First, that in many ways video games have come a long way since their inception. We're starting to see more deep, realistic characters of both genders in games, and the "strong" characters we're seeing are more compelling than they used to be.
Second, that we still have a long way to go, and in the last ten years or so we've actually seen some really terrible regressions.
Neither of these truths are supposed to be a judgment on gamers, developers, or the industry. They're simply observations of trends. You can see similar trends in books, movies, and television. Yes, we're making great strides forward. But we're also making some strides in the other direction. It's not any one company or one developer or one writer that's doing both of them; it's the medium as a whole.
That's what Anita is emphasizing here: that, yes, we should pat ourselves on the back for the instances where we're bringing games into the 21st century, but we also need to acknowledge our continuing failures when it comes to how we portray gender, and one or two successful cases among dozens of failures doesn't mean the work is done.
But i must add one little thing and then i just stop wasting my time on that.
Where is Anita gaming related ? Just tell me what she has Created. A Creation that leads to gaming is usually for what you earn respect. You dont earn respect just by telling others what is good and wrong or are we now a days realy so far that people with skills are less interesting then people who can make lots of drama? IF thats the reality im so sorry for a once great little community of people who did stuff and i congrat everyone for their contribution in destroying the meaning of it by opening the door to pretenders. And we will have a great future in modding also because no one cares and gives you any kind of spotlight because other strangers will come first because they have an oppinon!
Im sure we will see lots of great "games" in the future of indy gaming with all kinds of social topics. And the cool or REAl games will get no attention or support. Yes, great! Thanks!
And i must say you can ban me for that i dont care anymore. dont know what went wrong everywhere but i just dont care about political correctness censorship. If thats not welcome then well fare well!
Anita's not a game developer; she's a game analyst. She's part of a growing trend of gamers shedding light on this medium that we've all grown up loving, helping the broader community of humanity to start viewing it as an artistic medium rather than just a hobby for nerds.
Watch her last video on the Ms Male Character; she's not condemning game developers, she's identifying the tropes that exist (and they do exist) and pointing out where game developers have promoted those tropes in the past.
I will not watch any of her videos because i already know who she is. I do see your peoples point on a social level but i cannot connect it with gaming at all in all honesty because we are flooded since the first FPS game with violence. Disturbing violence is everywhere in gaming and it is not questioned because bloody gore of human being doesnt seems to be a problem... but other problem exists due to the fact that some vocal persons have gained influence in the press and gaming. As long you only pick out only ONE little aspect of games but turn a blind eye on real issues I Idont take it seriously. IF there is a problem with equality in your corporations then what is it the problem of the gamers ? If there is any solution then it is the boss who can change things either by forcing it or by letting a good and open discussion begin to grow for the better of all.
And a gaming analyzer would say that males are brutally murdered since the atari 2600 and thats ok because males dont have a problem with pixels.
@NWN_babaYaga I'll say it again: watch one of her videos, all the way through to the end. I'll suggest part 2 of the "Damsel in Distress" series as another good example. You'll see that she's not just lambasting the industry, but pointing out tropes that are harmful, to both men and women. She also specifically mentions that the problem isn't the literal physical violence against women (she points to a number of examples where women are on equal footing with men when the violence occurs, and those aren't part of the problem she's describing), but rather the systemic portrayal of women as secondary or cosmetic objects that are only there to be discarded or to inject an easy moment of high emotion in the player as a result of their being tortured or killed.
She also says on a number of occasions that she's not accusing developers of intentionally putting women into these situations all the time, but rather that developers sometimes aren't thinking about the larger context in which these games are being viewed, and so it results in trends like "protagonist's wife is brutally murdered, and the protagonist must then rescue his daughter", where the story is about the male protagonist and the female secondary characters are only there to provide motivation.
Obviously I can't force you to watch them, but you really shouldn't make assumptions about what her goal is unless you've actually seen what she's done so far.
I dont make just an assumption on her intentions i know who she is and what she and her crew is trying to do but lets move on to the point you make.
Ok, let us assume we get rid of these so called female "trophys" or a woman who gets beaten (males are murdered by millions in stats) . We just change the reality of our world in games to change the future of it in theory.... any game that trys to portray the world how it is right now should be banned by default because it could harm the path of bringing a better reality to our world just by denying the existince of the reality then.
And now i make the exact point she and her crew makes and then tell me honestly where the difference is.
Look seriously, i am a german and in most games i am killed theoretically because of my heritage. do you think i should now censor all american games because they kill my grandfathers or me by pixels and that a nazi in a game is always a german of our modern times too ? Do think all american Medal of honor gamers think that we germans are all nazis and they now try to hunt and kill us because of a game ? Should i now be totaly paranoid when i travel to the united states because young boys want to shoot me because they think they are private Longshot and i am colonel nazi ?
Where do we stop all this or are we not over reacting and miss something that is lost. Fun! imo gaming is about fun.
It's not quite the same thing, but it is a valid point--in any case, the solution isn't to ban these games, but to be aware of how they exist in the context of other games and of the industry as a whole.
The portrayal of Germans as always being Nazis is similarly problematic, although the difference here is that "violence against Germans" is (as far as I'm aware) not something that exists, either in North America or abroad, whereas violence against women is something that does exist throughout the world today. If it is something that exists today, then certainly that's a problem worth addressing, but it doesn't detract from the problem with women in video games.
The problem with gender stereotyping in games, particularly the tropes described in Anita's series, is that they reinforce the real-world stereotypes that have resulted in statistics like "1 in 5 women will be raped at some point in their lives" or "every nine seconds a woman is assaulted for no reason other than her gender".
It's the same problem as racial stereotyping in games and movies; it's not malicious, but it does reflect a cultural paradigm that is careless about its handling of certain groups, and that carelessness does have a measurable impact in the real world.
I´m totaly on your side and agree with every person on planet earth that REAL violence vs females is a problem. Any violence against a weaker person is a very dirty crime and shouldnt be tolerated. Thats all something i agree to 101 %.
What i find very problematic is to censor reality or even censor some fun instead of having a honest discussion in our whole world were the problems come from and what can we do about it. This violence against females is a very old and sick "phenomenon" and this is not a sunday topic to be thrown at "gamers" and now lets wait how they react to it. You also have to see them being schooled at home and then in school and when they want to have fun and just want to get lose some of their aggressions (because of our SOCIETY) they are being schooled once again. I think the whole way how that was forced into the faces of male gamers was very counter productive. Young boys are not that stupid and i think most of them just want to have fun. You know that the church censored comedy back then ?
I feel like you'd enjoy these videos more than you think you would, @NWN_babaYaga - the points you're making are points that she makes as well.
Once again, it's not about censoring the game, it's about being aware of the stories we tell as artists; and if we choose to deal with dark or grim subject matter, remembering to handle that subject matter with the respect it deserves.
It's also about trying to find more creative ways to represent women in games without using lazy symbolism like "wears pink" and "is girly" or "has a bow and lipstick and long eyelashes". But all of these appeals are meant to drive the industry and the art-form forward, which is a good thing for gamers.
Censorship and hate speech are always going to be problematic, even when the intent of the person using the latter isn't to incite but to discuss and resolve. Learning how to talk to each other is definitely a part of that, no doubts. As far as games being an outlet for aggression though, maybe there are better options than the abuse and defacing of women? A realistic portrayal of how things are is not quite the same as using that same media to dwell on it. In regards GoT having it's best warrior be a women, that's pretty much not true as there really ISN'T anyone thats the best. And GoT is flooded with problematic attitudes and portrayals of women, both in book/script + behind the scenes. Just look at the rape of cersei by jaime as an example. I believe the director Alex Graves was quoted as saying it became consensual by the end. WTF?
You'll notice the show is not off the air though. Nor is it likely to be. The point of these arguments is not to do anything but learn from where failures occured and improve upon the experience going forward, in this one Project (a single TV show) and it's successors and related.
But you know that the adventure genre where female characters alway had a prominent role in games were literaly ruined. So i think a good solution or start to bring female personalitys back into the minds of gamers is by supporting these kind of games. The adventure genre and RPGs are classy for that because you can tell storys and thats where woman stand out the most imo. I love ellen Ripley too and i think she is the best hero of all time because of the rescue of cute Newt. So why dont make people a gaming convention together with developers and the gaming crowd and start talking about games they would all like to see with female personlitys and get together and do them via a kickstarter campaign. Or at least what can the whole industry bring together to bring females back in games without the sex aspect or comical amazonian berzerker... Like a foundation for exactly that. Dont know but a practical solution is always better as just pointing out this and that but now no ones knows what to do except heating up a whole scene.
I´m totaly on your side and agree with every person on planet earth that REAL violence vs females is a problem. Any violence against a weaker person is a very dirty crime and shouldnt be tolerated. Thats all something i agree to 101 %.
What i find very problematic is to censor reality or even censor some fun instead of having a honest discussion in our whole world were the problems come from and what can we do about it. This violence against females is a very old and sick "phenomenon" and this is not a sunday topic to be thrown at "gamers" and now lets wait how they react to it. You also have to see them being schooled at home and then in school and when they want to have fun and just want to get lose some of their aggressions (because of our SOCIETY) they are being schooled once again. I think the whole way how that was forced into the faces of male gamers was very counter productive. Young boys are not that stupid and i think most of them just want to have fun. You know that the church censored comedy back then ?
A few points of my own here. I'm not sure I like the immediate connection of women as the weaker sex. That seems very problematic to me. Also, nothing was forced into the faces of male gamers. She produced a few videos on her own dime and than made a kickstarter request for more funding to continue her project. Her fame arose from a subset of our community that chose to voice it's counter argument with some of the most hateful abuse I have seen from the internet, very much demonstrating that the points she was making weren't just on the nose but the tip of the iceberg.
I dont agree with you @Serge for many reasons. The problem is deep inside the society that is created by adults in power and not by little gamers who happen to play games. So its nonsense to assume these problems are not being created by people in power trough centurys!
When you analyze a problem you dont start with a side effect that now is a gaming crowd that is angry at someone who "lies" also in their minds. Thats their right to say because anita and "others" are not quite that innocent as some think. But anyway the problem is not with the gamers but with a heritage of very wrong people in power or how is a society being build ? From peasants to kings ?
We could easily get rid of this whole problem via total system or regime change and every male is placed into prison for hurting a female. Every big business owner has to give all his wealth to a female with equal intellect and so on.... so there is a solution right now. But that wouldnt make some people in power very happy
@NWN_babaYaga can you provide some examples of the Adventure/RPG genre that had a female protagonist? The problem with Ellen Ripley is that that's one character in one movie that didn't exactly spawn a wave of strong female protagonists in gaming or the movies.
I dont agree with you @Serge for many reasons. The problem is deep inside the society that is created by adults in power and not by little gamers who happen to play games. So its nonsense to assume these problems are not being created by people in power trough centurys!
When you analyze a problem you dont start with a side effect that now is a gaming crowd that is angry at someone who "lies" also in their minds. Thats their right to say because anita and others of her an not quite that innocent. But anyway the problem is not with the gamers but with a heritage of very wrong people in power or how is a society being build ? From peasants to kings ?
The little gamers eventually become adults, though. Maybe games don't play an essential role in developing those little gamers into mature adults who don't abuse women, but if we have a choice to make games that don't actively reinforce the cultural paradigm that results in that abuse, why wouldn't we?
A side effect is generally able to be viewed as a symptom of much larger problem. And I'm noting that you don't feel there was anything wrong with the reponse Anita received, including death and rape threats, a 'game' depicting her graphic assault, and more.
A few points of my own here. I'm not sure I like the immediate connection of women as the weaker sex.
Women are weaker, that's just reality. When was the last time you saw women paving roads, laying bricks, cutting trees? Probably never. They make poor soldiers, and even poorer firefighters. Most women don't have the upper body strength needed to carry a wounded/unconscious person. Women are better at other things, but if I mention any I'll be seen as sexist... see how silly all this is?
Actually, I see every one of those things all the time @TheGraveDigger. Women are fantastic in all of those positions, and even with an argument that men have a certain physical advantage there, we come up to the issue of psychology where in team-building and interpersonal skills, women have proven themselves the superior. There was, I believe (have to admit my source on this is a fuzzy recollection) a study that suggested women would serve far better in Submarine duties than men would.
focusing on death and rape threats realy helps woman who seriously want to get involved into gaming... I dont comment on that any further because it´s not my business. But i think if the gaming crowd and developers want to do something for females in gaming then only by technical help and how things are done. So instead of blaming around now why dont make convention then and bring people together and make a step by step plan on how to improve the scene in general for woman artists or new comers who wants to be creative but dont know how things work. Like a workshop more or less but with the theme of a better environement for all people... you know... practical stuff!
And @Dee yes i agree that these kids become adults and some responsibilty could be taken into account but the whole story of her and associates realy blew out like a bomb now with all the accusations of fraud and fez too and bribery etc.
So a convention with people in the industry doing workshops for females who can then take the lead in the creative process of these games would be a good thing imo. I always think pratical because ok, we now know there seems to be a problem.. now what to do... to make it interesting for more female artists and writers to join the gaming industry or mod scene is what we should do. Because if you have established these female artists, leads and writers they will know what to do on their own and im sure their games would help much more then this blaming and everyone has enemys.
A few points of my own here. I'm not sure I like the immediate connection of women as the weaker sex.
Women are weaker, that's just reality. When was the last time you saw women paving roads, laying bricks, cutting trees? Probably never. They make poor soldiers, and even poorer firefighters. Most women don't have the upper body strength needed to carry a wounded/unconscious person. Women are better at other things, but if I mention any I'll be seen as sexist... see how silly all this is?
This is veering dangerously close to problem territory. For the record, I've seen plenty of women paving roads, laying bricks, AND cutting trees, and there are plenty of successful women in the military. The physical limitations of real-world biology do not and should not necessitate a limitation of gender representation in the medium, just as they shouldn't be a deciding factor in gender representation in the real world.
The problem is "women should not be objectified and reduced to a single defining trait of gender when being placed in a video game" versus "women should be objectified and stereotyped based on their gender when being placed in a video game".
If you agree with the first statement, then you can start to think about how a game could use more progressive storytelling devices. Or not; you don't have to be a part of the solution just because you're aware of the problem. Just being aware of the problem is enough to make a difference.
if you agree with the second statement, then that's... Well, I don't know.
focusing on death and rape threats realy helps woman who seriously want to get involved into gaming... I dont comment on that any further because it´s not my business.
You think that rape and death threats help women integrate into gaming? Care to explain that reasoning, or do you not care to? Would rape and death threats help you? I'm in no way suggesting that you or anyone deserve such, I'm just in the position of being at a loss on how that plays out.
I have watched several of her videos and I found them to be very insightful and well-researched. The logical order in which her information and cases are being presented almost led me to think that this was her master's or doctoral thesis. *shrug* In any event, the fact that video games are receiving such in-depth deconstructive analysis means that they have made it to the next level (pun intended)--they are a valid art form worthy of critique and analysis, both positive and negative.
Strangely, the games which I enjoy most--Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, the Fallout series--were not mentioned by her at all (or at least I do not recall her mentioning them). There are plenty of truly awful things which happen (or could happen) in Fallout, especially Fallout 3, which contains one quest that, after completion, made *me* (the player) feel like a dirty scumball. Even when I play "evil" I won't complete that quest again. I suppose this is because these games are designed so that the protagonist could be male or female without any bias of one over the other, except that female Couriers (New Vegas) can recover the Platinum Chip from Benny with much less effort than male Couriers.
I have seen negative criticism of Ms. Sarkessian but the worst that could be said about her analyses is that she sometimes misrepresents sub-plots in games or portrays actions as required when they are not actually mandatory.
The general trends of video games are a snapshot of where society is at this time and this makes them worthy of analysis at this level, even if you disagree with someone's individual critique. Our choices of video games also says something about us as an individual.
And @Dee yes i agree that these kids become adults and some responsibilty could be taken into account but the whole story of her and associates realy blew out like a bomb now with all the accusations of fraud and fez too and bribery etc.
What are you talking about here? Fraud and bribery with her 'associates'?
Those accusations were all fabricated; the blowout was caused by a small collection of people spamming those accusations all over the internet. These people were victims of fraud, not instigators of it.
Actually, I see every one of those things all the time @TheGraveDigger. Women are fantastic in all of those positions
That's VERY hard to believe. I've worked in the construction trade for over ten years and currently work in farming. And I can count all the labourer women I've known on 1 finger...
To shift the focus on what to do for females who are interested in the gaming process so they can express themself and we will see more games that have the soul of a womans mind and not some dude that pretends to know how a woman feels and think is imo more important as to stay in this mess of hatred!
Helping woman in the process and making it more interesting for them to join and do great games of their own in their own vision will automaticaly help a lot because young guys will respect that. That doesnt mean we should forget RESPECT right now but as i say. The theory of the problem now seems to be in many developers, gaming journalist etc. mind established and now it´s time to do something. But that should include WORK!
And what could be better as a convention sponsored by the big business guys who love us all so much eh. Or the gaming press sites and developers come together join venture and make a plan how to get stuff done!
@TheGraveDigger. Well, I'm in the Pacific Northwest, maybe region has something to do with it. I also know that women are heavily involved in all aspects of farming, as much as men, so I can only suggest looking to the News.
To shift the focus on what to do for females who are interested in the gaming process so they can express themself and we will see more games that have the soul of a womans mind and not some dude that pretends to know how a woman feels and think is imo more important as to stay in this mess of hatred!
Helping woman in the process and making it more interesting for them to join and do great games of their own in their own vision will automaticaly help a lot because young guys will respect that. That doesnt mean we should forget RESPECT right now but as i say. The theory of the problem now seems to be in many developers, gaming journalist etc. mind established and now it´s time to do something. But that should include WORK!
And what could be better as a convention sponsored by the big business guys who love us all so much eh. Or the gaming press sites and developers come together join venture and make a plan how to get stuff done!
I have no idea of what you're talking about with some of this, I'm sorry. I do get (correct me if I'm wrong) that you feel that the talking about the direction of gaming and representations is less significant than efforts put towards the development of a game that embodies those sentiments, but can't Anita's criticisms be seen as a part of that process?
well... you cant just force something onto people in a free society thats why i think bringing interesting woman in games and female gaming developers with a vision back into the industry is the best and only way that will truly create a better atmosphere. And via a foundation for woman in gaming you could create a little studio for female devs in about a year if it is done with professional help from all the developers around the globe. Just a first step to shift the gaming process into the hands of woman with a vision of their own so people realy see there is a new movement. The more woman in gaming the better because young guys WILL respect that i´m sure. But they dont take all the accusations now in silence.
Maybe men in gaming should man up and admit where wrongs were done. As far as goes more women in gaming and its development, there's already a huge market mass there. The problem is the sexist taunts they receive whenever they so much as bring up point one. Roping off a nice office space for women only is a far step back, not forward. And what does that say, that we can't see these ideas implemented unless the room is female only. It should be accepted that women's voices are secondary to mens? This was a topic addressed at how women in gaming are treated and you feel the way to go is to examine how that impacts you?
Comments
First, that in many ways video games have come a long way since their inception. We're starting to see more deep, realistic characters of both genders in games, and the "strong" characters we're seeing are more compelling than they used to be.
Second, that we still have a long way to go, and in the last ten years or so we've actually seen some really terrible regressions.
Neither of these truths are supposed to be a judgment on gamers, developers, or the industry. They're simply observations of trends. You can see similar trends in books, movies, and television. Yes, we're making great strides forward. But we're also making some strides in the other direction. It's not any one company or one developer or one writer that's doing both of them; it's the medium as a whole.
That's what Anita is emphasizing here: that, yes, we should pat ourselves on the back for the instances where we're bringing games into the 21st century, but we also need to acknowledge our continuing failures when it comes to how we portray gender, and one or two successful cases among dozens of failures doesn't mean the work is done.
Watch her last video on the Ms Male Character; she's not condemning game developers, she's identifying the tropes that exist (and they do exist) and pointing out where game developers have promoted those tropes in the past.
And a gaming analyzer would say that males are brutally murdered since the atari 2600 and thats ok because males dont have a problem with pixels.
I'll say it again: watch one of her videos, all the way through to the end. I'll suggest part 2 of the "Damsel in Distress" series as another good example. You'll see that she's not just lambasting the industry, but pointing out tropes that are harmful, to both men and women. She also specifically mentions that the problem isn't the literal physical violence against women (she points to a number of examples where women are on equal footing with men when the violence occurs, and those aren't part of the problem she's describing), but rather the systemic portrayal of women as secondary or cosmetic objects that are only there to be discarded or to inject an easy moment of high emotion in the player as a result of their being tortured or killed.
She also says on a number of occasions that she's not accusing developers of intentionally putting women into these situations all the time, but rather that developers sometimes aren't thinking about the larger context in which these games are being viewed, and so it results in trends like "protagonist's wife is brutally murdered, and the protagonist must then rescue his daughter", where the story is about the male protagonist and the female secondary characters are only there to provide motivation.
Obviously I can't force you to watch them, but you really shouldn't make assumptions about what her goal is unless you've actually seen what she's done so far.
Ok, let us assume we get rid of these so called female "trophys" or a woman who gets beaten (males are murdered by millions in stats) . We just change the reality of our world in games to change the future of it in theory.... any game that trys to portray the world how it is right now should be banned by default because it could harm the path of bringing a better reality to our world just by denying the existince of the reality then.
And now i make the exact point she and her crew makes and then tell me honestly where the difference is.
Look seriously, i am a german and in most games i am killed theoretically because of my heritage. do you think i should now censor all american games because they kill my grandfathers or me by pixels and that a nazi in a game is always a german of our modern times too ? Do think all american Medal of honor gamers think that we germans are all nazis and they now try to hunt and kill us because of a game ? Should i now be totaly paranoid when i travel to the united states because young boys want to shoot me because they think they are private Longshot and i am colonel nazi ?
Where do we stop all this or are we not over reacting and miss something that is lost. Fun! imo gaming is about fun.
The portrayal of Germans as always being Nazis is similarly problematic, although the difference here is that "violence against Germans" is (as far as I'm aware) not something that exists, either in North America or abroad, whereas violence against women is something that does exist throughout the world today. If it is something that exists today, then certainly that's a problem worth addressing, but it doesn't detract from the problem with women in video games.
The problem with gender stereotyping in games, particularly the tropes described in Anita's series, is that they reinforce the real-world stereotypes that have resulted in statistics like "1 in 5 women will be raped at some point in their lives" or "every nine seconds a woman is assaulted for no reason other than her gender".
It's the same problem as racial stereotyping in games and movies; it's not malicious, but it does reflect a cultural paradigm that is careless about its handling of certain groups, and that carelessness does have a measurable impact in the real world.
What i find very problematic is to censor reality or even censor some fun instead of having a honest discussion in our whole world were the problems come from and what can we do about it. This violence against females is a very old and sick "phenomenon" and this is not a sunday topic to be thrown at "gamers" and now lets wait how they react to it. You also have to see them being schooled at home and then in school and when they want to have fun and just want to get lose some of their aggressions (because of our SOCIETY) they are being schooled once again. I think the whole way how that was forced into the faces of male gamers was very counter productive. Young boys are not that stupid and i think most of them just want to have fun. You know that the church censored comedy back then ?
Once again, it's not about censoring the game, it's about being aware of the stories we tell as artists; and if we choose to deal with dark or grim subject matter, remembering to handle that subject matter with the respect it deserves.
It's also about trying to find more creative ways to represent women in games without using lazy symbolism like "wears pink" and "is girly" or "has a bow and lipstick and long eyelashes". But all of these appeals are meant to drive the industry and the art-form forward, which is a good thing for gamers.
You'll notice the show is not off the air though. Nor is it likely to be. The point of these arguments is not to do anything but learn from where failures occured and improve upon the experience going forward, in this one Project (a single TV show) and it's successors and related.
When you analyze a problem you dont start with a side effect that now is a gaming crowd that is angry at someone who "lies" also in their minds. Thats their right to say because anita and "others" are not quite that innocent as some think. But anyway the problem is not with the gamers but with a heritage of very wrong people in power or how is a society being build ? From peasants to kings ?
We could easily get rid of this whole problem via total system or regime change and every male is placed into prison for hurting a female. Every big business owner has to give all his wealth to a female with equal intellect and so on.... so there is a solution right now. But that wouldnt make some people in power very happy
And @Dee yes i agree that these kids become adults and some responsibilty could be taken into account but the whole story of her and associates realy blew out like a bomb now with all the accusations of fraud and fez too and bribery etc.
So a convention with people in the industry doing workshops for females who can then take the lead in the creative process of these games would be a good thing imo. I always think pratical because ok, we now know there seems to be a problem.. now what to do... to make it interesting for more female artists and writers to join the gaming industry or mod scene is what we should do. Because if you have established these female artists, leads and writers they will know what to do on their own and im sure their games would help much more then this blaming and everyone has enemys.
The problem is "women should not be objectified and reduced to a single defining trait of gender when being placed in a video game" versus "women should be objectified and stereotyped based on their gender when being placed in a video game".
If you agree with the first statement, then you can start to think about how a game could use more progressive storytelling devices. Or not; you don't have to be a part of the solution just because you're aware of the problem. Just being aware of the problem is enough to make a difference.
if you agree with the second statement, then that's... Well, I don't know.
Strangely, the games which I enjoy most--Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, the Fallout series--were not mentioned by her at all (or at least I do not recall her mentioning them). There are plenty of truly awful things which happen (or could happen) in Fallout, especially Fallout 3, which contains one quest that, after completion, made *me* (the player) feel like a dirty scumball. Even when I play "evil" I won't complete that quest again. I suppose this is because these games are designed so that the protagonist could be male or female without any bias of one over the other, except that female Couriers (New Vegas) can recover the Platinum Chip from Benny with much less effort than male Couriers.
I have seen negative criticism of Ms. Sarkessian but the worst that could be said about her analyses is that she sometimes misrepresents sub-plots in games or portrays actions as required when they are not actually mandatory.
The general trends of video games are a snapshot of where society is at this time and this makes them worthy of analysis at this level, even if you disagree with someone's individual critique. Our choices of video games also says something about us as an individual.
What are you talking about here? Fraud and bribery with her 'associates'?
Helping woman in the process and making it more interesting for them to join and do great games of their own in their own vision will automaticaly help a lot because young guys will respect that. That doesnt mean we should forget RESPECT right now but as i say. The theory of the problem now seems to be in many developers, gaming journalist etc. mind established and now it´s time to do something. But that should include WORK!
And what could be better as a convention sponsored by the big business guys who love us all so much eh. Or the gaming press sites and developers come together join venture and make a plan how to get stuff done!