I thought the solution was rather obvious, actually.

You fix things by making games where people are portrayed as... people. Not trophies to be acquired, not sexual objects to be drooled over, and not stereotypes.

You couple that with continued criticism of games that continue to rely on sexist, racist, or homophobic tropes.

And guess what? That's already happening. People have been saying that games need to change for a while before Sarkeesian showed up. Bioware acknowledged the issues and started trying to include more realistic characters in its RPGs years ago--and caught flak for it even back then.

To address your other... points?

My daughter asked me the other day why she can't play as the princess in Super Mario Galaxy 2 (or any of the other Mario games we own). And I had to tell her it's because the Princess got kidnapped. Her response was to ask if she could play as the Princess once we freed her from Bowser. And I had to tell her no.

There is something wrong with that!

After having that conversation with my daughter I fired up Torchlight, where I'm currently playing as a Vanquisher. Vanquisher's are rogue-like ranged characters and can only be female. If you want to be a warrior ("Destroyer" in game terms) or magic user ("Alchemist" in game terms), sorry--it's a men's only club. And not only that, but Vanquisher's--regardless of the armor they wear, must bare their midriff and wearing a mini-skirt showing lots of leg and cleavage (do a google image search for Torchlight Vanquisher to see what I'm talking about). Apparently you can't be a Vanquisher without being a sex pot too.

There is something wrong with that! (To be fair, they got better with Torchlight II and allowed any class to be any gender and allowed the women to cover up with armor OR choose to be sexy).

Society doesn't just change by itself. You're right, society is becoming more accepting of diversity--because people are fighting very hard for it.

Take America's attitude towards homosexuality. Look at the strides made in the last 20 years. That didn't just magically happen. There were TV shows that portrayed homosexuals as human beings worthy of respect. There were lawsuits. There were marches and protests. There were speeches. There were YouTube campaigns like "It gets better." A lot of people worked fucking hard to get the message out that bigotry is not okay.

Look, I'm sorry people pointing out to you how fucked up it is how women are sometimes portrayed in games is somehow ruining your ability to enjoy games. But there are serious problems here. Maybe not problems for you, but problems for people like my daughter.

The solution to these problems is not to lambast the people pointing them out. Nor is the solution to sit back and do nothing and hope it all works out for the best. One solution, as I've already stated, is to be openly critical of the messages contained in ALL media (including games). Another solution is to be vocal about the need for more realistic and diverse portrayals of people in ALL media (including games).

You can still have your Damsel/Dude in Distress trope, by the way. I have no doubt lazy developers will continue to use it as a substitute for meaningful story. Just don't expect people not to call out the utter absurdity of it, is all I'm saying.

Actually after thinking about it more, she was the was drooling over the shirtless guy right from the start. Seems superficial and a bit hypocritical to me.

bare, I did not think you studied in American universities? I guess I was wrong as that is the only way you would downvote my comment. Otherwise you would be very uninformed and judgmental about something of which you know nothing about.

Every American college I have went to is filled to the brim with "students" just struggling to get a degree. This holds true for everyone I speak to. Few students read the literature, almost none read all the required material. Phones are a constant problem as the students drool on them.

The poor are in a far worse position than the rich. They work, have kids, and they certainly don't care about education. Most CAN'T care. So yeah, not very many go to school to better themselves in a way that Universities can. Ie., they don't learn for learning's sake.

It's hilarious that the baby looks at her with a smile, "You are so silly" and then hiccups some drool out of the corner of it's mouth. That's exactly how I would've played it.

Rather, some moronic miscreant transforms a simple encounter into felony charges by spewing Its baboon red butt out of Its filth drooling mouth and then persistently but characteristically blames and vilifies the system that far more often than not, but not enough, protects people from....

Obviously...It's still here to spew Its insipid...

Insipid...word of the day...brought to us by Swirlry

My favorite six words in steak:

Ruth's Chris. Filet mignon. Medium rare.

drool

I can't wait for father's day.

I'm drooling on myself

As the old saying goes ... Cats Rule - Dogs Drool!

*drools*

Video proof ... Cats Rule, Dogs Drool. Me-owwww

From your own source:

"Noun. 2. dribble - saliva spilling from the mouth,"

But then I wasn't trying to be grammatically correct in the first place. You could have been right and I would have still meant dribble. I will always mean dribble.

And this is why I hate comment sections. Look what it does to people. Terrible. Truly. I'm done dribbling my dribble/drool/drivel/verbal diarrhea here.

The stone conservatory is a drooling idiot, the window slit is the idiot mouth, the weather stains are the drool... not a slow trickle, just the hanging saliva. The weather stains are water, but standing in for saliva as the window is standing in for the mouth.

I wish I'd started off by quoting Poetry, I didn't like my first response

Hmm... we could both have to hand in our pedant cards after this.

The important part of the definition for this discussion is, as a noun, an act or instance of dribbling. The verb means to allow saliva to trickle from the mouth, and the synonyms are:

drool, drivel, slaver, slobber, drip, spit, saliva.

If you say someone had dribble on their face, or had dribbled on their face, you don't need to qualify it with saliva as the meaning is already implied.

You know, it's not too late to ninja-edit both our comments and pretend none of this ever happened...

No, I meant dribble.

See, in English we sometimes we say things we don't literally mean. I want you to imagine some slack jaw, shirt stained with drool, covering their screen with their indignant "drivel".

ELLIPSIS FOR NEXT TIME MOFUCKA.