I haven't ad hominem'd anyone in this thread, or attacked Anita over anything about her
personally - only what she directly said in the articles she's written. I haven't even gone so far as to criticize her in any way related to meta-issues like the whole kickstarter thing - which is something many other posters have actually criticized her over.
The only one making this about interpersonal abuse is you.
@glowcat: I never said anything about "Man hurt too! Bad!" or made many in-game comparisons, so that's not even relevant. Slinging insults and mi-characterizing peoples positions isn't a rebuttal, glowcat. It's strawmanning plain and simple.
Good freakin' god. Maybe I should remind you about a few pages back to which I was referring to.
And she definitely states it in a way that implies that the few examples she's hand-picked are completely representative, which is definitely stating things in a rather misleading fashion. She also, in the current video #2 talks about how single female deaths in games are fostering a culture of violence against women, yet she completely ignores that you probably massacre 100's if not 1000's of male characters in each of those games. One thing that strikes me, is that if I was making a highly violent action game I might be tempted to put exactly zero female characters in it, to avoid any accusation of fostering violence against women, for the same reason you don't see many little kids in shooters. I have to wonder if this is one reason you don't see more female antagonists in shooters.
The above is a perfect example of your inability to both understand an argument and your reliance of misrepresentation. And yet you constantly call strawman
You might remember more if you weren't throwing shit and hoping it sticks all the time.
That's not "throwing shit" it's making a valid observation that a phenomena occurs regardless of gender. If someone is claiming that a specific trope is gender-specific, then examples that the trope is applied regardless of gender is a valid observation. I'll follow up with some observations about the "limited scope" violence that Anita complains is gender-specific at the end of this post. We're on the same page, then, that dead bodies doesn't make it the problem - it's the way those deaths are
framed that's the issue, right? See my examples at the bottom.
What I said was that most of the problems stem from the lack of diversity of protagonists.
The existing images which give rise to women/minorities in those roles also need to be addressed, but yes, a simple usage of more diverse leading people would probably help alleviate the bulk of it.
That's the observation that shows why the focus on all the other tropes is largely misplaced.
I also pointed out that there's a disconnect between Anita's premises and conclusions, so they're not valid arguments. Conclusions may be valid, but her lines of reasoning are not.
If I surmise that you've failed to understand her arguments properly why would I care for your analysis?
She's not attempting to make a logical connection between her
presented premises and
presented conclusions. In an argument, it's not sufficient to present valid premises and conclusions - you have to show how one flows from the last without exaggeration or misrepresentation. I've made the case by stating specific examples, which you or other have not sufficiently been able to defend. Hell, others have at least made some effort to refute what i have said. You, have not.
For example, I pointed out that her (very specific) claim that Krystals game was cancelled
because of the Damsel in Distress trope doesn't stand up to scrutiny - because it doesn't, and it's an extremely specific claim made by Anita. I perfectly well understand that she needed a pretty sound bite tying everything into "why the damsel in distress disempowers women". Maybe it does disempower women. But the Star Fox example is a
terrible example for Anita to claim was
caused by the Damsel in Distress trope.
Then, with defining objectification, there's more smoke an mirrors, she starts with the subject/object dichotomy which we're meant to accept is a "simplification", but then she hasn't really laid out the definition of who is a subject and who is an object at all then, has she? From "the player is the subject" she just jumps straight into "all males PC and NPCs are subjects, females are objects" without further explanation of how she derived that from the first premise. This just shows the setup itself was a hand-wave gestures so she can introduce the term objectification into the discussion with the veneer of scientific definition of terms. Post-modern interpretation suffers a lot from this sort of issue of not defining terms properly, then jumping straight into their widespread application.
Glowcat, you specifically labelled everyone you disagreed with as having the attitude of ""SHE'S NOT ALLOWING US TO BEAT UP WOMEN!!" in full capitals, no less.
This is making a moral attack on anyone who disagrees with you, insinuating they have some nefarious ulterior motive, and it has the benefit of making you look good whilst absolving you of the responsibility of actually addressing their arguments.
I hate having to spell out what should've been clear. People were drawing the conclusion that Anita wanted there to be no violence against women. Hell, YOU implied such earlier with:
And then they gripe that there aren't more female antagonists. Well, antagonists have a habit of being killed violently. So make your mind up on that one. Do you want "less violence against women" in action games or "more female antagonists"? Can't have both!
Hint: Anita actually defines what she means by violence against women specifically. It's in there. Yes, I checked.
If I'm calling the accusations hyperbole it's because they're exaggerations... Going from that to labeling EVERYBODY who argues against me as wanting to beat women is frankly an asinine reading. And how the hell did I not address arguments? I've addressed your shitty arguments and theirs by just linking to what the hell she's been saying all along free of creatively applied bullshit. It's goddamn ironic since yet again you're trying to distract from answering somebody's points with bogus accusations of strawman. Stop using that term if you don't know what the hell it is.
It's not asinine to be offended by objective
more asinine statement:
What does that have to do with her intentions or the "SHE'S NOT ALLOWING US TO BEAT UP WOMEN!!" hyperbole that's being tossed around here?
How else is that meant to be interpreted except as a straw man that I want to beat up women because I want to look at Anita's claims in a somewhat critical manner?
-----
Ok, let's focus on the more-limited types of violent tropes that Anita claims are women-only and are toxic. We already ascertained that violence in general is acceptable and afflicts both genders. But the issue is violence against dis-empowered individuals "for their own good".
Those have a trope name, "mercy killings". They exist in game narratives and a mercy killing is by definition "for their own good". If you look at TV Tropes page under video games, there are plenty of examples of male characters who fall under the "mercy killing" trope - e.g. they're killed "for their own good". So there is no automatic proof that it's only females who fall under this trope.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MercyKill Numerous bosses in World Of Warcraft, particularly in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Several bosses use their last words to thank you.
Ok, we have plenty of examples of male bosses
thanking you for defeating them. It's not an unknown or rare trope for a possessed person to fight the hero and transform back into a human on death. It's certainly not a uniquely female trope. It's much more likely flowed from the existing male versions of the trope, but merely replaced with a female character, rather than some concept of mimicking domestic violence. Which is again back to the point - should we only allow certain tropes to involve male characters, because involving female characters in the
same scenario could be questionable? That was the point of my (sarcastic) remark that removing female characters from violent games would remove the potential for criticism. It's still a valid point if you narrow the scope of "approved violence" and "harmful violence", because both types of violence can be shown in examples for both genders.
So, the question remains, is a trope harmful only when applied to a specific gender, and e.g., it's "ok" to kill possessed males in mercy killings?
In God Of War 2, Kratos comes upon the Titan Prometheus, who as per Greek mythology is chained to a rock with an eagle ripping out his organs every day (which grow back every night, meaning endless torment). Kratos mercy-kills him by dropping him into the Fire of Olympus, earning the Rage of the Titans power-up.
Note, here, we have the hero mercy-killing a disempowered (a damselled)
male, mercy killing him, and receiving a reward (character progression) for doing so. Now, this is relevant, because Anita cites a later example from the
same game featuring a woman in a similar scenario. The later one is labeled to be toxic, and reinforcing gender stereotypes. It's relevant that if Titan Prometheus had been female, and the scenario exactly identical, it would have been included in Anita's thesis as an example of toxic sexist attitudes.
The Metal Gear Solid series features this as a device at least twice. In "Metal Gear Solid", Solid Snake kills Sniper Wolf after she is badly wounded in a battle with him. In "Metal Gear Solid 3", the player is forced to initiate the mercy kill of The Boss, making it a Player Punch. Both of these characters beg to be killed though the trope description precludes this, but many of the other examples here are similar.
Here, MGS uses the same trope
twice, once with each gender, and both characters "beg to be killed" after being beaten half to death by the player, much in line with Anita's thesis, which supposedly only happens with women, and is code for domestic violence. And we're supposed to agree that the one involving a female is gender-related.
In Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn you do this to a fellow prisoner in Irenicus' dungeon/laboratory. The poor fellow is being kept alive in a special tank against his will and has died and been brought back countless times. He begs you to kill him by removing the energy cell that powers his life support, which is convenient for you since you need that cell to power a different device.
There are pretty much endless examples of (possibly dis-empowered) characters of both genders begging to die, and you being rewarded for killing them. No need to claim that it's primarily about gender.