Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

Do you find the idea of a man saving a woman in peril so disgusting and ludicrous that it should never exist in any video game under any circumstances? And if it does, then the only plausible explanation is that men hate women? Can you somehow reconcile the idea of a man saving a woman while simultaneously hating her and can you hold both of these ideas as being true without a hint of irony?

Do you believe that women should ALWAYS be presented as strong characters and any hint of femininity is the fault of misogynistic developers? Do you believe that almost no such game has ever been created?

Do you find the female form repulsive to the point where any display of sexuality renders you incapable of performing your most basic functions? Do you believe that men enjoy looking at beautiful women because they secretly hate them and wish to see them degraded?

Does the word propaganda evoke positive emotions? Do you have no problem with confirmation bias?

Then this is the series for you, my friend! All this and a lot more (well, 8 videos to be exact) can be yours, but only if you have no wish of conversing with the creator or leaving any sort of feedback. We all know that YouTube comments are a cesspool of c**p, so the creator of the series has generously turned off comments and the like/dislike bar, so as not to expose you to any bad thoughts!

You're welcome!

This series is perhaps one of the most bigoted things I've ever seen. Labels all gamers as women hating individuals even states as fact that we are all affected by Video games even if we think we aren't.

This is propaganda worse than the stuff Jack Thompson tried to peddle to the media.

I can't rate the series a 0 and so a 1 will have to do. I would recommend searching on YouTube and you will find almost every argument made in this series rebutted.

I also feel bad for anybody who Kickstarted this video series as years later it has not been completed. Essentially scamming those who invested their hard earned money into something they believed in. I can't imagine many of those who supported this project would be happy at the blatant sexism that came to be of the project.

Sad

This isn't a documentary. I'm trying to understand why this is on IMDb. This is a collection of video game reviews from Youtube. Anita Sarkeesian is the host, sitting in front of a "green-screen" reviewing video games and specifying how she doesn't like them. I assumed it was parody, as it's on Youtube.

I did make an attempt to understand the point of view, but Sarkeesian presents a lot of negative observations:

The series presents "tropes" (which are basically metaphors for some form of expression) versus women. In most points Anita blames society, specifically men, for not enjoying the video games. Although I did notice she ignored the target audience of said games belong to a male demographic.

Anita Sarkeesian labels female characters in specific video games that she herself does not like. Sarkeesian's expertise immediately fell into question, when she admits she "does not like and does not play" the video games she's reviewing.

Sarkeesian arrives with her decisions subjectively; A female character is attractive, that's objectification. This female character needs to be rescued, this degrades her value. This female was killed, this promotes violence against women ... Arbitrary conclusions, heavily criticized, without basis in facts and it's just an incredibly negative experience.

If your familiar with John Bruce Thompson (Jack Thompson) from the 80's then you might understand where this series of video game reviews leads you; Jack was an activist campaigning against violence in video games - notoriously calling it "Behavior Modification". It's that same capriciousness that's applied here, although a bit more irrational in observation than Thompson's - Such as referring to a female hero as just a man with breasts and deeming it a "hatred against women".

It vaguely reminds me of Dana Carvey's Church Lady from the old Saturday Night Live, except it's deadpan serious and way cheaper in production. I understand she was given a quarter of a million dollars from Kickstarter to fund this. It's one still camera aimed at the presenter for the whole time. I'm sure it's worth some value to watch it freely on Youtube ... but never in a school classroom. It's not for children. You'd have to be insane to think this would benefit children.

Ms. Sarkeesian promised the people who donated to her Kickstarter a series that "will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games." The gaming community gladly donated $158,922 with the expectation that the video series would be completed by the date noted, and would be a fair and factual analysis of how women are portrayed in video games.

I'll start off with the first promise: The deadline The first video was promised to be delivered during August of 2012. We received it on March 7, 2013. Seven months late. The rest of the videos? Some people donated 250 dollars with the expectation that they would receive a video copy of all the videos in the series by December 2012. Two years later and the series is only half done. For a series so biased and factually wrong, the delay is inexcusable and yet, the creators refuse to refund the money.

But let us ignore this and take a look at the actual contents of the series. Ms. Sarkeesian spawns out of the abyss: a set of ridiculous tropes with which she would be able label the vast majority of female characters whom she did not like in the games she barley played. The few characters that were praised in the series would have failed by her own standards if only the show was not completely arbitrary and had some structure in how everything was criticized. So what exactly did all the criticism consist of?

That lady is a bystander on the street whom you can kill. Violence against women. That girl is beautiful and is not modestly dressed. Objectification of women. That women is killing people in a bad ass way, acting like a man. Man with boobs. This girl needs help. Saying women are weak or incapable. This game has no important female characters. Sexism.

This is the entire series. The few (very very few) legitimate arguments that were made discounted the fact that the games in question had a demographic of men in mind. Much like how romance novels with muscular men on the cover have a demographic of women in mind.

Literally anything could have been sexist if Ms. Sarkeesian wanted it to be. Everything in the video series was said on a whim, with the precise and bigoted goal of shaming video games and the people who enjoyed them for being who they are.

Typically when I write reviews, I'll go back next re-watch whatever the review is for. Not with this.

I don't even know why I'm doing this you all already know how terrible biased and factually incorrect it is, and if you don't look up response videos on YouTube or just articles on Google. You'll find tons of things debunking every single one of her points.

Not only is tropes vs. women completely incorrect, it is both intellectually dishonest and was only created so that the head of feminist frequency, Anita Sarkeesian, could make money. First of all she said in the original kickstarter that she had been playing video games her whole life, but a while later someone uploaded a video of her from a few years before the kickstarter was released saying she does not play videogames. Why would someone who doesn't like or understand video games create a series reviewing them? Well it's simple they're currently topical and controversial, so it would be an easy way to make money.

But the lies and greed don't stop there oh no, there was obviously a huge backlash against her kickstarter when it was first released. So after the kickstarter had already been completely funded, she published a few tweets that were sent to her, and all these tweets did was insult her. And she said these few tweets proved that all gamers were misogynistic resulting in her getting over 100,000 dollars in funding.

Anita Sarkeesian has also disabled comments and ratings on her videos, because they are so terrible and asinine that they couldn't even stand up to the smallest amount of criticism or scrutiny. She also seems to think that if people disagree with her, it's harassment. She also thinks that people only disagree with her because she's a women not because what she says is idiotic. Both of which are just stupid statements.

Tropes vs women is very representative of feminism in modern day first-world countries. It's just a bunch of entitled privileged white women complaint that they're lives are so hard even though they're about as easy as they get.