Wait a second.. you're using Samus Aran, Cortana and Lara Croft as examples to prove there's no sexism in video games? LOLLLL I honestly thought you were trolling for a second. As for the topic, I don't understand how someone can argue that there isn't sexism in video games. It's pretty obvious. There are some rare exceptions like that girl from Mirror Edge and Lighting from Final Fantasy 13 (but even she is slightly sexualized in some of the outfits she wears). Now do I personally care? Not really. Women being used as sexual objects in the media is nothing new to me, especially for something which is directed towards a male audience. However there's still no denying it's there and while I don't overly mind it, when a strong female character is wearing something like [url=http://i-f.animepaper.net/thumbnails/preview/234749/1/%5Banimepaper.net%5Dpicture-standard-video-games-resident-evil-resident-evil-revelations-jessica-234749-xechs-preview-934e6d48.jpg]such[/url] it does slightly impact my gaming experience because I can't take the game as seriously nor the character.

I find it strangely convenient these ridiculous feminists complain only about females being sexualized. Yet pretty much every male main character has rippling biceps, 6 pack abs, rugged good looks, tall and tan, 5% body fat, and dastardly handsome. And he usually wears something that accentuates his body and features. You see that's what's wrong with these people like the woman who made that video, they support double standards. They think a woman's sexuality is more important and sacred than a mans. They claim to be modern and equal yet they support middle age ideas of men and women and sex. But I guess that's feminism for ya.

[quote]Samus Aran, Cortana and Lara Croft. All three are main characters and essential to the game, with each series being very popular and successful[/quote]I stopped reading right here. You are a complete moronic jackass if you think those characters are cool with Anita. They are ALL sexualized, and THAT'S the whole issue. Shithead. I'm not even on her SIDE. Like, COME ON. This is bullshit. Seggi put it so much better than I could ever care to:[quote]If, however, we're talking about the prominence of female characters in general, then you should probably ask yourself why one of the characters you listed can barely be identified as a woman throughout most of the games in which she appears, why one of the others is most well known for her ridiculously proportioned (and occasionally triangular) breasts, and why the other is not only not the main protagonist of her series, but actually falls right into the damsel in distress trope in the second and third games. Hell, you could half expect the gravemind to come out at the end of Cortana to tell you that your A.I. is in another planetoid. Strong, identifiably female characters that aren't overly sexualised and don't take a backseat to male characters are few and far between in video gaming, but their male counter-parts are abundant.[/quote]So, now that you've essentially been told what the answer of 2+2 is...

I was watching one of her videos on Lego being only for boys. You don't see guys going to -blam!-ing barbie and saying "hey, you make most of this stuff for girls, you need to make some for the male audience. I don't care if it wont sell because its only for girls, YOU need to make it for them." That goes for anything really, You NEVER see males go to a female dominated thing and say that they need to change the whole concept because a few males like what they have. So why the -blam!- do a few females have to go to a male dominated thing ( could be anything male dominated here) complain about it, THEN most of the time it gets changed to suit the few females. And for video game harassment, males get a massive amount of hate, it's just that we move on. It's not like words from a complete stranger on a game can hurt you so severely.

^Ridiculously relevant.^ [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=la9i2np0WTU]Also relevant.[/url] Anywho, there has been a rise in feminism lately, and while teh puma isn't necessarily against feminism, these people have been doing it entirely wrong and frankly... it pisses him off a great deal. The main criticism against the new rise of feminist, is that they believe any negative remark aimed at them is sexist, and that men on the internet do not receive negative remarks either. You see, it's this disconnect that has been their undoing. They are so self centered that they think they're the only ones who have been given bad names on the internet. Regarding the gaming industry, if they are saying the damsel in distress trope has been unintentionally leaving a bad mark on women, teh puma honestly fails to see how. It's part of a story, a story that was made for entertainment. Not every story places the girl in the same role (even if they do there are many cases in which the role has become somewhat tilted) , and many games still let you be a female protagonist. If we're going off of how frequently they are placed in as "damsel in distress", teh puma doesn't see it occurring that often anymore, and at least if it does occur, it is usually no longer the "omg I've been kidnapped by a turtle" like it was in the 80's and 90's. Teh puma has no doubt that the "issue" is being somewhat blown out of proportion. It's not that big of a deal, it's about on par with teh puma complaining about certain guns being misrepresented in call of duty.

You always here people talk about female harassment in online gaming, but they clearly don't realise that male gamers face all kinds of crap like death threats and racism and other insults, the key difference is that male gamers don't give a damn because we know that the online gaming world is full of ass holes, so instead of crying about it we ignore it. The fact that most male gamers ignore the idiots online, compared to a large amount of female gamers complaining about them, is part of the reason why people seem to think females have to deal with so much hostility online compared to males.

Relevant. Equalism > feminism And the reason there are more male protagonists in videogames is because most gamers are male. You adapt to your audience. It's THAT simple! IMO "sexism" or stereotypes in games are not a problem. Especially if you compare the stereotypes in games with the stereotypes that can be found in cartoons, children clothes and toys.

People love pointing out sexism in games. A perfect example of the bias towards women, there was a ton of controversy over the attempted r-ape scene in the new Tomb Raider. Nobody mentioned the scenes where the male protagonist gets r-aped in Far Cry 3 AND Fear 2 which came out, like, 4, 5 years ago. These games have the male protagonist sexually violated to the fullest extent, but when there is a scene where someone tries and fails to do the same to Lara, huge controversy.

Unfortunately feminazis don't realise that everyone is insulted somewhere in gaming and they think there's some agenda only against women.

[quote]So I watched that Anita Sarkeesian's video about sexism in gaming. You know that person who asked for a ton of money, got way more than what she asked for but didn't change her videos at all after she got the money?[/quote]Actually, I think she decided to double the number of videos she'd making in the series after she realised she'd well overshot the target, not that it's really relevant to the quality/veracity of her videos. [quote]And wow, just wow. She's clearly lost it with the whole "it's all sexist" thing. As with alot of feminists claiming sexism is a prevailent thing in gaming.[/quote]If you're going into it with the assumption that there's no real sexism in the game industry, you're not going to get anything from the video. Try actually honestly thinking about what she's saying, and weighing up why she may or may not be right. Give her the benefit of the doubt: if she says something you think is wrong and her justification for it isn't compelling to you, try to think about what she's saying from another perspective, to make sure you're not misinterpreting her point. I'll try and take you through some of your issues with her video, but try to honestly think about what I'm saying, rather than just rejecting it out of hand because it's coming from a feminist perspective. [quote]I don't see it. Firstly, females have been the focus on many games as the main character for gaming. Want three examples? Samus Aran, Cortana and Lara Croft. All three are main characters and essential to the game, with each series being very popular and successful (Metroid, Halo and Tombraider incase you didn't know) And those are just the main characters, in alot of games there are female characters (not including the ability to chose to be female which alot of games DO offer, like pokemon and saints row) which aren't a main character but still important to the story, shall we say Kat from Reach? Or even Amy from the Sonic series? (something that Anita convenitenly didn't mention, same with Metroid, the classis example of a main female character you play as who kicks ass)[/quote]To start, the video was, specifically, about the damsel in distress trope, and the way it negatively portrays women. Yes, there are many examples of strong female characters in video games, but this video was an analysis of the habitual portrayal of women within the confines of this trope. If, however, we're talking about the prominence of female characters in general, then you should probably ask yourself why one of the characters you listed can barely be identified as a woman throughout most of the games in which she appears, why one of the others is most well known for her ridiculously proportioned (and occasionally triangular) breasts, and why the other is not only [i]not[/i] the main protagonist of her series, but actually falls right into the damsel in distress trope in the second and third games. Hell, you could half expect the gravemind to come out at the end of Cortana to tell you that your A.I. is in another planetoid. Strong, identifiably female characters that aren't overly sexualised and don't take a backseat to male characters are few and far between in video gaming, but their male counter-parts are abundant. [quote]When someone refers to sexism in gaming they mostly refer to the damsel in distress. But, the only real series which does this on a frequent basis is Mario. Sure there's Zelda but alot of the time Zelda does actually do something in games, such as Ocarina of time or in Twilight Princess, she helps you defeat Ganondorf and helps you in your adventure.[/quote]You should try watching over the video again: she actually gives a number of examples of the damsel in distress trope in gaming, as well as an interesting investigation of the way Zelda and Peach are used as characters. [quote]But with Mario, it's the typical story of dragon kidnaps princess, hero saves her, which is a story dating back thousands of years, and now a staple of the mario franchise. Why does Bowser want her? I don't know Nintendo doesn't say, but I very much doubt miyamoto said "lol women weak mario save her" when making Mario and I also doubt Nintendo sticks to that philosophy when making a game.[/quote] She's not saying that Nintendo were intentionally trying to make games that portray women poorly, but the tropes they habitually employ do just that, even if it's unintentional (and I'm sure it is). [quote]It's simply that it's been around for ages and why change a formula which works? Nothing to do with sexism, more so that not coming up with a new formula simply saves time which is then used for making the game.[/quote] I think you need to think about what exactly you mean by saying that the formula 'works'. Is it an easy way to make games that can still be profitable? Sure. But does it believably and fairly portray its female characters? Unfortunately not. That might not seem like a big issue to you, but that is half of the human race that we are, for some reason, incapable of portraying well. If we want people to take video games seriously as a creative medium, and if we want to be able to do that ourselves, then the industry and the community alike need to be able to say that they can take that half of the human race seriously as individuals, rather than objects for adolescent ogling or male character progression. If, on the other hand, you're fine with perpetuating the stereotype of gaming as a juvenile pursuit with no real value beyond mindless fun, and are, furthermore, fine with gaming [i]being exactly that[/i], then, yeah, I guess it 'works'.

Aside from the harassment via the five year old retard population that is xbox live, (which I classify under internet rules, therefore you should ignore it) sexism in gaming (there or not) hasn't changed in the last 20 years. Why choose now to start complaining about it? I get that more and more females are starting to play or at least coming out about playing games (not that you really had to hide about it before), but its seems like people are making the bandwagon and trying to jump on it while the wheels are still wobbling.

Link me to the video?

TL;DR