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[penguinofhonor]

Don't be naive, Descan. The cost for a video series in the modern day is not all that high. The largest cost would be the hardware, and that assumes she needs a whole new computer and video setup for this.

As for the comments, I say bullshit. You expect me to believe this was popular enough to get this much money in donations but to have enough people posting badly on the comments that she either shuts them down or approves every single one?

She asked for too much, she got too much, and everyone just goes along with having their money taken. This is a very good scam, but a scam nonetheless.

So... your argument is that it is impossible for a lot of people to like this and for a lot of people to dislike this simultaneously, therefore it's a scam?

[Kansa]

Wait, wait, wait... What?

How does SHE have anything to do with what people donated to her? Like, at all?!

You said yourself she only asked for 6k. SHE asked for 6K. She DIDN'T ask for 159k. OTHER PEOPLE gave her the extra 153k, and you're blaming HER for it?!

What the hell, man.

Even if 6k is "way too much for a video series", which I don't agree with at all, she has nothing to do with the actual donations that come in.

And why she has a "vice grip" on comments? Is because nearly every single fucking comment would be filled with vile and terrible words. Any decent conversation would be lost. In fact, in the very descriptions of her videos, she says "We disabled the comments because people suck. If you want to discuss this, feel free to host it on your blog or other forum and discuss it there!" Like, hey, what we're doing right now!

I thought you were better than this, MSH. This is just mud slinging.

Don't be naive, Descan. The cost for a video series in the modern day is not all that high. The largest cost would be the hardware, and that assumes she needs a whole new computer and video setup for this.

As for the comments, I say bullshit. You expect me to believe this was popular enough to get this much money in donations but to have enough people posting badly on the comments that she either shuts them down or approves every single one?

She asked for too much, she got too much, and everyone just goes along with having their money taken. This is a very good scam, but a scam nonetheless.

It is still not a scam because everyone who backed that project realised what they were getting from the start, a series of youtube videos. She is producing exactly what she promised it is not her fault if people paid her that much for it and most of the popularity for the project was directly caused from the bile that the internet spewed up, there were people who made a game which its sole purpose was to beat the crap out of her. If I knew I was going to get comments like that from the start I would block them too as there would be no room for any reasonable discussion in them.

[Max White]

Joking aside, oh wow this thing. Uhh... I'll stay away from this.

2 pages in and this is already a shitfest. I'm ducking out.

Unlike all the other times where I said I was leaving and then stuck around to the end, I'm actually going.
Bye!

Clever bait, but fish is too smart!

^{*Sent via message}
Nope, still hadn't left.


Anyway, I would be interested in seeing the number of male to female indie devs.
Not the type of indie devs that are actually a small studio publishing on steam,  but bedroom devs with no bar to entry.

From what I have seen, there are far more males in this category than females. Not that I mean to imply that females don't want in on games development, presenting an argument in this fashion would be dishonest. I'm just wondering does my experience reflect reality, and if so why this is.

[Flying Dice]

Even if the situation really is such that one has to choose between someone who got a large sum of money by playing on peoples' sympathies and good intentions or a crowd of reprehensible bigots, that isn't a difficult choice. Considering that most of the backlash was composed of kneejerk responses from the sort of people who do things like this, I'm not convinced that her intent was to come out of this with a fistful of dollars that wasn't necessary to accomplish her stated goal. If Anita did start the project intending to see financial gain, she's still far less of an evil than many of the people that attacked her. I suppose giving the metaphorical beehive a good wallop is one way of generating publicity.

[Frumple]

If it is lower, MW, I'd wager it's 'cause the environment surrounding the skillsets needed for game development is still a bit toxic to females (programming specifically... from what I understand, it's a bit less troubled in the graphic design et al arena). S'true both in and out and academia, unfortunately. It gets harder to learn when there's barriers into the communities that build up around what you're trying to learn, yeah?

[MrWiggles]

All right.  Do you know of any trans female main characters outside of dating games?  I don't. 

A statement like this always strike me as special pleading or moving the goal post?


Do you that thing in X? Well, its invalid unless its everywhere!

Gender of most video games do not matter. Well, gender and sexual orientation for most fictional character dont matter, unless said media is about those two things.

No, sorry.  I'm trying to ask about trans characters who do not exist solely as fetish objects.  I should have been more specific, because when I thought about it I didn't agree with my own statement.

If gender for video games doesn't matter, then why is that that games with female leads get 40% the market budget of games with male leads?  It sure seems to matter to someone!

Its matters to marketing and focus groups, but not to story telling or game mechanics. Males are seen as gender neutral in marketing. Uh, something to the effect that folks are more willing, either gender to consume media with male leads then those with female leads. Thats seem to have been true, for a fairly long time. I'm only familiar with studies going back to the 80s. But you can find example before then that hold it up. Like Bionic Woman wasnt as strong as a show then 6 Million Dollar Man. But it hard to break down such thing, as was it because it was as spin off or just a weaker show, never minding the gender of lead.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Don't be naive, Descan. The cost for a video series in the modern day is not all that high. The largest cost would be the hardware, and that assumes she needs a whole new computer and video setup for this.

As for the comments, I say bullshit. You expect me to believe this was popular enough to get this much money in donations but to have enough people posting badly on the comments that she either shuts them down or approves every single one?

She asked for too much, she got too much, and everyone just goes along with having their money taken. This is a very good scam, but a scam nonetheless.

So... your argument is that it is impossible for a lot of people to like this and for a lot of people to dislike this simultaneously, therefore it's a scam?

My argument is that this reeks of e-scamming practices. Kickstarter is chalk full of people like this, she's just very good compared to most.

Let's go down the list, shall we?

-Chose a highly politically charged topic and made herself out to be doing something revolutionary.

-Talks about trolls, constantly. It's like she's never heard of "don't feed the trolls". If they're such a problem, then why does she seem intent upon drawing their attention rather than starving it? As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

-Asked for an abnormal amount of money, continuing to portray herself as some kind of "brave pioneer" and thus deserving of it for the project.

-Waited a very long time to actually start the project.

-Oh so conveniently has to keep any possible dissent out of the project.

Red flags all around. The internet is a great place for separating people from their money. Anita has done one pretty impressive thing though, and that is keeping people off her back on this. By actually making a video series that is ultimately only worth only a small fraction of the money gathered, she keeps the vast majority of people from suspecting her while cashing tens of thousands of dollars into her bank account. It also helps that there are a good deal of people on the internet who really are sexist shitheads, ironically helping her succeed by deriding her and thus making the project appear legitimate-but-oppressed.

[Max White]

Males are seen as gender neutral in marketing.

See I'm tempted to believe this because I am a male and most of the media that is directed at me features a male protagonist, and his gender don't have to come up as an issue.
I wonder if women see a male protagonist as being as gender neutral...

[palsch]

From what I have seen, there are far more males in this category than females. Not that I mean to imply that females don't want in on games development, presenting an argument in this fashion would be dishonest. I'm just wondering does my experience reflect reality, and if so why this is.

I'd think two factors here.

1) Women are discouraged from entering computer programming at all by a culture that is similar to that surrounding games, in formal education, on the internet and in industry. That cuts down massively on the number of casual female programmers with the experience to make a go of a successful (and so noticeable) indi game. To me this broader sexist culture is part of the same problem, helping create the barriers surrounding the gaming industry that in turn help keep the illusion that gaming is still a boys club.

2) Those that could are discouraged by the potential of becoming a visible woman online. See the subject of this thread. Or a more subtle example from this week.

[freeformschooler]

To some extent I agree with MSH, and it's for the reasons that he laid out that it's actually less productive to talk about Anita's video series itself than it is to talk about the issue it helped publicize.

[MrWiggles]

Males are seen as gender neutral in marketing.

See I'm tempted to believe this because I am a male and most of the media that is directed at me features a male protagonist, and his gender don't have to come up as an issue.
I wonder if women see a male protagonist as being as gender neutral...

If I recall correctly, they do. Boys are more likely to consume media with boy leads then girl leads, and girl seem to be indifference to gender.

So if you want to market a show to both gender, then you go with a male lead.

[Max White]

If I recall correctly, they do. Boys are more likely to consume media with boy leads then girl leads, and girl seem to be indifference to gender.

So if you want to market a show to both gender, then you go with a male lead.

Now your using the terms 'boys' and 'girls', are we talking about a specific age bracket, or in general?

I would think that in an older audience that would be expected due to males not wanting to appear feminine due to cultural pressures, but I would expect this to be less of a factor in younger audiences. Unless it really is just genetic predisposition.
And right now I just realized I'm looking for evidence to support a point, rather than a point to draw from evidence. So you know it will come to a rational argument, right?

[penguinofhonor]

Disclaimer: I very much see your points now. I just disagree with your interpretation.

-Talks about trolls, constantly. It's like she's never heard of "don't feed the trolls". If they're such a problem, then why does she seem intent upon drawing their attention rather than starving it? As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

I hardly think "Don't feed the trolls" is a universal rule, especially when the trolls are giving you justification for your project by the truckload. The response to her project was far more than just trolls trying to anger people, and it did much more than just give her publicity.

-Asked for an abnormal amount of money, continuing to portray herself as some kind of "brave pioneer" and thus deserving of it for the project.

What, $6000? Dude, when you're funding a kickstarter project like this, you aren't just giving the person funds for their expenses on it. You're paying for them to work on it full time for a certain period. And I consider that amount perfectly reasonable if she planned to spend 3-4 months researching and working on the project, in addition to her expenses on buying equipment and games to survey.

-Oh so conveniently has to keep any possible dissent out of the project.

I mostly agree with this point now that the video is out - in places that used to be hostile to her, most of the discussion I've seen has been "Oh, everyone was pissed about this? Why? It's pretty reasonable." I don't really think disabling comments and whatnot is really necessary at this point.

[Mlamlah]

Either learn to deal with it, because it's really not that big of a problem.

I disagree with this statement just on general principle. There are some pretty big problems with how women are portrayed in media in general, not just in video-games. But since we're on the subject of video-games i'll stick with that.

Whatever the motivations of Anita i think it's important to have a discussion on the place women hold in video games, which more often than not exist either as sex objects or helpless (sometimes both.), there are a number of games that challenge that assumption, but the overwhelming majority serve to reinforce it. 
I don't care one way or another if Anita was looking to profit, the point is that she's raising some valid points that some others are happier to ignore.
Now, i do find some things about how this has been handled suspicious, but again, it matters much less than the overarching argument that is being ignored all across the board.

[MrWiggles]

If I recall correctly, they do. Boys are more likely to consume media with boy leads then girl leads, and girl seem to be indifference to gender.

So if you want to market a show to both gender, then you go with a male lead.

Now your using the terms 'boys' and 'girls', are we talking about a specific age bracket, or in general?

I would think that in an older audience that would be expected due to males not wanting to appear feminine due to cultural pressures, but I would expect this to be less of a factor in younger audiences. Unless it really is just genetic predisposition.
And right now I just realized I'm looking for evidence to support a point, rather than a point to draw from evidence. So you know it will come to a rational argument, right?

The earlier studies that I'm familiar with are from the 80s, and those were kids at the oldest of ten. 90s stuff, dealt with older audience, but it seem to hold a similar conclusion.