For the first, there's the misconception about victim complexes and all that. She has frequently been told to GTFO and STFU by hordes of people. Now a lot of people see this as actual misogyny and the "boy's club" mentality of gaming culture coming out. Arguably they have a hell of a point as there's a lot of hateful noise in there. But the more verbose among her detractors tend to point out that her arguments are shit and stupid and that she's blatantly cherry picking whilst avoiding the positive aspects of the characters/games she's picking on (which she outright admitted to on twitter, but quickly deleted because it makes it kinda bad to illustrate that maybe gaming isn't as anti-women as she's making it appear). She also never bothers to point out games that handle women properly, attempt to appeal to both men and women, or that objectify men equally. Several of these games reduce women to objects, but they do the same to men. Because the writing is just
shit. A real attempt to fix things would be funneling that money into the development of a more inclusive game, the establishment of some kind of award for games that attempt to be more "equal", or even telling the audience to go buy game X because game X has loads of women developing it and the women are totally not one dimensional fuck toys or annoying whores. But that would involve work and taking away that precious money she doesn't need.
Women are underrepresented in gaming, but it's not nearly as bad as she's making it sound and there's loads of ways to improve the situation. Women are continually finding themselves further and further up the totem pole of game development and focus groups are often featuring more and more women. Several of the stories she decried as horrible misogynistic trash were written by, yup, women. But what people want aren't "answers" and "solutions" they just want to piss and moan and feel special/victimized without doing any work or suffering any real consequences. They get to pretend they're better than everyone else without having to have any solid argument to back that up, and the second anyone tries to point that out it's "WHATEVER, YOU JUST HATE WOMEN". Which automatically makes everyone else wrong and stupid and god help you if you don't fall in line, as you'll quickly find yourself besieged by the same hate speech and death threats these women are dealing with. Except this time with an added dose of hypocrisy.
In short, this movement is to feminism as McDonald's is to food. It's a quick, easy, cheap thing that satisfactorily fills you up but ultimately accomplishes nothing except getting shit everywhere and making people wish for death.
There's also some horrible double standards here and there.
1.) Jennifer Hepler is full of herself and kind of a bitch. People insulted her greatly and she left gaming. SEE HOW HORRIBLE AND EXCLUSIONARY GAMING IS? SHE IS A FEMINIST HERO AND MARTYR
2.) Phil Fish is full of himself and kind of a bitch. People insulted him greatly and he left gaming. OH WELL, SHIT HAPPENS.
See how having a penis works?
Warren Spector received/receives death threats. It's not like nerdrage is new. It's just that nowadays more game developers have tits and a tendency to whore for attention instead of sucking it the fuck up, dealing with it, and going back to work. Having criticism and hate thrown at you is just a part of being in the public spotlight. If I had a quarter for every "you're fat" e-mail Gabe Newell got I could buy the entire Steam library.
Furthermore, they're kneecapping the shit out of attempts to make women equal. The huge blowup over Hitman Absolution was rather hideous in hindsight after playing the game. In the game, they ultimately reveal that the
other ace in the hole within the globe-spanning super-secret murder-for-hire quasi-mercenary agency was actually a team of women who manage to be part of a small handful of people to ever get the jump on the protagonist. They play these guys up for like half the game as being the "nuclear option" to a rogue super soldier clone (and his pint sized 2.0 version who might wind up providing an avenue for a decent female protagonist down the line, inevitably they ignore that possible point in this game's favour). These women are efficient, ruthless, and every part as capable as any of the male characters to show up in the series. But let's ignore all that because this is a universe built around theme-villainy and they happened to decide to go with
sexy nuns. And also it's wrong to hit women. This is totally promoting male-on-female violence. So clearly the only way to have women included is to either remove them from the "game" portion, or to make the main character a woman. Neither of which sounds equal or optimal and the latter carries some pretty horrible connotations when you realize that female-on-male violence is not something you want to shrug off.
But apparently that's the solution provided by a handful of feminists who actually deal in "answers" instead of "moaning".
Which reminds me, some chick beat the living shit out of her husband down here last year. He had a restraining order against her and she proceeded to break into his home and attack him. In the process she damn near burned his face off with a pot of boiling water which required extensive repair. She's back in court right now. But it's cool, he had a penis and she had a vagina. That totes makes it okay. It's quite nice that I live in a world that wants to regard that sort of thing as less horrible and more correct than if he broke into her place to permanently disfigured her.
In short, man hitting woman, misogyny. Woman hitting man? Liberating. Man hitting man? Business as usual. Woman hitting woman? Sick male fantasy. True equality would instead point out that they're all person-on-person violence and carry the same connotations.
So it's basically an unwinnable war with constantly moving goalposts and loads of misandry. But it makes people feel special whilst simultaneously filling that wonderful urge to feel persecuted. Because unfortunately as a culture we've equated persecution with heroism but the part where you actually have to "do something to fix it" always seems to sail past people's heads (or they decide it's too much work and frequently doesn't get them anywhere near enough attention).
Originally Posted by Sprung
Best game I've played since Mass Effect 2
Apathetic Demon
Hi DL,How are you?
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