Video Game News and Miscellany
- Thread starter figmentPez
- Start date
River City Ransom is now on the 3DS eshop.
Another reason you don't buy a new console at launch:
Getting it robbed from you as soon as you leave the store.
Getting it robbed from you as soon as you leave the store.
I can't wait to hear the year end numbers... I want to know if we're just living in our own little bubble or if the Xbone is really going to do as badly as it looks.
I uh... totally bought one. But some guys stole it from me. And the receipt too... yeah.
Anita Sarkesian has a new episode of Tropes vs. Women.
As with all of Sarkesian's videos, I feel a lot of her perceived authority on the subject is lost every time she references an obvious parody of the trope she's trying to identify as further proof of her point.
Ah, but doesn't a parody still only prove to further exemplify the point?
Not when the focus of your series is tropes VS women, implying that these tropes are counteractive and harmful to women. Citing a source making fun of that trope (and thus removing power from it) as the same weakens that standpoint.
But that's the entire point. There are so few examples of positive female character designs that "parodying" them only makes it worse.
That isn't the point she made. She uses it in a string of literal examples of Ms. Male Character. It's what I hate about these videos. She always has a bunch of good points or examples, but they're almost always littered with disingenuous examples that I refuse to believe she's too dumb to not notice.
Please tell me she doesn't consider an Adult Swim game a serious source. Please.
Beyond that most of her examples are tied to games that had such small amounts of technology to work with that there were likely no other ways to differentiate between a male and female character. Even further beyond that, but still tied to the technological limitations, the first round of games used barely, if at all, rely on a story to motivate gameplay. Two of the first four games mentioned are puzzle games. The fourth is a simple puzzle/platformer. Stories generally aren't the focus, nor are the characters, in these sorts of games. The puzzles are.
I can see what point she's trying to make, but games predating at least the 90's are not a great basis for discussion, in my opinion. The medium had barely found it's footing outside of arcades, partially due to pricing, and the mindset of people in general was different.
Beyond that most of her examples are tied to games that had such small amounts of technology to work with that there were likely no other ways to differentiate between a male and female character. Even further beyond that, but still tied to the technological limitations, the first round of games used barely, if at all, rely on a story to motivate gameplay. Two of the first four games mentioned are puzzle games. The fourth is a simple puzzle/platformer. Stories generally aren't the focus, nor are the characters, in these sorts of games. The puzzles are.
I can see what point she's trying to make, but games predating at least the 90's are not a great basis for discussion, in my opinion. The medium had barely found it's footing outside of arcades, partially due to pricing, and the mindset of people in general was different.
So mentioning where the trope began - and thus the foundation and name of her entire argument - shouldn't be considered?
Honestly, I guess I don't understand the dissension here. Just because something is parody doesn't mean it's safe from examination
I don't know. Even though I'm passionate about the idea behind this, I'm just not intellectually equipped enough to have an argument about it.
Well I guess that's part of the problem, this trope she christened is based off of the necessity and limitations of hardware at the time of its conception. There's far less of an excuse for it now, I suppose, but when a game had to fit on a few measly MB, there couldn't be much choice in the matter.
This has always been my problem with the entire Tropes Vs Women project: She's usually not wrong in her actual ideas, but she uses terrible examples and generally does a poor job in making her point.
For example, in an earlier video she was going on about how Zelda and Princess Toadstool were only portrayed as helpless victims in the early years of the NES... completely overlooking their portrayal in other media at the time, like cartoons and comic books. MY Zelda and Peach (as in the ones I always thought about) were the hyper competent leaders from the Mario Brothers cartoons and Zelda cartoons, not the damsels from the games.
For example, in an earlier video she was going on about how Zelda and Princess Toadstool were only portrayed as helpless victims in the early years of the NES... completely overlooking their portrayal in other media at the time, like cartoons and comic books. MY Zelda and Peach (as in the ones I always thought about) were the hyper competent leaders from the Mario Brothers cartoons and Zelda cartoons, not the damsels from the games.
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figmentPez
Staff member
She's also overly-defensive. She tries so hard to cut-off any counter-argument, or misinterpretation, that she just ends up muddling her main point.
She also treats her ideas like they're final conclusions. I can't figure out if she's just not aware of how she sounds, if she has no clue how unrefined her concepts are, or if she really thinks that she's managing to sound like an authority when her presentation is so unpolished and obviously in need of bouncing her ideas off of people who aren't just yes-(wo)men.
I like that she's bringing up these ideas, and this area of subject matter desperately needs to be explored, but I don't think she's presenting what she's found in an effective way.
GasBandit
Staff member
Edit - You know what, I apologize. A one word negative reply is so very much a Charlie thing to do and despite your avowed discomfiture in discussing this topic, you still made the effort and you don't deserve a reply that comes off at that level of snark. This was the first post I made today after coming home from a funeral and obviously it hasn't put me into a place conducive to long discourse. And if I'd read further, I'd see others said much of what I would have said. So consider it retracted.
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GasBandit
Staff member
That video was a very insightful watch. I usually have a hard time sitting and listening to a head talk for more than a couple minutes, but I made it all the way through that one and found his points salient and well made.
He had some interesting points, but the bash on Nintendo and how you can't support a system without good third party support in the current environment made me roll my eyes. Unless his argument is that the environment has substantially changed since the Wii came out (which he offers no evidence for), the Wii is an obvious to the point of "why do I even have to type this post" counter.
It's the accent.
Yeah, I had the same reaction to that. Nintendo has done just fine on almost exclusively first party software since the gamecube. First party licensees are their bread and butter.
Either way you look at it, it demonstrates that his "You need good third party support to sell a console" claim isn't the case.
To be fair, though, the Wii had tons of third party support. It was just all shit. Shit shovelware that nongamers bought in droves, and that is what the Wii sold most to.
The Wii sold to core gamers on the strength of first party titles alone. But core gamers aren't what made the Wii successful.