How Anita Sarkeesian Wants Video Games To Change

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Eight things developers can do to make games less shitty for women", not that a lot of this pertain to action games and probably make more sense if you're thinking about first and third-person shooters, the Arkham games, and stuff like that:

1. Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")
2. "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)
3. Have female characters of various body types
4. Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.
5. Include more female characters of color.
6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
7. Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic
8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies

 

For the last three years, Anita Sarkeesian has been talking about how women are treated in games and has slammed the widespread sexism she sees in the portrayal of female game characters. She's done this through a series of online videos for her non-profit, Feminist Frequency, and in lectures at conferences and even at some game studios. Her supporters cheer the idea that her influence may transform the medium; her critics fear that. They both infer a lot from her analysis of games, but at her NYU talk she left no ambiguity. She spelled out what she wants to see done, what she thinks game developers should think about doing differently.
 

Her list was brand new. "You get to be my guinea pigs," she said as she took to the podium in front of a couple hundred developers, game design students and gamers, "to see how this all works."
 

Near the start of her talk, she apologized for being sick and said it was the first time she'd been ill in two years. She fought back a bad cough throughout an hour-long presentation but frequently elicited applause or laughter as she spoke. This was a friendly and game-savvy crowd



"Motion capture and animations for female characters often have them looking like they're walking down a runway at a fashion show," she said. "It's as if the person directing the mo-cap session told the model to walk in the most seductive or sexy way possible rather than just asking her to walk the way a soldier or intergalactic bounty hunter or any ordinary woman going about her business might walk."



Even sitting could be a gender issue, she showed. She ran clips of how male and female characters sit in Destiny, a game that imbues its heroes of either gender with the same capabilities. When the guy sits, he just sits, feet and butt on the ground, knees up. When the female character sits, she lays on the side of her legs. "This is supposed to be a hardened space warrior and yet she is still sitting around like she's Ariel from The Little Mermaid," Sarkeesian said. "I mean, what the hell?"
 

The animation arguments were interesting but also demonstrated Sarkeesian's emphasis on the critique of what players see, more than what they do. She has certainly been critical of the interactivity that leads players to rescuing damsels in distress, but if, say, developers changed many of the Eight Things she requested in her talk, it wouldn't make games play differently, if at all. That might explain why her criticisms of gaming occupy a different spot than other people's criticisms about, say, free-to-play game design, game length, or downloadable content. Those latter arguments clearly and directly pertain to whether a game would be more or less fun or engaging for any player, which for many gamers is the paramount gaming concern.
 

Arguments about the depiction of women, however, will find a sympathetic ear among those who, like Sarkeesian, believe that less sexualized and more diverse presentations of women will make games more approachable—more fun—for more people. They won't move people who might linger on the likely fact that changing how characters sit in Destiny or walk in Arkham City probably won't make those games play any better.
 

Sarkeesian talked about how a more expansive range of female characters can open games up to new stories and experiences, but she doesn't flat-out say that it'd make an okay game more fun. That's not really her point. So it's easy to see how two people might sit through the same Sarkeesian presentation and think "This completely matters" and "This doesn't matter at all."

Talk of gameplay brought Sarkeesian to her final point. She said she'd spoken with "well-meaning" game developers about how to handle female enemies. Many games use violence as their main means of interaction, she noted, and some developers were uneasy about if or how to put female enemies in harm's way.
 

"Simply putting women in the line of fire is not in and of itself a problem," she said. "Everything depends on framing, right? So, with that in mind here are two things to keep in mind when designing female characters. One: avoid violence in which women are framed as weak or helpless. When we critique violence against women, we're often talking about violence in which women are being attacked or victimized specifically because they are women, which then reinforces or perpetuates a perception that women as victims and men as noble, brooding heroes...
 

"Two, avoid violence against female characters in which there is a sexualized element."

She praised BioShock Infinite's presentation of a Columbia police force whose male and female cops wear similar uniforms. "The ideal here," she said, "is to design combatants who just happen to be women."
 

Of all of Sarkeesian's requests, I could see this being viewed as the most well-intentioned but creatively stifling one—Why not sometimes have a sexy female enemy? Why not sometimes let a character of any type be helpless or play up their gender?—and yet it also seemed to be the one where she was trying hardest to find ways through it and where she felt like there were the worst potential negative impacts.
 

"Don't make the enemies or villains hyper-sexualized," she said,

"because again it creates a scenario in which violence against women is gendered and infused with elements of titillation. Violence against female characters should never be sexy.

 

How do you balance creators' freedom with the need or desire to open a game up to a broader audience? How do you assess which portrayals of women in games attract or repel male or female gamers? How do we truly determine the impact of the characters we see or control on how we relate to those characters or view the world?
 

Sarkeesian didn't lay out those questions, but those are the ones implicit in her critique. Those are the ones that supporters and critics of her views on women in games are likely to debate for a long time to come. Little of this is bound to be easy, and each of her eight requests are likely to stir debate about what gamers want, what developers can or should do, and what makes for better video games that more people will enjoy playing.

Source : http://kotaku.com/how-anita-sarkeesian-wants-video-games-to-change-1688231729

OP : also stop men violence 

[brownninja97]

why did you post this, its just gonna start a flame war.

[eelnico09]

I wonder how many games this woman actually played.

 

I am not sure if ranting and madly insulting this women would be against the CoC so i won't, but i REALLY dislike her.

[SIGSEGV]

Hmph, I can agree with that, even though I generally dislike Anita she does make a good point.

However, I don't think it should be a requirement that you include a female or male character, the developer should feel free to use whichever gender suits them, otherwise you get the problem of having random characters in there just for the sake of not being labeled a 'sexist'

[Tech_Dreamer]

She's like that one kid in kindergarden that everyother kids hate for some reason..

[DavidTheWin]

Those 8 things are fairly reasonable, more reasonable than I'd expected from her. That said, it isn't worth diversifying a game for the sake of it. If your game is set in a medieval European war then sacrificing the accuracy of the army being 99.9% white male just for the sake of diversity is pointless.

[Guest Kloaked]

I only agree with points 2 and 8. The rest seem like they're changing.

[Scionyde]

 

Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic

 

lolwut? Can't say I've ever heard pain sound orgasmic instead of painful. I highly doubt that (subjective) occurrence is something intentional, probably just a weakness of the voice actor/actress more than anything else.

[SIGSEGV]

lolwut? Can't say I've ever heard pain sound orgasmic instead of painful. I highly doubt that (subjective) occurrence is something intentional, probably just a weakness of the voice actor/actress more than anything else.

I think she's referring to LoL

[dlf]

I agree with #2 (Lingerie is not armor) - we don't need a trillion (Skyrim) mods about it, a few should be fine . . . .

[KayTees]

Oh c'mon, that conference is 100% unnecessary.

[Bogica]

All those things could be reverted and told about MALE characters, overly manly men, built like super models, abs and stuff, unrealistic standards, macho guys etc.

"Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")"

So she wants manlier women? As if we don't have enough of that in reality? Women behaving like men more and more every day, that is just disturbing, they need to be girly and lady like, it's unnatural the way they behave in society!

[Damikiller37]

And here I am a random person on the internet saying that I don't care what another random person on the internet has to say. Now what? Is everyone going to write news about me too?... Some people just have to get over themselves and stop being so butt hurt about things that clearly aren't affecting majority of the actual gamer audience.

[SeanBond]

Anita is a selfish person in it for the money. Although she does have some valid points about games she twists 99% of the games she talks about in a way to make them seem like they dehumanize women in ways they don't actually do. But you can't blame developers in trying to lean towards making the vast majority of people something more interesting for them (men.) And nobody better say there are as many female gamers, but it's not even close. Those statistics that back that statement up include the mobile market which many can argue aren't even made up of actual gamers.

[zappian]

 

Why is this women let anywhere near game devs.

 

These SJW like to ruin everything.

[Syntaxvgm]

I hate her, and everything she stands for, and how she conducts herself, why shes does this, hell even her pure existence. 

She is literally taking us backwards. 

She is a pure insult to the gaming community, and is doing her best to paint gamers as male chauvinistic pigs. 

 

But these are not way to far fetched for once. 

 

 

 

I like how chell from portal is postiive. 

Wasn't she criticized for being a quiet character, and "males don't like females when they talk" or something that  is design to make me feel like a pig? 

[SuperPug]

Huh... some of the points in that list actually seem reasonable. Which is surprising. But has she ever looked at any male character ever? They're usually extremely musuclar and ultra manly. It sets unrealistic standards for young men blaaah     /s    lol

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

"Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)

[Syntaxvgm]

Huh... some of the points in that list actually seem reasonable. Which is surprising. But has she ever looked at any male character ever? They're usually extremely musuclar and ultra manly. It sets unrealistic standards for young men blaaah     /s    lol

it's ok to do that to males. It's also ok to portray them as mentally inferior simply because they are males. Welcome to 2015. 1st world problem, I know, I'm a white male and should check my cracker penis privilege or something like that, but this is true. 

 

People like her make potentially legitimate and important issues too polarized and hate filled. 

 

I doubt very many men WANT females to feel outcast in the gaming community, and in the past few years, as gaming has became more and more mainstream, the community is opening up to the female audience.  

Anita hurts this progress. 

[Syntaxvgm]

"Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)

I was looking for that to post it but I couldn't find it. Makes me smile every time I see it. 

[nj4ck]

 

Eight things developers can do to make games less shitty for women", not that a lot of this pertain to action games and probably make more sense if you're thinking about first and third-person shooters, the Arkham games, and stuff like that:

1. Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")
2. "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)
3. Have female characters of various body types
4. Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.
5. Include more female characters of color.
6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
7. Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic
8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies

1. Citation needed, I can't think of too many games that follow this principle.

2. male armor isn't much better in most cases.

3. Yeah, like male characters are always present in any imaginable weight class.

4. You mean like over-emphasized muscles and shoulders as broad as an 18-wheeler? Yeah no, that never happens...

5. oh come on.

6. Like what? I don't even understand what she means.

7. uuuh wat? I never found it to sound "orgasmic" but thanks for pointing that out. Interesting..

8. Just imagine the tantrum Sarkeesian would throw if enemies were actually female and the main character happened to be male. "VIOLENCEE AGAINST WOMEN WAAAAAH DEMONIZING WOMEN WAAAH SEXIST WAAAAAH!!!"

 

Videogames are fine the way they are, no need to water them down to make the SJWs happy. Their whole point is based on the assumption that this leads to sexism in real life, an assumption that isn't based on reality.

[SuperPug]

"Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)

 

To be fair... if i was an archer those would totally be the areas my eyes (and hence my arrows?) would be drawn to... so it stands to reason that this armor might actually be effective

[Syntaxvgm]

If she wasn't mentally retarded and actually cared about video games, she would make her own game instead of bitching at the industry to follow her imaginary standards.

you don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games

 

Literally hypocrisy in the form of a game. 

[Ertman]

it's ok to do that to males. It's also ok to portray them as mentally inferior simply because they are males. Welcome to 2015. 1st world problem, I know, I'm a white male and should check my cracker penis privilege or something like that, but this is true. 

 

People like her make potentially legitimate and important issues too polarized and hate filled. 

 

I doubt very many men WANT females to feel outcast in the gaming community, and in the past few years, as gaming has became more and more mainstream, the community is opening up to the female audience.  

Anita hurts this progress.

Playing the victim card... Nice touch.

[GuruMeditationError]

 

Eight things developers can do to make games less shitty for women", not that a lot of this pertain to action games and probably make more sense if you're thinking about first and third-person shooters, the Arkham games, and stuff like that:

1. Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")
2. "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)
3. Have female characters of various body types
4. Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.
5. Include more female characters of color.
6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
7. Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic
8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies

 

 

I know virtually nought about Anna Sarkeesian and I've not really read any more than what I've quoted here (it's not something I particularly care to get caught up in), but I think all of the above is fine. I don't see anything wrong with it whatsoever. In fact I welcome it, I hope it'll be taken on-board and if it's implemented I look forward to seeing the results.

 

:shrug: