Is #GamerGate misogyny posing as concern for ethics?

[TheFeniX]

Regarding Other M, part of the backlash could also be credited to Samus being the protagonist. Her actions are controlled by the player, so when she is weak and ineffectual, then by extension so is the player. It also helps that Samus has been around for decades, and that she's one of the oldest female video game protagonists ever. Metroid sold well because the games were well-made and the main character was groundbreaking, and Other M attempted to do a complete 180 on all of her characterization up to that point.

I'll give you that. There was also backlash about the new Devil May Cry game as the New Dante was labelled an "Edge Lord" which I find makes me chuckle. They do not like establish characters being messed with.

It's also inaccurate to say that the Gamergate gamers love weak women. It's more that they love sexual women, and while the helpless damsel in distress or submissive ornament is one type of sexualization, it's certainly not the only type. Gameplay does usually trump that (see your X-Blades example), but they do mobilize when someone speaks out against it. See, for example, the bile directed at the reviewer who committed the sin of not giving Bayonetta 2 a perfect score because the comical levels of sexualization turned him off, which included at least one attempted campaign to get Nintendo to blacklist him as punishment (because, you know, ethics in video game journalism).

The GamerGate group (at least I assume most of it's related to a few websites, one in particular I won't mention), particularly the Nintendo fans, are a weird lot. They kicked up about the same amount of fuss, ruthlessly mocking Nintendo, for adding heels to Zero Suite Samus' character in the new Smash Bros. The thrust of their bullshit seems to be "we know what's sexist and what's not, so do what we say, even though we probably won't buy your game anyways." And this is something I've seen in a lot of other mediums, not just entertainment.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I always thought that the reason why mass media effect people is that we have learned to see them, television in particular as authority figures to be trusted. After all, up until a few years ago TV was how we got all of our news. So to see something on TV that looks official and informative means our brains will think it is. But that's just wild speculation on my part.

That is also a factor, yes. But repetition will even change attitudes with bar chatter etc.

The brain is awesome, but it takes shortcuts. Shortcuts in learning, shortcuts in information processing and recall. Shortcuts everywhere.

[Flagg]

Raw Story

Busted: Gamergate supporters’ attempt to SWAT transgender game artist backfires

Tom Boggioni
05 Jan 2015 at 09:42 ET

A digital artist claims supporters of “Gamergate” attempted to harass her by sending a SWAT team to her former home in Portland, Oregonlive reports.

Grace Lynn, a transgender woman now living in California, says the prank call was phoned in by supporters of the video game movement.

Ostensibly about “ethics in gaming journalism,” Gamergate grew out of accusations by the ex-boyfriend of video game developer Zoe Quinn, who claimed in a series of blog posts that she had cheated on him with gaming journalists in order to garner positive reviews for her games. The movement devolved into a series of attacks on women in the gaming community, including threats of rape and murder against high profile women such as developer Briana Wu and critic Anita Sarkeesian.

According to Lynn, she was once a member of Gamergate but became disenchanted with the extreme misogynistic turn it took.

“I was a misogynist,” she said. “I felt degraded as a trans-woman. I grew up with the stupid, stupid idea that women had privilege. So I joined in. I thought I was punching up at other women who were more privileged than I was.”

After attempting to get Gamergaters to rein in their attacks on women, she claims she became a target.

“I became a target because I am one of a dozen people who is fighting Gamergate in a vocal way,” she said. “They try to take us down with doxxing and swatting. And it’s all come to a head this month.”

Last week, Portland officers received a call around midnight saying that an armed man was holding residents hostage inside in a home formerly occupied by Lynn.

As officers were developing a plan to contact residents, they learned that the call was probably a hoax, and later confirmed that everyone inside the home was safe.

“That’s not how we operate,” police spokesperson Sgt. Pete Simpson said. “Patrol officers are going to go assess a scene based on what they see. We don’t roll out a SWAT team just because someone calls 911. We need more than a phone call.”

Lynn says the hoax, called “swatting,” was intended for her, noting that postings on a forum on the website 8chan described the plans to “swat” her.

They said they were weren’t members of Gamergate, but Lynn says they are supporters of the movement, according to OregonLive.

According to Katy Bartzen Culver, an associate director for the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, what happened to Lynn isn’t unusual.

Lynn is “speaking out and saying things that are pretty measured,” Bartzen Culver said. “For that, she becomes a direct target of some pretty vile communication. The question is who has the power to keep this community accountable?”

Out come the long knives.

[Kane Starkiller]

Now, if there is no evidence to be found that gory non stop violence in games affects people negatively how would there be any evidence that a constant barrage of depictions of jews as subhuman would affect people negatively during the 1930s? In both cases, it was "just a matter of depictions and giving people what they want and expect to see," surely?

Or... it could be that this constant barrage reinforces and sanctions behavior that otherwise would not be so sanctioned.

This is hate speech and slander. If there are games where portrayal of female characters can be shown to be hate speech then in most countries this is criminal offense. This however is nothing like examples Simon Jester mentioned.

For what it's worth, I don't think the main line of argument is necessarily that "games are sexist and make gamers sexist". The real argument being made by Anita Sarkeesian and some of the other outspoken critics at the center of GamerGate is not that "sexist games->sexist gamers" but rather that there is an underlying misogynist streak within the gaming culture and one MANIFESTATION of that side of the culture is that games are so prone to having sexist imagery or having weak female characters and everything. Essentially, "sexist gamers->sexist games."

Whether that argument is correct is a different story. I just don't think your characterization of the argument is entirely fair, when I think there's really a different argument being made. It seems highly unlikely that sexist games are actively causing gamers to become sexist; but I think it is at least worth discussing the possibility that these sexist games are simply representative of a deeper and broader trend. Do you understand the distinction (not sure I explained it well, I'm super exhausted)?

Anita Sarkeesian has yet to demonstrate how her personal opinions translate into the objective characterization of a game as sexist or worse yet misogynist. She claims that games which feature a male protagonist saving his girlfriend are sexist as opposed to being the simplest way of establishing a motivation for the player: saving a loved one.

That makes no sense whatsoever.

You're literally saying "if there's no evidence X affects people negatively, how would there be any evidence Y affects people negatively?" I could think of dozens of examples off the top of my head that could be mad-libbed in for X and Y to make that sound very silly indeed.

And I suppose you would substitute "violence in games" with butterflies and "claimed sexism in games" with nuclear weapons in order to make my strawmaned point look silly. The phenomenon discussed here is negative impact of media on human psyche. There has been no evidence that extensive violence and murder in video games affect humans. Do you have any evidence that larger than average breasts negatively impact human psyche?

Have you ever heard of "art criticism?"

It is common, indeed routine for people to review and analyze art based on how good it is. To notice disturbing subtext and hidden messages in a work of art. To make recommendations or requests of the artistic community that they start sending desirable messages to society at large.

So as soon as video games started getting taken seriously as art, it was inevitable that people would start looking at them seriously and asking "what messages do these games, these works of art, contain?" Just as previously they did for comic books, television, movies, and so on.

And part of the role of the critic is that, when a work of art shows disturbing features like being misogynistic or racist, the critic tells people about this. Publicly. That's normal. That's okay.

If you disagree, fine. If you plug your ears and refuse to listen, not so fine... but you're within your rights.

If you start demanding that critics shut up and threatening them with rape and murder because they said your favorite artwork was misogynistic... Not fine. Not fine at all. And indeed, when this is persistently happening to women, and only to women, it tends to suggest that they were right all along to say that the artwork was misogynistic. Because if it's not creating fans who like to hate, stalk, harass, and possibly harm women... it's certainly attracting fans who like to do those things.

Really? The "art critics" have the right to request that artistic community starts sending "desirable" messages to the society? By whose definition of "desirable"? If you are talking about slander and hate speech there are laws for that. Anything else is personal opinion which they are welcome to but that is where their rights end.
And, no, the fact that some of them were threatened with rape by anonymous people doesn't change that at all.

[Simon_Jester]

OK, that's fair: there are two classes of stereotype-riddled, oversexualized female characters in gaming: the ineffectual damsels, and the "warrior woman" who's basically an invitation to drool.

[For example, think of Lara Croft. She was an implant-toting, pistol-packing, "look at my butt while I shimmy through caves" character in earlier installments. She turned in the most recent game into a more humanized character who struggles and bleeds and has at least some actual depth... less about wish fulfillment, more about being the female version of Indiana Jones. That was good. That was the kind of direction I suspect most people criticizing games for sexism would like to see more of.]

The original Tomb Raider hit a bar so high in 3rd-person exploration and puzzle solving, labeling the game as some kind of PG-13 porn game does it a huge disservice. As the games progressed and the developers seemed more interested in portraying Croft as this Indiana Jones with tits, moving away from the core platform and puzzle sections into an action-girl in tight spandex, the series cratered and barely kept making money.

The idea that Tomb Raider was popular because Croft was some kind of sex symbol is some weird revisionist stuff born out of the idiotic "CROFT IS HAWT" marketing EIDOS went through when they couldn't understand why their own game was popular. I almost wish Croft had been a man because then gaming rags couldn't have pushed tits in my face and we might have been able to play more than 1 or 2 good Tomb Raider games in the past 15 years.

You're right; I apologize.

For a counter-example, if gamers hate women so much why had Metroid sold so damn well over the years? Why did Other M crater when it showed Samus as a weak and barely effectual character? Gamers love weak women right? Why was Perfect Dark a big deal on N64, but was instantly forgettable on 360? Why isn't there a huge backlash in the FFXIV community when women are, literally, in charge of everything? X-Blades had it all: a hot chick with tits barely contained slashing through boring dungeons: it sold great, right? No, no it didn't.

"Gamers" don't mind women and minorities when the game is fun and doesn't feel like a cheap cash-in. But, they don't make the games. They can only chose what to play. And if developers won't give them options, then they either don't play your game or buy it anyways because it's all they got to work with.

Well, criticism of the games as art is not criticism of the gamers. Insofar as the gamers get criticized, it's usually because a certain chunk of their membership is literally walking right into that criticism, while the rest facepalms.

I will observe that Felicia Day got doxxed, despite having excellent credentials as a positive, pro-gaming celebrity (indeed, she is a celebrity ONLY in the gaming community). And she got doxxed literally just for saying "I have been afraid of the Gamergate gamer community, afraid to speak out on this issue because I thought they were hostile and would try to hurt me." Which they immediately did.

Actually, and this by no means excuses the reaction she garned, she said she was afraid of the gamer community because of Gamergate and walked across the street to avoid some dudes in Captain King and Carl on Duty shirts just walking down the street minding their own business.

She was doxxed only after posting that. Again that doesn't excuse attacking her but its easy to see how some would be offended by that, like a black man getting rightfully offended when some little old white lady clutches her purse when he gets in an elevator.

And yet this does validate her very concerns.

If a woman who clutches her purse when a man walks into an elevator gets mugged by the man for doing so, it only serves to prove that the man has absolutely zero sense of irony and is ignorant and brutish enough to perpetuate the very stereotype he suffers from.

(I'm a schoolteacher; I have all too much experience with people choosing to live down to their own offensive stereotypes)

So the shit-gamers here are acting in a way that totally validates every criticism targeted against them personally. Meanwhile, the bulk of the actual criticism, that which is not directed against the shit-gamers personally, is not directed against any gamers. It is directed against the games themselves, and we'd have a better video game industry if people listened to it.

As well the shit slingers should be targeted for criticism like a horde of disappointed mother in laws who thought their baby should have married better. But its not just the douches being hit with vast waves of pointed fingers, the two gamer shirted dudes Day mentioned "clutching her purse" away from and everyone else who plays games lumped in with the shitbags sending dead animals and needles to people.

Yes. This happens. It especially happens when a group collectively allows the worst members of their 'community' to hijack their message and passively sits there while it happens.

And 'gamers' as a whole? That's her fanbase. This is the woman who starred in The Guild. She is the last person I'd expect to show an unwarranted fear of gamers as a whole.

And yet she did. She expressed fear of some random guys over the simple fact they were wearing shirts that said they enjoyed video games.

And yet she did after Gamergate, when it had just become explicit that a noticeable percentage of gamers were acting like misogynistic rats, launching gratuitous personal attacks on high-profile female figures in the gaming community, and that a frightening number of other male gamers were sitting back and letting them.

Yes she has stalkers and she seemed to show less fear towards these physical sick fucks who follow and harass her physically compared to internet drama queens. She crossed the street to avoid people because of the internet asshole, not because of her stalkers. Stalkers completely unrelated to Gamergate, existing well before this cluster was a twinkle in some trolls eyes, and definitely unrelated to the Halo and Cod boys

Uh... wouldn't her stalkers be trying to come into contact with her physically? She has reason to be worried about physical security, not just Internet security.

[Kane Starkiller]

OK, that's fair: there are two classes of stereotype-riddled, oversexualized female characters in gaming: the ineffectual damsels, and the "warrior woman" who's basically an invitation to drool.

And this is hate speech or slander even accepting your claims at face value?
But of course there is no reason to accept your claims at face value.
"Sterotype-riddled" - Which steretypes, are they hate speech,slander?
"oversexualized" - Over sexualized by whose standard? Is being sexualized at all a bad thing? By whose criteria?
"invitation to drool" - Do I have to justify myself for drooling over women? Is that morally reprehensible now? Again even accepting your claims that all female characters are an invitation to drool. Drool if you want, don't if you don't want to. Very simple.

[Vendetta]

Anita Sarkeesian has yet to demonstrate how her personal opinions translate into the objective characterization of a game as sexist or worse yet misogynist. She claims that games which feature a male protagonist saving his girlfriend are sexist as opposed to being the simplest way of establishing a motivation for the player: saving a loved one.

However, the protagonist is overwhelmingly male and the person to be saved overwhelmingly female.

Which is because of a set of assumptions based around the default masculine point of view (the idea that the assumed male audience will be more motivated by a captive female than any other possible replacement). Which has the side effect of reducing the female character to a commodity not a person, they're usually no more possessed of agency in the story than they would be if a particularly valued inanimate object had been stolen instead.

So yes, it's pretty sexist, even if that isn't the intention and only happens because videogame writers are, by and large, catastrophically lazy fucks who don't even have time to tell you why they don't have time to tell you the story.

[Kane Starkiller]

However, the protagonist is overwhelmingly male and the person to be saved overwhelmingly female.

Which is because of a set of assumptions based around the default masculine point of view (the idea that the assumed male audience will be more motivated by a captive female than any other possible replacement). Which has the side effect of reducing the female character to a commodity not a person, they're usually no more possessed of agency in the story than they would be if a particularly valued inanimate object had been stolen instead.

So yes, it's pretty sexist, even if that isn't the intention and only happens because videogame writers are, by and large, catastrophically lazy fucks who don't even have time to tell you why they don't have time to tell you the story.

So what? That's because historically game players were mostly male and the most straightforward way to introduce motivation is that your girlfriend or wife or crush is kidnapped. It is simply a capitalization on the fact that men do in fact react to women in their lives being threatened. How does this turn them into commodities? Are you saying that if you are playing a game to save your girlfriend and in the middle of the game the main villain offers you to buy her off from you are more likely to do it because by now you somehow view her as commodity? I would love to see some evidence or at least reasoning behind that one.

Nothing here makes those stories sexist to say nothing about being misogynist that is woman hating.

[Vendetta]

So what? That's because historically game players were mostly male and the most straightforward way to introduce motivation is that your girlfriend or wife or crush is kidnapped.

That's a) not as true as you believe (the first wave of home consoles were marketed as unisex, male focus came later), b) no excuse because "mostly male" does not accurately represent the modern audience and c) irrelevant because this extends far beyond gaming.

Also, the laziest way to do something should probably be automatically criticised because it's the laziest way of doing it.

It is simply a capitalization on the fact that men do in fact react to women in their lives being threatened. How does this turn them into commodities? Are you saying that if you are playing a game to save your girlfriend and in the middle of the game the main villain offers you to buy her off from you are more likely to do it because by now you somehow view her as commodity? I would love to see some evidence or at least reasoning behind that one.

The point is that it ignores the agency of the female character, she is reduced to an object as far as the story is concerned, not a person with opinions and desires of her own who acts in furtherance of those desires. In the classic damsel in distress story absolutely nothing would change if you removed the woman and replaced her with the hero's favourite stick. Because she's not a person, she's an object for men to squabble over. That's what I mean about being a commodity, she's an object of value not a person.

Nothing here makes those stories sexist to say nothing about being misogynist that is woman hating.

Reducing women to the status of objects, which is what these stories do, is inherently sexist. Even if it's only done out of laziness.

[Kuja]

Out come the long knives.

Not only did they try to SWAT someone for the terrible crime of no longer agreeing with them, the fucking morons gave the cops the WRONG HOUSE.

Gamergate supporters send 20 police officers to the wrong house

Members of the pro-Gamergate community 8chan tried to get a SWAT team dispatched to the home of Grace Lynn, a former member of the Gamergate movement, as retribution for leaving. But Gamergaters gave police the wrong address.

Portland police dispatched 20 patrol officers, not a SWAT team, to the address given to them during a call about an armed hostage situation. While the police were drawing up a plan to contact residents in the neighborhood, Portland Central Precinct received a call that the situation was probably a hoax.

Swatting is the act of calling police with a fake report of a situation severe enough to warrant a raid by a SWAT team. Bomb threats and hostage situations are two of the common methods used by “swatters” to try and execute the prank. Swatting was popularized as a tool used by online gamers against other online gamers, often to watch the prank take place live over a streaming service like Twitch.

In this case, the attempted swatting was just another instance of the harassment Grace Lynn has been facing since she abandoned the Gamergate movement. Lynn, a pixel artist, songwriter, and game designer, withdrew her support for the movement when Lynn saw it as a hate campaign, and not a call for better ethics in video game journalism.
Even before she was contacted by Portland police, Lynn was aware that a swatting attempt against her was going to take place. The online harassment of Lynn is so bad that she monitors the Web to try and preemptively prepare for it. That’s how she discovered the plan to launch a swatting attempt against her, as discussed in a thread on 8chan which has since been removed from the board.

[Kane Starkiller]

That's a) not as true as you believe (the first wave of home consoles were marketed as unisex, male focus came later), b) no excuse because "mostly male" does not accurately represent the modern audience and c) irrelevant because this extends far beyond gaming.

Also, the laziest way to do something should probably be automatically criticised because it's the laziest way of doing it.

Are you saying that historically most players weren't male? No excuse? What makes you think game makers owe you any excuses or explanations for what kind of main characters they make unless they are breaking the law?
Lazy? Lazy has nothing to do with sexism.

The point is that it ignores the agency of the female character, she is reduced to an object as far as the story is concerned, not a person with opinions and desires of her own who acts in furtherance of those desires. In the classic damsel in distress story absolutely nothing would change if you removed the woman and replaced her with the hero's favourite stick. Because she's not a person, she's an object for men to squabble over. That's what I mean about being a commodity, she's an object of value not a person.

Who ignores the desires and opinions of the female character? The bad guy. That's what makes him the bad guy. If she gets herself free without help then there is no story.
Are you saying that players would be just as motivated to free a stick as they are to free a human woman? Are you a telepath now?
How are the men "squabbling" over her? She is kidnapped/in trouble and one of them is trying to rescue/help her. How is one reduced to an object of value and a non person by needing help? What about disabled people that need actual real world help from their loved ones 24/7? Do they have value? Are they reduced to objects and non-persons?
When you say she is an "object of value" what value are you talking about? Money? Gold?

Reducing women to the status of objects, which is what these stories do, is inherently sexist. Even if it's only done out of laziness.

See above. People (even if they are women) who need help are not objects and making stories where you help them is not sexism.

[Simon_Jester]

OK, that's fair: there are two classes of stereotype-riddled, oversexualized female characters in gaming: the ineffectual damsels, and the "warrior woman" who's basically an invitation to drool.

And this is hate speech or slander even accepting your claims at face value?
But of course there is no reason to accept your claims at face value.
"Sterotype-riddled" - Which steretypes, are they hate speech,slander?
"oversexualized" - Over sexualized by whose standard? Is being sexualized at all a bad thing? By whose criteria?
"invitation to drool" - Do I have to justify myself for drooling over women? Is that morally reprehensible now? Again even accepting your claims that all female characters are an invitation to drool. Drool if you want, don't if you don't want to. Very simple.

Uh... I don't even understand what you're getting at.

I can try to address your rambling, disconnected questions.

1) A "stereotype" need not be either hate speech or slander. Read a dictionary.

2) "Oversexualized" as in "this character's sexuality is portrayed in such a way that it overtakes the rest of their character." While that can work in some fiction some of the time, it's bad when it takes over all fiction all of the time.

3) "Invitation to drool." What is reprehensible is when women are only or overwhelmingly portrayed in fiction as a way of getting men to drool over them (and therefore buy the fiction). Basically, we're back to a version of Kant's categorical imperative: that it is always wrong to treat a person only as a means to an end.

4) You know damn well that I didn't say "all female characters are an invitation to drool." Don't lie.

[Kane Starkiller]

Uh... I don't even understand what you're getting at.

I can try to address your rambling, disconnected questions.

1) A "stereotype" need not be either hate speech or slander. Read a dictionary.

2) "Oversexualized" as in "this character's sexuality is portrayed in such a way that it overtakes the rest of their character." While that can work in some fiction some of the time, it's bad when it takes over all fiction all of the time.

3) "Invitation to drool." What is reprehensible is when women are only or overwhelmingly portrayed in fiction as a way of getting men to drool over them (and therefore buy the fiction). Basically, we're back to a version of Kant's categorical imperative: that it is always wrong to treat a person only as a means to an end.

4) You know damn well that I didn't say "all female characters are an invitation to drool." Don't lie.

Those were your points. If they feel like rambling or disconnected well... maybe you should rethink your position.

1) I didn't ask you for a definition I asked you to list examples of these bad female sterotypes in games that you referred to.

2) So are you actually going to produce an objective criteria or are we still at whatever you personally think "overtakes" the rest of their character? I won't even ask how you got the idea that this is done in all of fiction all the time.

3) But if we take your statement at face value it is men who are being used as means to an end. Artists draws a sexy woman (in Bayonetta's case for example a female artist) and poor dumb males buy it and shell out money.

4) No you declared that there are two classes of women both of which you declared are oversexualized but you only explicitly said that "warrior woman" is an invitation to drool. I wrongly assumed that "ineffectual damsels" are also an invitation to drool since they are also oversexualized according to you. My bad.

[Kane Starkiller]

This reminds me of Spider Woman "controversy":

[bilateralrope]

Early on GamerGate managed to pressure Intel to stop advertising on Gamasutra. GG called this a big victory. Then Intel appologised after realizing just what GG stood for. Intel restored the ads last month.

Then Intel decided to make it clear just what their position is: Intel pledges $300M to bolster women, minority workforce in wake of GamerGate

By Michael McWhertor on Jan 06, 2015 at 9:43p

Chipmaker Intel announced at CES today that it plans to invest $300 million to support diversity and inclusivity at the company, and to actively support hiring and retaining more women and under-represented minorities as part of a "Diversity in Technology" initiative. As part of Intel's initiative, the company plans to fund programs that support "more positive representation within the technology and gaming industries."

The announcement from Intel comes after the company found itself inadvertently caught up in the GamerGate harassment campaign last year.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced the Diversity in Technology initiative at the company's CES keynote in Las Vegas today, saying, "It's not good enough to say we value diversity, and then have our industry not fully represent" the women and minorities in Intel's talent pool.

"This isn't just good business. This is the right thing to do."

As part of its effort, Intel says it's working with industry partners to "support, enhance or create new programs." Some of the announced partners include the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the eSports League (ESL), the National Center for Women in Technology, Feminist Frequency, Girls Who Code, Rainbow PUSH and the Cybersmile Foundation.

In a release, Intel acknowledged "a recent confluence of events related to women and under-represented minorities." During his CES keynote, Krzanich himself referenced online harassment efforts that targeted women and minorities.

Intel became attached to the GamerGate harassment campaign after it pulled advertising from game industry site Gamasutra last year. The chipmaker had been targeted by a campaign against Gamasutra and its editor-at-large Leigh Alexander, who had been critical of gamer culture, leading Intel to temporarily withdraw ads. That decision led to criticism that Intel was endorsing anti-feminist bullying.

"We recognize that our action inadvertently created a perception that we are somehow taking sides in an increasingly bitter debate in the gaming community," Intel said in a statement at the time. "That was not our intent, and that is not the case. When it comes to our support of equality and women, we want to be very clear: Intel believes men and women should be treated the same.

"And, diversity is an integral part of our corporate strategy and vision with commitments to improve the diversity of our workforce," Intel continued. "And while we respect the right of individuals to have their personal beliefs and values, Intel does not support any organization or movement that discriminates against women. We apologize and we are deeply sorry if we offended anyone."

Intel's new Diversity in Technology campaign pledges to achieve "full representation of women and under-represented minorities" at the company by 2020. Full representation, Intel says, means its U.S. workforce will be "more representative of the talent available in America, including more balanced representation in senior leadership positions."

It looks like GamerGate forced Intel into a position where being neutral was not an option. So good things happened in spite of GG.

[Lord Revan]

at least when it comes to oversexualization it's actually quite simple to answer, when if you ask your typical consumer what they remember of the character after they played the game (or watched the movie or read the comic or similar) is "eye candy for men (or women)" then that character was oversexualizied as her(or his) depiction as a sex object over powered everything else in the minds of the public.

Good example would be Nova from the Starcraft series how many players do you think know anything about her besides that she's a cute blond woman in skintight outfit, for example how many know that "Nova" isn't in fact neither her codename(that's agent X41822N) or her true name (that's November Annbelle Terra), or how many knew that she had history with Gabriel Tosh. I would suspect that for most SC2 players she was just eye candy.

[TheFeniX]

Well, criticism of the games as art is not criticism of the gamers. Insofar as the gamers get criticized, it's usually because a certain chunk of their membership is literally walking right into that criticism, while the rest facepalms.

People view criticism of the most random shit they do, are a part of, or own as criticism to themselves all the time. Gamers are like this with other gamers, even in the same genre: put a Quake and a UT guy in the same room. There's going to be a lot of arguing, mostly about taste. Then have a Counter-Strike guy walk in and watch both the Arena shooter guys club him to death.

As part of this, we generally assume people are defending a particular pastime you do not because they play it themselves. Not to say there isn't a portion of the playerbase that isn't loud and obnoxious, but do we really know how many strong they are? Look at something like the WoW official forums. You'd think it's doomsday and everything is horrible, but people complain a lot more than they compliment. And even if there were 10,000 people claiming the sky is falling, there's 5-10 million more just playing the game completely unaware of all the bullshit going on because they are content.

So, if someone were to say "WoW players are whiny babies, just look at the WoW forums," I'm sure there'd be a lot of people pissed off. And when journalists and bloggers start comparing the average gamer to felons who need to be dragged into a jail-cell, you'll have some problems generating any kind of traction for change.

The point is that it ignores the agency of the female character, she is reduced to an object as far as the story is concerned, not a person with opinions and desires of her own who acts in furtherance of those desires. In the classic damsel in distress story absolutely nothing would change if you removed the woman and replaced her with the hero's favourite stick. Because she's not a person, she's an object for men to squabble over. That's what I mean about being a commodity, she's an object of value not a person.

Agency has been a major issue in gaming for a long time. The problem isn't so much that women lack agency, it's that generally only the player has agency. And when you have a female character with no agency and you rely on the go-to female stereotypes, they are rightfully offended. I'm offended because considering technology, that shit should not play in anything but the most brain-dead of shooter games.

But I don't see agency really making a comeback. No Ur-Quan fighting their own war on a dead-line instead of just waiting around for you to blow them up. No NPCs in Wizardry rounding up essential quest items themselves and changing the dynamic of the game. Agency tends to be much to complicated for players to deal with or developers to bother cheating at faking.

Sadly, the only real recent example of agency (and with women to boot) comes from the gutted RPG Skyrim. Delphine not only has the gall to steal your stuff (even though from a gameplay standpoint, she did nothing), she forces you to prove you're the Dragonborn, and will blow you off unless you kill Parthunaxx. Even Karliah holds off her plans only because she needed something to bring Mercer into the open (which you happily accomplish for the both of them). Hell, Astrid might qualify as well. Meanwhile, Alduin does one thing during an extended cutscene, then hangs around doing nothing while you ensure his demise.

[Beowulf]

Surprise! They don't have much back story for Nova in SC2. She's in all of two cut scenes, and a controllable unit in a single mission. Why? Because SC2 isn't about her. It's about the Queen of Blades. Nova was a throw away character to end Tosh's storyline. Why would we know more about her? Narratively, she doesn't matter!

[TheFeniX]

At least I know who Nova is because I was around when people were bashing Ghosts after it started out as a decent looking TPS stealth game then became nothing but Nova ass-shots while Blizzard was waiting around to cancel it. "Hot doctor lady" who gets all warm in her female parts when Raynor saves the day was so bland I couldn't even remember her name. Bonus points for being a rough and tumble frontier researcher who still complies with Blizzard's "must look like a runway model" CGI cutscenes what with her meticulously plucked eyebrows, nary a hair-strand out of place, and most definitely kissable lips. Blizzard doesn't allow any (human) women below a 9/10 in their cutscenes. Dead women also have to be 9/10+.

This is something that's been sort of weird to me since MK2. You'd think the "modestly" dressed Sonya Blade would be more popular among women, but I distinctly remember the sexy-dragon-lady Kitana being more popular (even more so among men duh) during that time. Now part of this could have been that Sonya wasn't playable in MK2, but Kitana's popularity extended into MK3. Who knows, maybe I'm misremembering. But, High-heels and a boob window in blue is still a fairly popular cosplay selection for women. She also has a pretty detailed backstory (that's not a euphemism) for a fighting game and still retains her popularity. I'm sure a lot of guys think she's nothing but this hot ninja chick, but I guess with the movie out they could pick up the "10,000 year-old princess" bit.

At what point do you draw the line and is sexualization (or over, if you can define that) in of itself a bad thing? Honest question. I like to bash on DOA and it's "booooobs," but as was brought to my attention on this forum: the ridiculously attractive and proportioned females (and males, really) are the characters pushing the story along. They are the heroes, even if they are boner inducing while being so.

[Kane Starkiller]

To me this is nothing but a relic of thousands of years of religious propaganda: there is something icky about sex and sexualization even though we can't quite put our finger on it.

It's not a coincidence that every movement that seeks to monopolize morality always centers on sex. Christianity did it, Islam did it and now radical feminism does it. Make something as natural as sex and wanting to look beautiful or be with beautiful people into some kind of crime and you're almost there. Now only you can bring the salvation. DON'T BE TEMPTED BY FLESH!

[Terralthra]

Yup, that's definitely the case. There's no differing gender standards at all or anything. It's just moralizing about sexuality, which is why when a male character is sexualized, male gamers are perfectly fine with it.

[Kane Starkiller]

So do you agree with those posters? Personally I'm not a woman or a homosexual so I'm not really interested in seeing sexualized males other then generally admiring a powerful anatomically idealized male form.
This has to come from women or male homosexuals. But it's not going to come if we listen to all these fucking moral warriors blathering on how filthy it is.

[Elheru Aran]

It's not about "filthy". It's about a disparity in how designers portray women versus men in video games, and in the response of gamers to that inequality. Uniformly across the board women are frequently sexualized in their portrayal, while men are simply 'normal'. It'd be the same kind of wrong if men were consistently portrayed as sexualized (like the picture Terralthra posted) while women were shown covered up in 'normal' dress 99 times out of a hundred.

[Kane Starkiller]

Then let women demand more sexualized guys in games. Let them create mods with naked guys in games and send a message to the game creators.
Except this is not what these feminists whine about. They portray "sexualized" women as intrinsically bad with the explanation that reinforces negative female stereotypes without providing a shred of evidence.

[Elheru Aran]

It's not about the stereotypes (although that's part of it, too) either. It's a gender disparity. Same thing as the pay disparity issue. It's not right that women are consistently paid less than men for the same level of employment. Are you going to say that's a problem too?

Also, do note that there aren't as many women gamers out there as there are men (although those numbers are increasing). Regardless of that, though, it's not the fault of women gamers that there aren't as many non-sexualized women in games; that's the fault of developers pandering to what they view as the 'gamer' demographic and gamers that do fit into that demographic (young, male, hetero d-bag).