You're right with me up to the point we reach the kinds of censorship you happen to support.

What's the penalty for incurring the ire of the social justice elite? Well, only that you'll be branded a sexist or whatever by the entire gaming media, perhaps have your Twitter account banned or your videos taken down from YouTube, or maybe you'll just be arrested on false charges of harassment. It's a storm that a strong individual might weather, but from which any company will steer away automatically. Of course it's censorship.

Games are being censored (they came for the japanese bikini simulators and I said nothing...); social media is being censored: Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia and any number of even less reputable sites are being censored - all in response to social justice histrionics. This crybaby, zero-offence, closed-minded, closed-mouthed malaise is damaging to our culture: damaging to art, to academia, to journalism. And if you acknowledge the need for open expression, you will oppose it.

"There is more than one way to burn a book," wrote Ray Bradbury of interest groups taking offence, "...each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever." You don't recognise any of this?

Yes, 'critics just don't have the talent to create' is a tired old fallacy and I regret echoing it, but there I was thinking particularly of the likes of Wu and Quinn: loathsome reptiles and degenerates whose own creative efforts are so miserably inept that to garner sales, patreon donations, and fraudulently positive reviews they resort to pretending themselves the brave minority voices raised against the misogynistic, LGBT-phobic, uni-racial establishment - in an industry that has never actually had any of those problems.

As for Anita Sarkeesian; that liar, mountebank, fascist collaborator, and 21st century Jack Thompson; that professional victim and demagogue who harnesses manufactured outrage for profit; or in the most generous possible light, that half-educated nincompoop who somehow rode a tide of hysterical activists-without-a-cause to a broadcast platform for her worthless, narcissistic rambling:
It isn't the fact of her fuck-witted critique to which the gaming community so righteously objects but the baffling inaccuracies and outright slanders therein, her self-promotion via false claims of harassment, her attacks on artistic expression and internet freedom.

And these are exactly the kind of sub-intellectual trash who will presume, against all standards of rectitude and conscience, to instruct their betters on what kind of jokes they're allowed to tell.

You never cede an inch to these fucking people. That's how you get Mary Whitehouse, or the Comics Code Authority, or McCarthy, or the FCC, the BBFC, the OFLC, the IWF.

@SDGundamX

We can criticise religion generally - for it's falsehood, for it's stultifying effect on the mind, for the shadow the faithful cast over an enlightened world.

We can criticise religions individually - for the divine exhortations to genocide in each of the abrahamic canons, for the promise of infinite torture by a benevolent god in both christianity and islam, for their arbitrary or bigoted taboos, and particularly of the newer creeds - islam, mormonism, scientology - for what we know to be the bad character of their founders.

And, as you say, we can criticise the behaviours of individual believers, communities or sects - catholicism on condoms and the spread of aids, genital mutilation in africa (which you're quite right to point out has cultural roots that pre-date islam, though it would be disingenuous to claim religion has no reinforcing or propagating effect on that practice).

I wholly disagree that this last is the only or most meaningful critique to offer of religion. There are fundamental tenets of these ideologies on which all their denominations, however fractured, can be said to agree.

Allow these people their diversity, their specificity and their subtle variation of interpretation and you're in danger of chasing a thousand little fish at once, in a thousand different directions, while the religious school as a whole shifts, shimmers, dazzles and slips away. I prefer to play the dolphin pack: surrounding, corralling, squeezing and finally devouring the enemy entire.

I don't get why people think it's a "cross to bear" or even that she thinks it's a "horrid, society crushing trope".

It's an artistic critique of a common aspect of video games. She's not saying the world will end if we don't fix this, it's more like "hey, look at this thing. Isn't this kinda fucked up?"

Until you're a first hand witness to something of that staggering magnitude, I think you should probably hold off on the language critique.

Some people are too susceptible to awe. It takes them over. I'm sure he was merely in the moment and thought of the carnage later.

What brand of racism? Well, thanks to the amazing technology of the sift, let's do a little search..... oh look.
"Slavery is irrelevant to the plight of the black man today."

"If Blacks did not commit more crimes than other groups then women would not be clutching their purses and other demographic groups would not be as afraid."

"Your right but in Zimmerman neighborhood there have been break in by young black men. Hence young black thiefs' set the precedent for Martin to be followed." Hey, crap grammar into the bargain too!

"Funny how you don't hear jack what Black pastors protest against GAY marriage" Racism and homophobia.... bonus!

"And you wonder why blacks are still call the n word."

No, you're a fucking beacon of racial harmony and enlightenment.

You're goddamn right I'm angry. Being angry is the correct response to this. And no, I don't need any "anger management" bullshit, because I control my anger and channel it into doing useful things.

I don't give a shit if a homeopath or an astrologer or a climate denier or any other nutjob you care to name disables comments on youtube. It's simply not a meaningful channel for debate. There are other, better channels.

There's no one claiming to represent everyone who uses the internet saying that online harassment is ok.

But those GG assholes claim to represent "gamers", and no, it's not even slightly about ethics in journalism. It is, in fact, the complete opposite. This is a group that called on Nintendo to withdraw support from reviewers who were critical of Bayonetta.

The fucking hypocrisy is mind blowing. Seriously, think about it. A group that is supposed to be anti-censorship and pro-consumer told one of the biggest names in the industry to boycott a publication because it criticized their product. It is to Nintendos credit that they ignored these assholes who can't understand the difference between critique and censorship.

There isn't some balanced 3rd party POV on GG. Those people are fucking troglodytes, and the sooner they're consigned to the dustbin of history the better.

And yes, of course, I'm ashamed to be part of society sometimes.

I'm not a WASP, but I am Irish and I'm deeply ashamed of some of the racist bullshit associated with my country. I was raised Catholic. Take a wild guess about how I feel about that.

The "gamers are dead" thing has been completely misinterpreted. Did you even read the source article? It's saying that the target market for games isn't "gamers", but just people. Stop marketing to a fictional teenage boy demographic.

And quite frankly, I'm considering buying a t-shirt that says SJW. How the fuck did advocating social justice become a pejorative?

@GenjiKilpatrick, you're not the only one who's done their research on Anita. Unlike you, I didn't start out a fan. My first reaction was that it was bullshit. But almost every video I've seen critiquing her is either barely contained misogyny or has confused criticism with censorship.

As for blocking valid criticism on YouTube, it's pointless. The signal to noise ratio is so low as to be nonexistent. Trying to pick a valid point out of a sea of bile and idiocy is a waste of time.

And no, gamer gate is not some first world problem bullshit, it's a fucking disgrace and makes me embarrassed to call myself a gamer.

I don't know. Her "debunking" itself is pretty weak. Seems more like sour grapes than real critique.

Anyone see it yet? Critiques?

And here's a prominent scientist's critique of the IPCC. It provides a good rebuttal to those who imagine that the only critics are ignorant and/or venal people who believe in a vast conspiracy of climate scientists.

So in your eyes, this is the worst SNL skit of all time? That's amazing!

I found it a somewhat clever critique of the evolution of sitcoms and the suckass nature of TV in general.

@Asmo

Except my daughter doesn't want to play other games--she wants to play Mario Brothers games. They have excellent game and level design. Why should she have to go elsewhere? Are you trying to say Mario Brothers games not for girls?

All my daughter is asking is to be allowed to play as the Princess--maybe after you free her from Bowser. That doesn't seem like much to ask, as it would have exactly zero effect on gameplay.

Personally, I'd go much farther and say when a game series continuously sends the message that women are helpless victims who need to be defended by men, when they're continuously objectified as trophies to be passed from player to villain and back to player again, then something is very wrong with that game and things need to change. Yeah, other games may be great, but why should that prevent people like Sarkeesian or myself from pointing out the games that aren't? Why should the trend itself not be pointed out when we can find examples of it outside of the Mario series?

No, it's not required that every game have a male/female playable character. It is, however, good business sense not to insult potential female customers of a product by portraying females (playable characters or NPCS) in sexist ways (or homosexual characters in bigoted ways, or ethnic minority characters in racist ways, while we're on the topic). This doesn't seem very difficult to understand and clearly game companies DO understand it because most are making great efforts to be diverse and more realistic in their portrayals of characters. However, just because some are trying doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the bullshit in those that don't. Games like the Mario platformer series, for instance.

You disagree with the way Sarkeesian presents her message... okay. I don't have a problem with that. I think everything you wrote grossly misrepresents what she's saying about games and gamers, but you're entitled to your opinion there.

Moving on... sorry you felt insulted. That was never my intent. But your comments on this issue are written in an extremely emotional manner as if you've somehow been personally wronged. If you don't want people to take it in that manner, you might want to think carefully about the tone your posts on this topic take. I have no idea what that link you provided was supposed to prove, so I'll just leave it alone.

On "Damsel in Distress," it's "your trope" because you've been--throughout this thread--defending it as if it is some bastion of literature that must be preserved. You are quite literally the only person I've ever seen actually try to defend it. And as I said, if it is that dear to you, you can have it. Games will still get made using it.

Other media,though, have long since moved on from it. Take the movie Die Hard as an example. Yeah, the main character's wife gets taken hostage by terrorists and that provides a nice emotional hook to move the plot forward--damsel in distress, right? If it were a game, though, we never would have heard from Holly Gennarro McClane again until Bruce Willis killed all the terrorists. Or maybe a video recording of her would show up after every "boss fight" where she tells John McClane, "Sorry honey, but I'm being kept in another part of the building."

But that's not what happens is it? The character of Holly is central to the plot of the movie and she appears nearly as much as John McClane does. She tries actively to subvert the terrorists by hiding her true identity and by taking responsibility to make sure the hostages are treated well during their captivity.

In other words she's portrayed as a real human being with personal agency throughout the movie.

And that's the point that you seem to be missing. That doesn't happen often in games despite the fact that it does happen in every other form of media (or at least in the examples from media that we generally consider "good"). When we are talking about the "Damsel in Distress" trope in games, THAT is what is being critiqued. Not the fact that someone was kidnapped to provide an emotional hook, but that one particular gender is always targeted and--to add insult to injury--is presented as weak, helpless, and without any agency of their own. They exist for the sole purpose of being rescued.

Thanks for the pro tip, BTW. Had no idea you were a pro at being a patronizing git but I'll take your word for it.

There are serious problems with Sommers video. If anyone hasn't seen it yet, watch it here.

Basically, her argument is "I looked at some literature (I'm not going to tell you what though) and I concluded there is no misogyny in gaming. You can trust me because I call myself a Feminist."

That's called "appeal to authority" and it's a logical fallacy.

The hugely ironic thing is that anti-Sarkeesian people are constantly going on about Sarkeesian is not qualified to critique games because she only played some of the games she talks about in the videos and watched YouTube game footage of the rest. Yet Sommers admits in the start of this video that she hasn't played video games since Pac Man in the 80s! By anti-Sarkeesian standards, she's even less qualified to talk about games than Sarkeesian is.

But that doesn't stop people who don't like Sarkeesian from trotting out this video as some supposedly magical proof that Sarkeesian's arguments have been debunked.

Her videos don't make the argument that games cause violence against women or anyone else. She analyzed the roles of women in games and found trends in how they were portrayed. These were not flattering portrayals (for example the "Damsel in Distress" portrayal) and male characters were not often treated in the same way in games. She's pointing out how off-putting that can be to potential and actual female gamers and recommending women be portrayed in a more realistic manner. She's also pointing out how games are reinforcing the sexist and misogynistic messages that already exist in society. I don't think she is claiming media is the root cause of either sexism or misogyny.

Games ARE changing and including less "Trope-y" content and more well-rounded characters. And that's partly BECAUSE of her critiques (the creative director on The Last of Us has publicly stated her work heavily influenced the character designs and story of the game).

But I don't see that as a reason to not call out certain games for falling back on tired and occasionally demeaning representations of women.

@Enzoblue

Thunderf00t is probably the least level-headed response you will find. His video is terrible for a lot of reasons, mostly because he does all the same things Anita Sarkessian is accused of doing (for example, cherry-picking) to an exponential degree, but I recommend you watch it anyway and draw your own conclusions.

As much as some Gamergate supporters would like the movement to be about ethics in gaming journalism, it has its roots in a witch-hunt started by claims from a jilted ex-boyfriend that his girlfriend (Zoe Quinn) slept with reporters to get good reviews--claims that were later shown to be completely untrue but not before the Gamergate movement had found a cause to rally around. From the very start, the movement had trouble separating actual journalistic ethical problems (i.e. gifts from game publishers to game reviewers... see pretty much any tweet or video by TotalBiscuit about Gamergate for a reasoned overview of the problems) from anti-feminist screeds against Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and later Brianna Wu. And it only got worse over time.

To understand why people might be opposed to Sarkeesian's critiques, you should probably read: this article. Just to summarize the article's main thesis: there is a group of gamers out there who refuse to see a problem with the status quo and make the claim that anyone trying to point out a problem is demanding special privileges. This is not to say that Sarkeesian's critiques aren't without flaws. It is rather to explain how so many people got enraged by her analysis that they felt the need to personally attack her.

So, to put it in a nutshell, there ARE some problems with gaming journalism but they are akin to the same kinds of problems entertainment journalism has in general (Colbert's point). But there are also some serious problems with gaming culture that were brought under the magnifying glass by the whole Gamergate phenomenon.

Frankly, as a "hardcore gamer" (30+ years of gaming experience including games across dozens of consoles and the PC), watching the "debate" on the topic has been embarrassing to say the least. Gaming was finally overcoming the stigma and stereotypes that it had been shackled with before this thing blew up and made us look like the bunch of socially inept man-babies the rest of society assumed we were.

I think not only is it going to take years for our social image to recover, it is going to take years to overcome the toxicity that has pervaded the debate. People on both sides are seriously butt-hurt about how everything went down and the back and forth has been more on the emotional side than the intellectual, leading to lots of flame wars and very little critical reflection.