Anyone who says Animal Crossing can't make you choose violence has never had some asshead new neighbor park their damn house in the middle of their blue roses.
You can choose violence in animal crossing but it's not very rewarding, or at least it takes a lot of effort to be rewarding. 😂 Pitfall seeds are my go-to
The entire Gamergate saga shows that so many people do not realize that CRITIQUE DOES NOT EQUAL CONDEMNATION. People can like something and still admit that there are parts of it that make them uncomfortable.
Anita flat out said that it's possible to enjoy a piece of media while still being critical of its more problematic aspects and they still sent her death threats!
A point about boob armor. Armor is not just designed to block and absorb a hit, it is also meant to distribute the force of the blow across a wider area. boob armor creates several points (like the sternum) where the force of the blow would be concentrated, making it impractical. Someone with large breasts would bind and wear regular armor with a wider chest area, not model their armor to fit their boobs. But that's just for practical armor. If it's ceremonial, go nuts.
Yep. I could totally see someone making boob plate ceremonial armor in a more egalitarian version of the Middle Ages. But at least for battle, deflecting enemy blades toward an unnecessary joint located over your sternum is one of the worst ideas I can think of
I completely agree and that was my critique of that point. It’s difficult for people who don’t know how armor functions to understand, because they’ll understandably translate bra and corset logic to armor when that wouldn’t be realistic or useful. Armor is meant to defend and to deflect shock from force, and having a concave portion beneath the breasts to “support” them would crush the chest and heart in two seconds flat
@@lumiveleda1289 Honestly, not just that. Joints are weak points. Remember that you can't just hide in a tin can, because you still need to be able to move. And even if it's not two separate pieces, even just something like two pieces being welded together instead of being a single piece is a weak point. But with boob plate, you're literally putting an unnecessary joint *right* over your sternum, which is about the last place you'd want to be hit. But on top of that, as if boob plate wasn't already risky enough, you're also setting up angled metal to deflect blades right *at* the joint. So while I could see it being used ceremonially, boob plate is probably one of the worst designs to actually wear into battle
The only difference between masculine and feminine armor, in my own design philosophy, is what cloth is paired with it and how big the dome of the chestplate is If its bigger, probably got tiddies in there If its smaller, probably not
having built both feminine and masculine armors for LARPs, I think I can provide some insight on this. first point, I think that needs to be addressed is the seeming assumption that combat armor was a strictly utilitarian affair, but quite the opposite was true, and anyone rich enough to have armor that could follow the fashion of the time would. To the point that laws ended up getting past that basically said you can't be fancier than the king. Secondly, out side of jousting, a boob-plate could be historically Plausible, one doesn't tend to rattle around inside armor Thirdly and most importantly, ITS OK TO DISLIKE IT JUST AS A STYLE, we really don't need to argue over how you wan't to style you fantasy/sci fi setting with "facts and logic" when its really just different opinions on aesthetics and and gender presentation.
so a quick note about Depression Quest, it is a choose your own adventure "game" in the same style as a lot of "games" from Choice of Games. I'm putting game in quotation marks because they're called games due to the interactivity. They're limited scope collaborative fiction; a novel in which the author occasionally asks for input on what the main character is doing, and usually is written in second person perspective. There's a lot of cool experiences in this tradition, but their heritage is rooted in CYOA *books* not video games, so I genuinely think that anyone going in with the "gamer mindset" is going to have a genuinely terrible time with these experiences. If you instead approach it with a literary frame of mind, there's a lot of value to these experiences as interactive literature.
Except that Depression Quest stepped outside the construct and implied social contract of offering your character choices by deliberately disabling some choices, ones you the player knew would be beneficial for you the character to undertake. It is definitely a game, the CYOA facade is clever subterfuge to disarm your preconceptions at "playing a game" about depression. I only played through Depression Quest twice in December 2014 and both times it was brutal and disheartening.
I think the problem with titty armor is that having armor molded into the shape of boobs is unnecessary & actually pretty dangerous. Even ppl with large chests would want something flat/slightly curved so that the force of impact is distributed equally, otherwise you’d just end up with a broken sternum.
that's an interesting point! i guess i don't know a ton about armor - i just know that in general, at the time, i needed ALL clothing/gear that was MUCH larger in the chest than the rest of the body, and the only alternatives i'd seen in art was flat armor, which would NOT have worked. lol
On the other hand, look at the history of armor, we have plenty of examples of pecs and abs sculpted or painted onto chestplates, narrow waists on suits of armor (for a long part of history, that was considered an attractive masculine trait) plus the entire history of the codpiece (armor sculpted to make your junk look big). Beyond the basic types of armor given to the rank and file, armor was also a fashion statement, and humans are vain. You don't have to look far to find stylish but impractical decisions in historical sets of armor. I don't see why, in an alternate history/fantasy setting where more women wore armor, women wouldn't also favor armor that emphasized body features.
Armor for big boobs would look interesting for sure. Curvy, but no cleavage. Essentially mono-boobs. And the fancier ones would have big decorative nipples and design elements that imply cleavage without actually creating it. There'd be a sturdy corset underneath that both supports and compresses, to mold the boobs into a shape that's easier for the armor to protect. Picture this: a smooth, cleavage-less hourglass. The decorative areolas are flowers, and engraved vines circle around the chest to imply breasts before spreading over the rest of the torso. Sure, it's protective, but it also says "I'm the richest woman here and don't forget it." Don't forget the massive war horse, which is decorated with hundreds of flowers during the celebratory parade for returning heroes, and vines are flowing from the helmet. I like vines.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS To give a little more info: breastplates are usually very roomy and curved outward because you need to breathe. As well as many soldiers wore chainmail or gambeson underneath (I can't remember how to spell gambeson right rn), not to mention their own clothes. So already having the armor be boob-shaped is unnecessary. But then, as OP said, it's dangerous. As the structural integrity in-between the boobs is very much hampered and made faultier. Especially if they're more tightly molded/molded to the individual breast like many sexy armor pieces are (the mandolorian armor is a bit better in this regard than usual pieces). It also guides weapons to your sternum when the better breastplate shape diverts blows. You don't want it to be easier for your enemies to hit you. Many sexy pieces are also often absurd, with metal underwear, crop top breastplates, pointy bits of metal ready to stab you if you move, just armor that only protects your nipples but leaves all your vital organs exposed, high heels (try running on the battlefield with that), literally bare metal sitting right upon your exposed skin, and just so much more. The other point is that folks are simply tired of having everything women wear be made sexy or to emphasize that they're women. Like, many women (at least of average size) could fit into a breastplate fashioned for a man (all other measurements being equal, like waist width and torso length), so why does it always have to be made feminine/sexy when protective armor works just fine? Why do we always have a need to design the costumes to point out that the wearer is female? It ties in to the topic about how men are the default and women are the other, the aberrance, the deviation from the norm. Like how a lady character gets a pick bow on her head to signify she's a girl. Then there's also the other other point about how this is just so common for women but rare for men. Male characters are much less sexualized in comparison to lady characters, and the disparity is annoying.
@@notoriousblt3085it's important to note that many of those more sculpted armor pieces weren't meant for practical use though. They were mainly for, at best, statement pieces meant for more ceremonial spaces. They aren't meant to be protective. Some weren't even meant to be worn at all. So while pointing to them as proof that armor was aesthetic at times is valid in saying that you don't need to make your designed armor a plain gray copy for everyone, it's also a bit inaccurate to act as if those types of armor were meant for practicality or combat.
Gamers: "video games are art!" Reviewers: *looks at video games from a deeper angle and finds political meanings and implications that they might likely endorse like they're art* Gamers: "No, not like that! It's not that deep!"
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". I find that people can have wildly different interpretations to a piece of media and some can get pretty wild and draw conclusions that the creator(s) may not have intended. It can be fun, but I rolled my eyes at The Game Theorists, for example.
@@unschoolwish I think it might be a bit different. Yea when Matt Patts drawing a red line between 8 different games to make a point it’s kinda just for fun from there, but if a game includes themes of police corruption and abuse I think any political analysis there is pretty much expected. It’s also important to note what might be said without the artist intention. It’s not hard to put out a message you never meant, if it were something I made regardless of whose politics I’d like to hear about it. Art is a form of communication after all, it’s not just a product we simply consume like a cigar.
@@unschoolwish I mean, that's kind of the whole "the artist is dead" post modern art critique point. The reader/watcher/viewer gets to interpret as they see fit and the artist is irrelevant.
You mean not like hate merchants and conspiracy theorists like Anita? If you are still simping for hate, get the fuck out of the video game space. You aren't welcome.
Not to comment again. I'm AFAB, and I vividly remember almost being radicalized by GamerGate back then. I came from an fundamentalist Christian and abusive family with no support system, had tons of internalized misogyny and queerphobia, and I wanted to fit in and find community so badly because I was bullied relentlessly in school. I remember the conversations of feminism in pop culture back then being centered towards the perspectives of cis, straight, white women only, and I felt isolated from the movement because I felt that they didn't reflect my own experiences. This might have sounded dramatic (and it is because I was a child), but Anita saying that some of my favorite video games were sexist and I was a bad person for playing them reminded me of my bullies at school. I'm a completely different person now, but it's a little terrifying seeing just how close to the alt-right I was just because I was an angry, confused child disillusioned by society. I'm sorry for even entertaining the misogynist beliefs that the movement sold me.
i think that's a valid point. i'm glad our discourse has expanded a lot in the past 10 years, but i understand what you're saying - i'm a neurodivergent person who grew up in a catholic family, i was likely to take things very literally, and i struggled when a lot of 2000s-2010s feminism didn't seem to acknowledge my experiences. so i get where you're coming from 100% - i think that's an important point about inclusion and how easy it can be to alienate the very people who could help
As a person who didn't have great media analysis at the time (me, circa 2014: people wouldn't just lie on the Internet!), I would have fallen on the side of whoever I heard first, so I'm happy I was afraid of the Internet at the time and wouldn't have found it.
Also AFAB, this comment hit way too close to home. I got stuck in the centrist but not really sphere of policing transness and following milo and ben shapiro. I got out because i saw a left wing youtuber dissing blaire white’s awful video on removing the venus symbol from pad packaging amd hated both of their points enough to form my own opinion for once :P i wish i never went down that whole spiral though. Its both comforting and fucking tragic knowing i wasnt the only one who fell for this as a child.
I haven’t finished the full video yet but re: Sarkeesian’s comments on body types - the way I interpreted this was that the inclusion of the body types, jiggle physics etc in itself isn’t negative, but the way they are framed (for the male gaze) is problematic. I’m sure she assumed that mostly men play games, but I feel like her commentary was more about how the developers designed the game with straight men in mind. That may also be a bad analysis but I remember it making a lot of sense to me at the time. I am neutral about her btw so this isn’t a defense of her analysis and I think your critique is really good and i agree! I just thought I’d comment because the portrayal of women in games definitely made me feel bad about my body. I had a lot of anxiety about my lack of femininity and ability to fit those standards. These videos came out during a time in my life where I was learning about these concepts that I had wrestled my whole life (which is probably bad lol), so I resonated a lot with a few of her takes. (Just a few tho I didn’t see the whole series) P.s. i waited to comment at he start of the Zoey Quinn segment, but am still watching so my bad if I misinterpreted your critique
I agree with you - I think that's likely where she's coming from as well. I think that type of critique hits each audience differently based on our own experiences, but I agree, that's likely what her intention was
I've watched discussion panels that Anita sat on, and on several feminist discussions (that had nothing to do with video games) she puts forth sex negative ideas. Honestly tropes vs women is the sugar free low calorie version. She is also anti sex work.
the absolute chaos gremlin energy in the first 17min videos was fucking insane; you are a true testament to the absolutely horrifying levels of derrangement sims players hold. i'm subbing. please don't put me in the pool and delete the ladder.
I was actually at the panel at VidCon where Anita called out that guy, and I also believe he was there to be intimidating. There was a group of people all sitting together near the front, and at least one of those people tried to talk to me prior to the panel with the topic being something along the lines of why feminism was bad. It was such an off putting conversation that I just tried to forget, and I could tell there was some tension with the panel because the moderator started the panel being very clear and pointedly remarking that harassment from the audience would not be tolerated. This was many years ago, so I might be misremembering some things, but that's why I recall.
omg you were there?! i really want to go to vidcon eventually ... it sounds really fun! yeah the vibe i got was that sargon organized a group of friends to take up the front 2 rows just to be intimidating. and it worked. he's a really trashy person.
Atleast he was there to listen, and if asked, would debate about the position. Like many other would do if ever given the chance. Instead she broke convention rule of insulting him publically.
@@TheRealVordox He was there instead of being at home with his children. How much money did he piss away so he could sit and smirk at a woman he hates? I feel sorry for his wife.
@@TheRealVordoxI don't think debating inherently means much, lots of those 'types' are huge on debates but it's not always in good faith. "Debate me, bro" is practically a meme, for example. He also could have just been there instead of taking up the whole front row so people who actually wanted to be there were not given the opportunity, and that also means he centered himself when looking at the audience. Even if he did not mean it to be malicious, it was a bad choice, though again I'm not sure a benefit of the doubt is warranted.
@@noctap0d from what I have absorbed second hand about The Babysitter's Club, that would be 90 pages of the ethics of the wizarding world being absolutely torn to shreds by a group of young non-magical girls getting up to low-stakes hijinks
regarding the throughline in here that science says video games don't influence player attitudes vs anita's discussion of their effect on culture, it's a valid counter-counter point to bring up that that science is of the direct effect on the player, and anita's contention is about the overall culture consuming the media. The idea that personally playing the game does not increase your personal likelihood of personally doing a crime IS compatible with the idea that ideas in thepopular media shape popular attitudes.
Absolutely agree. Her whole "Tropes vs Women" series (which started as movies and tv and only went to games with the Kickstarter) was about using pop culture as a framework for introducing people to feminism and its critiques of our culture. I found it a very useful tool in educating people who had no experience with what feminist critiques actually are. They're not the deepest videos to be sure, more 101 stuff, but an awful lot of people need 101 stuff.
Looking back, I think the one thing I turned away from Anita for was her sex negative feminism. I genuinely thought her critique was pretty interesting until she was so sex, negative about stuff and a lot of people in gamergate who had criticisms of her, they definitely prayed on the sex negativity. I mean first off there's a lot of feminists that platform sex, positive views and I think that's way more constructive. If I had a nuance understanding at the time, I would have realized that I really value her as a feminist voice, though she has issues with sex negative critique. However, I wasn't so educated on feminist outlooks so I just saw her as a nut job after watching too many Sargon videos that gave me a bad impression of her. How stupid I was. Now I'm a trans person who is keenly aware of the transphobia in gaming communities. How the tables have turned?
@kdjets yes! And she helped color my view of what feminism even is. I remember going "if this is feminism, no thanks". It took a long time to get past it.
I do think it’s fair to criticize Quinn (and to a lesser extent, Sarkeesian) for their lack of transparency, delayed/fizzled out projects, etc, but I think I might stop JUST short of calling them a scammer. Crowdfunding today is a legitimate business model for whole video game and comic book studios, but back in the 20teens it was often a much more nebulous and sketchy space, and projects not being completed was more frequently just brushed off as par for the course. That’s not to say that was a GOOD thing or that people didn’t take advantage of it - neither of those statements are true, and it’s fair to argue that Quinn took advantage of this and the fact that her supporters weren’t really supporting her WORK so much as her as a person/figurehead whenever she announced new projects. But I’d caution against underestimating the significant barrier than GamerGate harassment posed to its targets actually completing any projects they committed to. Beyond the obvious fact that it’s just hard to work creatively (or at all) when you’re being doxxed, stalked, etc every day, Quinn’s projects were brigaded and anyone who collaborated was drawn into the harassment they were subjected to for YEARS after GamerGate. There are still people to this day who make harassing them a daily hobby. Quinn had to relocate multiple times, their relationships often publicly imploded because of the harassment directed at her partners and friends, their life just seemed to be in constant chaos for years. I’d imagine it would be hard to complete even pretty modest projects under those conditions. And while it’s fair to ask if maybe they should have just refrained from crowdfunding at that time, for someone in their line of work crowdfunding at the time was one of the only semi-reliable ways of making a living independently (as opposed to working for a larger game company). I think if they were just a grifter, they’d be grifting to this day, not working relatively low-key contract writing gigs for comics and video game companies like DC. That was absolutely the right move for their career (moving away from something public-facing and dependant on funding from the public, and working for someone else on managed projects for a reliable wage) and it’s too bad they didn’t take that track and stick to it sooner, but one can imagine that they might have been considered nuclear-level unemployable by most big shakers in the industries until GamerGate had mostly blown over, so it’s not like they were spoiled for options, or like they had a rich family or partner to support them financially so they wouldn’t have to work during the harassment campaign. As for why they didn’t tell their fans publicly about the Tingle game not coming out…… I mean, look at what happens any time they do make an update? Any mention from them of these projects gets a wave of renewed harassment from people who will just ignore any legitimate updates they have in favor of accusing their current employers of harbouring a scammer. At this point they have to weigh the benefit of updating their fans with the possibility of further damaging their current active projects. I get that it’s frustrating when people are reluctant to criticize someone who has been a victim in the past. And the Tingle game not coming out to this day does sting, and should probably count against them professionally to some degree. But Quinn’s victimization isn’t entirely in the past, and even back then it’s easy to see why they might be reluctant to post any visible updates without accusing them of “just going and taking a better paying job and ripping off the poor funders” and straight up being a deliberate scammer. The people harassing Quinn are, imo, just as much to blame for theyr crowdfunded projects flailing as they were/are. I’m kind of surprised to see Savvy blow past this and chalk it up to people just seeing Quinn as a victim and nothing else- as though being seen as a victim due to a literally historic and deeply traumatizing harassment campaign is somehow an advantage or even a privilege for Quinn that lets them “get away with” not finishing projects they clearly worked on and intended to finish for… idk, kicks? Again, I’m not trying to hardcore Defend Zoe. You can definitely argue that their fans aren’t harassing them and deserve updates on projects they backed. But it just feels obtuse to be like “WHY wouldn’t she finish these?? Must be because of that sweet victim privilege that lets her get away with no criticism!”
So I agree to an extent. I did mention at least twice in that section that a reason for project delays and cancellations could absolutely be the level of harassment Zoe was facing, and that was totally reasonable due to how dire the situation had gotten. I was on Kickstarter a lot in the 2010s and it was still considered gross then to take money and never finish the project. I know a lot of video game projects never got finished at that time from tons of other creators - which is why Kickstarter scam RU-vid series were started to call all these people out. The issue is that crowdfunded video games never being finished is so common at this point that almost nobody even trusts that a video game Kickstarter is legit, which now makes it very hard for new developers to gain any traction in that space. I think you make a lot of valid points that I agree with overall, but I don't think the tingle Kickstarter thing was fully excusable. Fans contributed a lot for that. I know Zoe was in a tough spot, one i certainly would never want to be in, and I agree that their career pivot makes perfect sense. But taking $85k from fans and not delivering is still shady AF imo
i really love your comment! think you really got into the crux of it. I think she was maybe a little hard on Zoe. Zoe was also inside some of the IRC chats screenshotting shit under an alias like imagine how horrific that would of been for her.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS It's definitely shady and isn't excusable, but I would argue that calling it a 'scam' carries the strong implication that the entire thing was designed from the start to dupe people out of their money, which is clearly not the case here, and clearly is the case for a large number of Kickstarter 'games'. There is a grey area in which passionate but inexperienced people promised something they should have known they could never deliver, but this isn't that either - this Quinn's goals were definitely realistic. In other cases you could argue that the intent doesn't matter if the end result is still that backers don't get their game, but given the amount of unfair and malicious attacks Quinn has suffered on their character, language that's misleading about their intentions should probably be avoided.
Yes I agree. This behavior is absolutely not okay, AND it reminds me so much of my ADHD brain that loves new projects, commits to things that are well within my realm of expertise, but forgets to factor in burnout or the fact that I've committed to like seventy different things. And I've never been stalked or harassed as part of my work. It seems like Zoe has stopped trying to crowdfund projects, which is good. It also seems like it would have been helpful for her to hire someone to manage her as a creative as part of the process of some of these things (see: why I will never allow myself to be self-employed). None of this sounds like it was malicious, just unprofessional as hell.
@@blumoon187 i think you're right. and i definitely relate re: the ADHD thing. my brain is always coming up with new projects and planning them out, but i only end up fully executing a few of them. when it comes to taking money from fans, though, you need to be committed. i completely agree with everything you said - i don't think Zoe INTENDED to scam fans, and I'm really glad they've stopped crowdfunding, because it just isn't working.
10 years man 10 years… I remember that almost directly before Gamergate there was a conversation going on about if video games could be art And then it got completely derailed by all this gamergate stuff because people decided to apply the most basic feminist theory 101 critique of video games. You know like how people do with like every single other artistic medium ever
what's so weird is that anita's actual work is pretty dry and basic and doesn't really ever advocate very strongly for anything to be changed. I think people who grew up in the late 90s/early oughts had a chip on their shoulders about being nerds and basically treat younger, diverse people with nerdy interests as proxies for people from those demographics that wouldn't hang out with them back then instead of taking the W that is other people seeing the value in their interests. You wanna just shake them and tell them Zoe quinn is NOT the girl who wouldn't sleep with you in high school in 2002 because you went to LAN parties. She's a girl who WOULD GO TO THEM WITH YOU NOW. they are literally not the same people and even if they were, ffs, that means you persuaded someone to like your thing!
I was nervous when i saw the title suggested until i saw who made the video, and i haven't started yet but want to just say right now you are one of the few RU-vidrs where i see this topic and actually trust how you're gonna cover it
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS I got halfway and love it! But also my premium ran out and I'm debating watching with heckin ads since the video is so long or waiting until i get paid next so I can watch without xD
Looking back at Anita’s work reminds me of the Barbie Movie discourse. Nothing new is being said, the messaging is pretty shaky in places, but then the other side acts like it is all hugely insidious and anti-man. And you have defensive reactionary arguments on both sides. Also I realize I was less online then I thought I was in my twenties 🤷🏻♀️
Right? Like I had definitely heard of Gamergate and had wrote it off as all those guys who yell at video games just finding more things to be mad about. But the Gamergate to right-wing pipeline was not a connection I've made before.
While your views on Anita’s work is completely valid I don’t agree with them entirely. I saw her criticism more as pointing out that these female body types are there specifically because the mostly male developers made them look this way because they assumed the audience would be straight males. It’s completely valid that queer women would be attracted to or like these designs but they were made assuming you don’t exist and that you don’t matter in the market. I also don’t think it’s possible to prove that the media you consume doesn’t influence your views on the world, that seems self evident. Do video games MAKE people violent? No. But being constantly exposed to violence will obviously change how you feel about it and constantly being exposed to sexist portrayals of women will change the way you see women, I can’t see a scenario where that isn’t the case especially if you’re a loner or young and forming your views on the world and don’t have a chance to really go out and meet real people and be exposed to the diversity of humanity.
I think you bring up good points as well. Which is why I found her criticism just mediocre rather than AWFUL or malicious like some guys did. I think she was too surface level - she didn't go into the cause and effect relationship of HOW video games/media reflected in real life, but instead would say things like "it should go without saying." I think her criticism definitely has value, and a lot of people liked it, which is great! As I said, I also think part of the issue is that she was thrust into a much higher level of fame too quickly before she got a chance to work on conveying complex messages to a wide audience, but that is the fault of her harassers. I think she is a smart person with a lot of potential and it's awful how she was treated
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSyeah that’s extremely fair haha. I suppose I am just so dumbfounded that people were mad at her for, as you said, mediocre and basic level media analysis.
I also could see some necessity in what Anita was pointing out a well because it was relevant in more of a structural context as well, with how development biases exist in the industry before things are actually put together. Like the how the pre-state development categorizes the validity of how to or if they should market minority characters in games as well. I mean the industry was very behind with the rest of society due up until Anita's project because of the generation the publishers came from, where they often still refused to think a minority could lead a movie or lead character or that actions in marketing only had to at baseline appeal to just white/male/straight audiences before anything was acceptable. Games and shows that might have been aimed at men or teen boys, but had a sizable female audience were seen as failures by the marketing firms. When they only focused on a predetermined audience, and not potential peripheral ones, their audiences were skewed by the same biases because of dated gender marketing. Anita also did mentioned how toys for girls were usually always domestic objects, while boys often got things completely unrelated to gender expectations. Sure its basic knowledge now, but it was not as widely accepted as a problem then. Then when it is revealed that an unpresumed audience did like something but wanted more representation for their preferences, that was when reactionaries would get upset and cry pandering, because they assume the main market bias, was the sole one. Its pretty much what they still do today, when non-LGBT people get mad to see a pronouns option is in a game and get upset, because they think the lack of inclusive marketing, meant to have that shared prejudice before it got "political" or "politically correct". The industry created these biases that the audience bigotries were melded for, by the biases in the industry. If they think female fictional characters have to always have top-playboy sex appeal, its because that was what they were sold on in old marketing. In short if, the industry progressed faster with the generation, there wouldn't be the same arbitrary reaction, if diversity was already the norm. The only reason gamergate and stuff like that exists, I think is because people the industry created with these biases they cultivated in an audience with the lack of diverse marketing, are the people who accepted it as the norm, rather than a bias.
This is exactly where I disagreed too. It's not an assumption to say that games were designed for young men. This was because in the 80's, market research found that most of their consumer base was made up of boys. The industry should update their market research.
The other thing I would say about body-types: for women like me who have small, childlike (and not very curvy frames,) the issue for me is not that hourglass-figured women don't exist (or deserve representation) but that I'm inundated with imagery of them as the only desirable kind.. pretty much in all media, but especially in anything aimed at men. It gave me the sense that men wouldn't like me. Furthermore, boys seem to like to make fun of girls with small boobs or flat butts while lusting after a body I'll never have without surgery.
I'm about your age (I'll be 30 late this year) but I was active duty military at the time. Being aroung a bunch of young men who were the EXACT demographic to be radicalized by Gamertate was, to put it lightly, hell 🙃
Hoah, homie. Being a lesbian under DADT, with it being well known, and as squad leader... I'm grateful for my protective, understanding leadership up the chain who intervened when things got incredibly sketchy in some situations. Solidarity 🤘😘🔥
Hmm a journalist literally fucked the person he was giving positive coverage for and we were radicalized by actual truth? Good lord you people literally still think I'm a Russian bot.
It is a little relieving to hear you don't like Anita's work. I was in a lot of self-labelled feminist circles online in the late 00s and early 10s, and had watched a few of her videos and thought they were incredibly basic and 101. Maybe not terrible, but not exactly groundbreaking. I remember my main feeling about the whole clusterfuck was like... "THIS basic ass shit is what people are getting so worked up over??"
that's how i felt, too. her work isn't very good. it's not original, some is likely plagiarized, and a lot of the points are weak. but at the same time, people getting upset about the CONCEPT of her work are extremely short-sighted. and those who harassed her are horrifying humans.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSYeah, it's a shame that it's still hard now to have a more nuanced conversation about her videos or arguments in the face of that massive harassment campaign.
Every time I said "this is actually kind of crap," about Anita's work, I had to VERY QUICKLY clarify how it had nothing to do with the fact she was attempting to analyze with a feminist lense and more because it was just... Not terribly well done as videos or as an analysis. This was baby's first with jiggly game footage to keep my attention, it feels.
It was 101-level criticism that was discovered by people who object to even remedial-level critique. It seems like any mention of her online summons people who insist on "reminding" everyone that Anita "said all men hate women" and "claimed that all games are deliberately sexist."
I can say from personal experience, most people I knew at the time had never heard of GamerGate, Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, or any of the other players in this mess until "Gamers are Over". In one incoherent article (well, several, actually, across all the game news outlets), thousands of normal, well-adjusted people were dragged into the mess by writers who were WAY too online to understand that most people had never heard of any of this. When your first exposure to it was someone making a rambling attack on your hobby and everyone who enjoys it, who goes on to declare you a dying breed worthy of scorn, its easy to end up siding against them. I suspect a lot of other people were brought into the fold by "Gamers are Over", and if so, I'm here to tell you that you really have nothing to feel ashamed of, you were just too busy touching grass to know about the backstory up til that point.
okay, but have you considered that you're not allowed to comment on my video because i've had sex with you, meaning that this comment is officially UNETHICAL GAMER JOURNALISM?! checkmate atheist.
The people who think that was what Anita Sarkeesian was doing, didn't care for what she actually said, and just strawmaned her project through the same way conservatives do with everything, now regarded as culture war. It was always a right-wing old guard play to scare people with some personalized threat from an outsider, than to comprehend the propositions at the risk of change, that they are told to fear. Its what culture war is now. Same tactic. Xenophobes and fascists have always done this more broadly. "They're after you, they're kicking you out of your way of life." Which is all Fox News and Dailywire do now. But what I find a bit more odd from it all, is that the people this was targeted at, the "Gamer" trying to "protect his hobby" is just established as only being "white/male/straight" like it is only their hobby to defend from everyone else.
This mirrors my own experience where I did not know about Gamergate until about 2018-2019 and I came across the Folding Ideas video on the subject. My initial response was “Wait, this was a thing that happened?” Because if you try to describe the events of Gamergate to people, they will think that it’s a parody.
@@jordanholt9170 Yes, because the reporting made it seem more absurd than it was. Those women faced a bunch of harassment and threats, but it wasn't the product of any conspiracy, organization, or hashtag movement. All that began before GG formed, and was done by lone wolf trolls who had been sending the same crummy message to male devs and reviewers for years.
I remember for whatever reason that during high school I was waaay into gamergate and frequented the image boards where people organized around it and it was… really weird. Everyone there was very very weird and DEEPLY dedicated to this stuff and constantly made big declarations about how it was our struggle of the generation. In between that and constantly commanding people to keep sending emails there we’re constantly new dedicated threads where people would post by the minutes updates on how much the opposition was cracking and how much they hated them and every time they tweeted ANYTHING it was pounced on. There was also the fact that the culture was so ravenous that any time a popular figure moved off base from the majority beliefs or moved away from GG they were basically declared persona non grata and treated as the enemy all along. Also the boards were always being shifted around for where the “main hub” was because people kept having meltdowns and nuking everything, causing people to migrate. Very strange time and also really interesting seeing the primordial ooze of the modern alt right take form live in front of my eyes, even though I didn’t know that at the time. Ether way those guys were all a bunch of losers and I’m glad I moved on to better and more mentally healthy and politically positive pursuits.
Did you see them try to organize any harassment or threats? Or were the email campaigns directed at companies, sponsors, and the FTC? I only saw the latter. But the FAR bigger precursor to the modern right was the Tea Party movement of 2010. Most GG supporters wound up staying left-wing by 2015-2016
I did. I wish I could undo the harsh comments I made. At least I have hope that others could change and cringe at their misogynistic attitudes like I did
@@theshire9173 It's happening yet again with Sweet Baby and some old Gamergate friends are chiming in on the controversy. I haven't seen much, if any misogyny at all, but journalists and the consultant firms are trying to claim harassment.
@@nexusgigaSame. Oh how I wish I hadn’t experienced the whole thing as a woman and Gen X trying to finally be able to play games that hadn’t been accessible to me for most of my life. Mostly lack of money, but also being a girl often meant getting access was hard in public spaces where games were available. It was assumed I had no interest in the 80s. Gamergate felt a little like the door that had been opened suddenly had bars across it and men pointing fingers at me telling me I still wasn’t allowed in. So stupid.
@@jaybee4118 yeah I can totally see your pov on that. Alot of "gamergaters" I knew just wanted ethical games journalism. When the alt right came in we left pretty fast to do our own things. It was hell to see women get harassed and given such awful threats. We tried reporting them to the police/,fbi when we could but it was just too much
@@nexusgiga Except that ethical journalism was never what gamergate was actually about. You and your friends may have believed that that's what the movement was for, but in reality, it was a mass harassment campaign, whos purpose was to push women, mostly nonwhite and queer ones, out of gaming circles, as well as block any who wanted in. Gamergate was also created and spread by nazis on 4chan. The harassment was the whole point. It was a deliberate act. Ethics in games journalism was just a veneer the perpetuators used to hide their true aims. Which was to push minorities out of gaming spaces by any and every means necessary and make gaming a good ole boys club again. Even though it isn't and never has been.
So Zoe and their ex were together for what, six months? And then got back together and it didn’t work out? I can’t imagine doing this to someone I’ve dated, let alone for a few months. Nobody deserves that.
as a quick comment early into the video lmao "video games shouldn't be so political" the last time I heard that statement, amusingly, was in a review of a visual novel that featured a queer character, someone quickly pointed out in a comment on the review complaining about this that the player who had said such a thing had listed their favorite games on their profile as Deus Ex, Fallout 4, and Bioshock.... games which are.... EXPLICITLY political. (the steam reviewer deleted their review sometime later, but I remember the sense of irony when reading the comment) Art is political, you can't seperate it out and make it not so, you can enjoy it for many reasons, but if the game has any kind of themes then like, it's tangentially or more directly going to engage in some kind of political thought.
@@Jesujej what are you talking about? It was awhile ago and I could probably name at least 20-40 different vn’s with queer characters in them. The biggest name gay vn I can think of that just came out was Paradise with JASTBlue / Nitroplus CHIRAL but I didn’t read it yet and all the characters are gay men so I don’t think you mean that one.
The thing about gamergate that baffled me the most was how milquetoast Anita Sarkeesians takes were and how MAD they made gamers. Like. Imagine if they read some actual radical feminist takes. They might have a heart attack.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSnot to be that guy - but the crowd who championed gamergate (e.g. Sargon of Akkad who rallied with the EDL aka THE ENGLISH NAZI PARTY) were so violently regressive and reactionary that even the entry of milquetoast critiques were a “bridge too far.”
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS Because many of them were disingenuous if not outright lies. A most glaring one being that Hitman "encourages players to murder women and treat their dead bodies as dolls to play with." The reality? Hitman punishes the player for killing anyone besides the assassination target, but the player still has the ability to choose to kill others on their path. The women, when killed, have the exact same ragdoll physics as every single man in the game. The fact that she was then lauded as the most important person in the gaming sphere because of flat out false claims and nobody would allow anyone to question it or present another perspective is what really drove the uproar. Then you add in that game studios were consulting with her based on these bad faith arguments to get insight on how they should change their games and it added fuel to that fire. Liana Kerzner has been open about how she was rejected by multiple (white male) editors regarding this because they "already had a feminist perspective" on issues - solely Anita's. She was also blackballed by most of these websites for doing genuine journalistic effort in...... talking to the gamers who sided with GamerGate. Can you imagine? A journalist talking to both sides for sources to cite in their work? Completely unacceptable! Liana's "Lady Bits' series is infinitely better than Tropes vs Women at evaluating video games with a feminist lens.
@@ninjafoxgamesgeekeryThat goes to Savvy's point: it wasn't ever really about feminism. It was about a couple of individuals that triggered the ire of a mob. Anita was a target before she even gave her first take which, funnily enough, is probably what gave her the notoriety to become as important as she did.
I was very disconnected from the pulse of society when I first saw a video from Feminist Frequency. I had thought "these videos are going to change the dynamics of story telling and everyone will love this form of education by video essays. Why are comments turned off? Ohh nooooo."
It’s important to note that for a while, there were a lot of flash games that were just about punching celebs and stuff, but from what I’ve seen they were usually much less graphic and more goofy. A lot of them are cartoony and illustrated, and the ones that use real pics stray pretty far from realistic violence (i saw one person’s head just morph into a skull??). I think that’s probably why people defended it as silly. They probably didn’t play it and assumed it was in the same ballpark as those. It’s fair to still oppose these games, esp when the content is triggering for you, just think the context is worth noting!
Another criticism i have (i’m a fan i promise!) is that i think ur interpretation of video games affecting real life is very literal. Anita mentions in her videos that none of these tropes will make anyone become a raging misogynist, but their prevalence helps normalize misogyny and nobody would deny that media DOES affect people, which is why stuff like representation is important and stuff like racial stereotypes are bad. Being able to perpetrate violence against women in video games doesn’t turn anyone into a woman-hating monster, but it reinforces subconscious biases.
There were also a games (and a banner ad) where you could punch Osama bin Laden, I know Tom Fulp of Newgrounds made one a few days after 9/11 after hearing about hate crimes against Arab-Americans and feeling that if someone wanted to get back at bin Laden personally, they needed a better way to do it.
I just wrote an incredibly long comment about encountering those "smash up (insert person here) games back in the day" and some of them were incredibly graphic/gore filled. More than one was a literal torture chamber and full-body of the individual. I never liked them and until watching this video only heard people give me a hard time for saying they were tasteless. (To clarify these are people who wanted to use my internet and computer in order to play them so I had every right to express what I did and did not want my bandwidth used for; but they did on the wrong time was totally up to them as long as they didn't make me watch. But as a lot of this video essay illustrates; far too many individuals are dissatisfied add massively overreact to even the mildest differing of preference or boundaries.)
I'm a gamer who's only peripherally involved in the gamer community and mostly plays indie titles. I watched the Tropes vs. Women videos some time after they came out, and I thought Anita pointed out a lot of problematic themes in video games that I was glad to be more consciously aware of, some of which I'd noticed myself. I didn't think the videos were that deep or controversial, they were basically video versions of TV Tropes pages with some clips giving examples. That was my take on it at least. It was completely shocking to me to learn that men had gone absolutely rabid over it and wanted violence for someone talking about feminist media theory 101.
Same, i think her points were very feminist 101 rather than deep dives, they just pointed out and critiques and educated the audience abt certain tropes. I think, a lot of people also approach her series with the games' lore in mind, while shes going abt tropes, in some cases valid but in most cases shes talking abt the tropes that exist in video games and general media not that specific IP. However, i do think that she cldve went deeper into how some issues were repsented in the lore of some of these games to illustrate her points better. Although i do like her series cuz its very comprehensive.
@@espeon871 I think people who criticize her often overlook how groundbreaking those videos were. The impression I have is that she's largely the reason the gamer community started talking about these issues in the first place. She suffered so that all female gamers could enjoy the (imo) significantly more frequent and better female representation in games that we have now as compared to 10 years ago. I think she instigated devs veering away from a lot of those problematic tropes and doing things differently, like for instance Gotham Knights isn't the type of Batman game that would've been made 10 years ago.
@@espeon871 For example, even if Hitman was a bad example, Women as Set Dressing is still absolutely a thing. For example, War of the Burning Sky by EN Publishing is *mostly* one of my favorite published adventures for D&D 3.5, and I even want to make a fan conversion to PF 2e. But there's one scene in book 3 that just does not hold up. For context, the plot so far is that the elves and orcs are going to war again, and some freedom fighters (the party) from a resistance in the Evil Empire escaped to a neutral city with a case of vital military intelligence. But the Empire secretly has a secret base beneath the city and is using magic to summon a storm to destroy the town. The climax of book 3 is finding your way down into that base and fighting the leader of that operation. It also contains a dungeon, with the implication that some of the guards... have their way with the women imprisoned there. But furthermore, when you actually confront the leader, he's actively torturing a woman, with the implication that he's getting off on it. They essentially had the guy sensually torture a woman solely as a Kick the Dog moment, even though the players are already well aware that he's evil. And that's *absolutely* an example of the broader point that fictional women will be put through all sorts of stuff to enrage a presumed male audience. (Also, while I haven't actually run that AP, if I ever did, I'd just remove the woman he's torturing and move the boss fight out into the room with all the lava, which is a cooler boss arena anyway)
The problem though is Anita is a grifter. Her examples were wrong and she was lying, but everyone was believing and listening to her. She had tarnished credibility and did more damage than good.
Thank you for this excellent and informative video. Everytime I try to genuinely find info on this subject, I end up finding videos and post either labeling gamergate as nothing but hateful men harrassing women for trying to enter their space or it was gamers finally calling out and exposing journalist for pushing political takes instead of actually informing gamers. Your video was an excellent look at both sides of the audience. It was also an excellent explanation of why the modern understanding of the events are so divided as a result of the hyperbolized truths and lies that are clouding our views of the events in hindsight. Hopefully you get the recognition you deserve.
You have NO idea how excited I am to watch this lol, I genuinely needed something super long and informative to listen to while I work on art commissions. Also idk if you’ve been told this but your whole Look is giving Gay Ms Frizzle !!! You look GREAT
i watched this whole video all in one go. I kept getting weirded out by your change in atire then I thought. She didn't record a 6 hour video in one go. I'm the weirdo for watching it all at once. Great video. Take my like.
I also heard he was sexual abused as a teenager. Don't quote me on that since the only source i have is I heard it from a RU-vid comment claiming karl admitted in a podcast. (And no I'm not going to look into because I don't want my recommendations to be full of his content)
I think it’s valid to criticize his ideas, but it’s gross to make fun of people for things like this. I don’t know the story so perhaps he got cheated on or maybe he’s a step parent. Neither of these are moral failing on his part.
For a long time, I felt shitty for being apart of this. That I was oblivious to what was happening to Anita and the others. It hurts when you realize that you have been contributing to this kind of harm,
I'm still watching this but I'm just finishing the section on depression quest. As someone who has struggled with depression most of my life, I don't think you COULD make a game that 'simulates' depression because it, understandably, would be framed as a game where you play someone who is depressed. But my experience with depression is not as someone who lives in this mindset. When placed with the option 'go to therapy or not' or 'go out with friends or not' there is more at play than 'I should do x because it will help my depression'. It is more framed in my brain as 'if I go to therapy, it may help, but I will have to put in the energy to 1) locate a therapist 2) find a way to pay the therapist 3) apply to the therapist and make an appointment 4) arrange my schedule so I am able to see the therapist and 5) actually get up and go to my appointment. When you're depressed what you can and can't spend energy on is very different than those whom are not mentally/physcially ill. And this is all to say that the person is in fact aware they are depressed. There are many people who don't seem to recognize the choices and habits they have have contributed to their depression, because people don't make their decisions like that. Not that I want to boot up a game in the future to eventually discover my character is experiencing debilitating depression or anything, since content warnings should be ethically required for any media exploring this. I have more I want to articulate but I can't really get it out right now, I considered just not posting this comment but I do think I'm kinda getting something that I feel is important to be said about the idea we can 'simulate' mental illness. I think we can get glimpses into the perspective, but an encapsulating 'experience' of really any mental illness would most likely be distressing to any who participated. idk, just my 2 cents.
Those are all really good points and I still think it can be worth it to make art based on mental illness or being ostracized. I think a lot of that art will tend to be quite imperfect because it won't speak to everybody the same way.
I'm not at that point of the video yet, but I can completely agree with you. As someone struggling with a chronic depression since I can remeber (beeing diagnosed few years ago) I feel even worst when someone tell me that I just have to try not to be depressed and that is my choice. Plus depression have some faseis, it can affect more strongly one day than another. It's complex and, but of course this is only my experience, at this point I know it will never disappear for me and the only thing I can do is to learn how to handle it without causing myself and the others to much harm in the process. Of course I can understand that seeing it from the outside, as someone who is not suffering because of it, what they are telling me it's not meant to harm and maybe they simply don't understand the difference between saddness and depression, from there the trope "you have to choose to do this" can be in good faith. But the gamification... why??? Art can be a cure, can be beautiful and cathartic. And you can take inspirations from your struggles with mental health. Lots of artists have done it since always. But to create a game that "simulate" depression and where you can choose not to be depressed just by making silly choises? Unfortunately it didn't work like that, never. Btw, as always, sorry if i misspeled something or if the consecutio it's wierd but english it's not my first langue
@@kdjets I agree that making media surrounding the topics and giving sort of in depth 'case studies' is great for representation, but at the same time I think we as a society need to move away from the idea that we can fully understand and 'experience' these life situations that are not our own. Sometimes people are going through something you cannot understand, and acknowledging that their perspectives are valid regardless in my opinion is how we need to move forward. Which is why I think designing a game that is supposed to 'make you feel like you're going through depression' is reductive and not nessiciarily helpful when it implies to the neurotypical player that this experince is similar/representative of to what an actual person with this condition is facing. At least, that is what I'm trying to get at with my comment. I do think more media, including video games, should include more neurodivergent representation as well. I hope I didn't give off that impression.
@@micol7490 Yes this is what I mean. I think you can represent people without having to feel the pressure of making people 'feel' like they are going through the same thing.
As a person who struggles with depression I have not had the courage to play depression quest yet, but my understanding of it is that the choices you can make are limited. Like if you get a phone call that invites you out the choice to tag along is in the list of choices but is not selectable because you are depressed and don't have the energy, even though it would be the best choice for your character to do. For me this kind of feels like the frustration I have felt with wanting to do fun things that would help me and not having the mental capacity or energy to do them. So it might be good way to relay this frustration to a person who is not suffering from depression as a way to explain how depression not only gets you down but also keeps you down.
Going to have to watch this in chunks because 6hrs is a lot. But even as someone who was an AFAB gamer during GamerGate, I feel like I didn't fully understand even half of it while it was happening, so I'm genuinely looking forward to watching. You always put so much research and nuance into your videos, and I'm sure this will be no different. I'll try to remember to edit or comment again when I've seen enough to have actual thoughts. But I wanted to at least leave a note of appreciation now, because your work is great in general and I know engagement in the first few hours/days can be critical for the performance of videos with the algorithm.
No one fully understood it at the time. There were actually so many parts to it, even this 6 hour video missed some things because there’s no way one person can know every part of it. There’s somethings in it I hadn’t heard of before and I knew a lot. Tbh a lot of it will never make sense because it was some men who had a hissy fit because they felt it was their exclusive domain.
It was such a clusterf*ck because SO MUCH of the media reporting at the time was just repeating internet rumors. Even the New York Times claimed it all started when Eron wrote a blog post accusing his ex-girlfriend of sleeping with a journalist for positive reviews......something he never said. Ever. He never so much as made reference to any "review". Simply reading his blog would have shown that. It did shake up my trust in the media somewhat, at least when it came to reporting internet drama. Anyway I was in the thick of it that year, and can provide archive links to whatever details were missed.
people who thinks politics shouldn’t be in video games need to get their head out of the sand: video games are a piece of media, and like all media, a lot of it is revolved around politics. some of the most successful movies and books have political messages, and many video games have a political message to them that also makes them popular. Even games that aren’t know for their politics still have a political message to them.
@@DEichenberg Exactly. Not every game is focused and revolves around "politics", which can be broad and there's differences between a game world with it's own internal politics localized within that setting the game itself being used as a vehicle or allegory for direct real world events or politics. Not every theme or message is the same or equivalent in intent or execution.
@@DEichenberg"then make your own game" bruh why do you think this argument of "then make your own x" suddently holds up on that one topic? It's already the most low brow,consoomer coded argument when politics aren't part of the discussion.
@@DEichenberg Uh what? It has nothing to do with the point, which is that all games contain some kind of politics. Did you even read the original comment?
It's wild seeing Sargon of Akkad (a literal Neo Nazi) on Joe Rogan. Not because they don't have the same reactionary nonsense views, but because Sargon isn't that important.
sargon made joe rogan look like a genius by comparison. watching that interview was painful. joe actively kept trying to redirect him to talk about something more interesting but sargon was SO FIXATED on anita, and joe was BORED. lol it's really funny to see how extremely stupid sargon is
@@TheIMP2010 I was referring to Sargon, actually. (Odd I thought I typed in his name) . Which has some truth to it since back in the old days of the ~18th century enlightenment, a person opposing the traditional old world style monarch system of government would be considered "liberal", and those wouldn't necessarily be in line with what is considered to be progressive left today.
unrelated, but on the 'smurfette' thing: I still subscribe to the controversial (but correct) position that all smurfs _are_ born male...Smurfette isn't the exception, she's just trans. And we stan her. You know, in the modern day where I am an intersectional feminist who's frontal lobe has finally finished developing...I can't help but notice how they choose to frame Zoe's affair with her boss. So they're the bad guy...because they slept with a married man...who has authority over them? The man isn't responsible at all for cheating on his _wife?_ There's no question over inappropriate (even concerning) implications of a _boss_ sleeping with _a subordinate?_ No, its the AFAB person who's the bad guy. _They_ are the predator taking advantage of the situation? Oh but of course, people are just calling the gamergaters misogynistic because Zoe "just happened" to be a woman? Yeah, I'm sure their gender identity at the time was completely incidental to the point. I'm sure it didn't inform the backlash _one bit_
Smurfette was actually created by Gargamel in the show to seduce and betray the Smurfs. There's also baby smurf, but IDR where he came from lol. Fun Fact: Also, biologically (embryologically) speaking, all humans develop as undifferentiated female first, and then differentiate towards male or female phenotypes based on dose effects from transcription depending on if a Y-chromosome exists or not.
Smurfette isn't a Smurf, so technically all 'real' smurfs are male or male identifying. She was created by gargamel to infiltrate the Smurfs home and destroy them from the inside out but they instead taught her how to be good and she was brought in as an honorary Smurf.
Smurfette WAS born male. She was turned female by a spell (I think cast by Gargamel). I'm not sure if it was intentional or accidental though. I know this very well because I grew up in the age of The Smurfs and, as a trans woman, I desperately wanted that spell cast on me when I was a child.
@@Kaylakaze naw homie, she was made out of clay and a seduction potion so gargamel could use her against the smurfs. She was clay that was turned into a girl, so she's not even technically a Smurf but the other smurfs were good natured and took her in anyways
Have you seen Anita's take on it on Nebula? The video is under "That Time When...". She concludes that Gamergate gave legs to the Trump presidency. Gamergate walked so Trump could run.
5:53:20 Anita's reaction to seeing Sargon in the front row kinda sounds like a PTSD response to me. That's almost exactly how I react when my PTSD is triggered. It was a bad reaction and I don't condone her response, but I don't think she was in control of her actions in that moment.
It still does not excuse her actions. She abused an audience member. If she is prone to abusing people she shouldn't be doing panel discussions in front of an audience.
@@StephensCrazyHour hon, mr Sargon went there with a whole posse with the explicit intention to take up the front to 2nd row of seats to intimate her. Im not a big fan of Anita, and I do agree she lost her cool and said things she shouldnt, but Sargon is Not the guy to stan.
technically it means stalker fan, but its used in fandom terms to mean supporting or pushing something? Ex "wow, we love this guy, cant help but stan". Perhaps not the most fitting of words, but eh.
This was a really good summary of how it all began. I knew most of this stuff before watching but in a lot of cases, I'd forgotten the order of events. I had friendships end over GamerGate. Not particularly close friendships to begin with, and GG mostly just sped up the process of inevitably drifting apart because we were too different. But because of how volatile it all was, those friendships ended in shouting and blocking. In one case a casual friendship ended in the other person graphically detailing how I should end my own life. I had friends I thought were good and decent people try to justify SA threats and death threats sent to Zoe and Anita because "they're attacking video games". I watched get further involved in GG, watched their hate grow, and eventually watched their entire political compass shift. I haven't forgiven those former friends. I doubt I ever will. I hope they've changed their views and tried to become better people in the years since, but the trust I once had for them is destroyed.
I was a fresh faced member of a tiny indie team at that time, working on an online kids game with a target demo of 8-12yo girls (though it ended up with wider appeal than intended). We should have been tiny enough to be completely overlooked and we kept quiet and stayed in our niche, but as soon as Gamergate really got spun up, anything even percieved as not intended for the adult male audience was in the firing line - and that included us. Thank god our forum system had manual approval of all messages by one of us built in, so our userbase never saw what we did, but it was a nightmare. My boss there is STILL a frequent target of trolls, including violent ones trying to take it irl. I'm being very selective with what I say on this topic for obvious reasons, but the credible threats of death and violence she still faces, just for being a woman in tech, mostly started from Gamergate.
I know how you feel except mine was the Animegate thing. I got death threats because I pointed out that they were going after Bulma's voice actress for no reason. I was in the right wing space at the time but seeing the anger first hand made me realize that a lot of these people who took the whole animegate/gamergate thing soo seriously were just looking for a reason to get mad. I watched a few videos by nortious gamer gate RU-vidrs and saw that a lot of it was just wish casting. They wanted so badly to believe that people were coming for their games when they weren't.
Oof Gamergate 😬 when light weight pop-feminism and internet chud culture clashed in a brutal ugly online war from which emerged no victor, just a few internet grifters.
Iiiiii had to stop during The Zoe Post. I was with someone for around a year, and I wasn’t perfect during that time but I tried my best. He was an abusive liar who cheated on me. He forced me to let him read my journals (after sneakily reading them beforehand and using what I wrote as emotional ammunition against me). After our breakup (which involved police taking him away TWICE), he wrote a detailed email about every single thing that happened in our relationship, minus his cheating of course, and SENT IT TO EVERYONE HE KNEW. This included friends and family of mine. I’m guessing what happened between Zoe and Aaron will eventually be relevant? I’m just not seeing how and the stress from hearing this stuff is getting to me.
I'm so sorry you went through that. The post is relevant to the story as a whole, but of course I'd agree you should skip to the next timestamp if it's affecting you emotionally. You can definitely pick up the rest of the story from context
In short, Eron claimed Zoe had abused him by demanding unprotected sex while sleeping with 5 other individuals. He broke up with her. She later accused him of physical abuse, so he posted that on his personal blog. Zoe later admitted to the affairs along with the game journalist she slept with
Gamergate has always reminded me of that meme template where Squidward looks over to some chaos happening as he’s sunbathing, and then ignores it. I heard whispers of the stuff but it really just felt like high school drama between not so great people.
Armor! Something I can comment on. I mean, besides my other 2 comments I mean. I am a straight cis man, and as such am obsessed with armor. And I'm sorry Savy, but when you said you would need boob armor in that character's place, I had to stop for a few minutes, because as someone who is obsessed with armor, I have many thoughts about this. There are many reasons why boob armor is impractical, even for larger chested people, that go beyond body shape. 1. If we're talking historical accuracy, boob armor is completely impractical to create. Steel is Rigid by default, and if you're working with it, creating two separate pockets for body parts would take a lot of time and steel. It would be much, *much* more expensive than just a relatively standard breastplate. 2. Typically a padded gambeson or aketon would be worn under a plate harness. These were very thick, quilted cloth garments that would not only provide additional protection from blows, but would also prevent any sort of chafing that wearing a steel garment might often cause. Imagine it as a very thick coat. Because of this, most people wearing plate harnesses would have the same relative body shape with some variation for body weight and such. Boobs would have no prominence in this. 3. Boob plate would provide no protection to the wearer whatsoever. Like a tank has shaped armor to deflect shells and explosives, Plate armor was shaped to deflect energy away from the point of contact. Plate armor was strong, but it wasn't infallible, and blow bouncing off the armor can be just as good as a blow missing. The broblem with boob plate is, it wouldn't deflect shit. Anything hitting the plate would direct the energy right into the boobs, or the sternum, and has a good chance of just caving in the boob part. 4. Breastplates are already shaped in such a way to account for peoples chest. The have a pronounced curve from the top to the bottom that extends a good few inches away from the chest, so it won't encumber the user's breathing. It's also to account for any dents that it might get so that it doesn't just jab right into your abdomen. Personally, I think boobplate just looks kinda ugly, completely impractical, and pretty uncreative. Many historical examples, battle armor or not, are just beautiful and artistic, and even the ones that aren't basically works of art are shiny, and shiny = good. ETA: Having gotten to the end of your section on Anita, I think you may have misunderstood her a little bit. She's saying what you're saying, that there should be more diversity in body types. She's not saying there shouldn't be any women that could represent thin and/or large chested women at all, just that there should be more diversity in body types.
I have never heard about this phenomenon in my life, but as always, I am excited for an incredibly long video from Savy. And I am more than confident that you'll provide a nuanced take on this to educate me! Thanks, Savy! My Friday work day has been saved!
GOOD! because i have soooo much early 2000s shovelware it's insane. and late 90s shovelware. my favorite playstation game of all time is the Rugrats in Paris adaptation.
Having lived through all that and being one of the people that could have been led down the alt-right path it's crazy looking back on it now. Thank you for all the work you put into this.
I get you have some sort of personal weird beef with the way that she called the street fighter girls slender… but you really don’t see her actual point that the men have diverse body types and the women don’t? You’re just gonna ignore that point completely?
Oh I can completely agree that the male characters had greater body diversity, and she's right about that. I probably should've clarified that. But my issue is that so often, people (still to this day) treat women as if we can all be categorized as fat or thin. Nobody would look at somebody like The Rock and call him thin or fat, but for some reason, it seems like people forget that muscular is a fully separate category that applies to women as well. I don't think Anita is fully at fault; it's a wider cultural problem I've noticed in terms of body diversity discussions
Ah Gamer Gate... an opportunity for men of all ages to craft a narrative that contradicted the realities of their day-to-day lives. If I remember correctly, we're talking about a cool group of guys who spent entire days playing video games, completely deregulated from their own bodies, communities, and deeper interests, living on that steady drip of angry competition-- all sandwiched between naughty habits that would melt their mom's bones. It was never about politics in games, or ethics in journalism, or any of that. To me it just always felt like dysregulated men being subjected to opinions that gave a little truth to their shame. At the end of the day, we're all just a bunch of monkeys being exposed to boundless information for the very first time in human existence. That's probably the nicest thing I'll ever say about Gamer Gate.
I think gamergate existed in a time when “what do words mean” should’ve been a valid response. The number of made up or dog whistle words/phrases during this time made it so difficult to keep track of this stuff unless you were a hacker or a hoarder 😂
The "Gamers are Over" article is kind of interesting in that it clearly reads like it wasn't made for consumers but to speak truth and frustration to others in the industry. Because, yes, it's a TERRIBLE article. References and key context are crammed awkwardly into hyperlinks several hundred words apart with no elaboration on what they mean. For a casual gamer, it's not helpful at all. But as an indie who was around during this time, it's *incredibly raw and evocative writing*. It reflects back what I was feeling at the time. That these people were NOT who I wanted to serve, and how I resented having to be in the same space as them. This feeling of a paradoxically adversarial relationship with what could have potentially been my own playerbase. So while it wasn't useful even remotely as an article, it's an incredibly vivid emotional time capsule of being there in the thick of it.
While I don't agree with everything you said here (I for one am a fan of her work), another criticism of that video series that I have argued and agreed with is her bad criticism of sex worker characters. As a former sex worker (stripper specifically) myself, there is a world of difference between the strippers in a game like Mafia II and the strippers in a game like Grand Theft Auto V. The strippers in Mafia II are unnamed. The only sex worker we see interact with the protagonist as a potential love interest but not really is never given a name or any personality outside of her role as a "sexy character". In fact, her character file is literally "Joe's Girl". She wasn't even given a name. Now, the strippers in Grand Theft Auto V all have names, different body types, and unique personalities, half of them will sleep with the character half of them won't, one of the strippers and all of the street workers were played by actual women in the industry who an interviews have gone on to talk about how they were given complete control of the scripts and most of their acting was improv. One of the street workers was the first character in a video game to be modeled after and played by a trans woman...which often doesn't get talked about. The street workers fight back when you attack them. They have different voices and even different motives (some of them will call the playable character back after some in game time has passed and share a bit about their life) Like other pedestrians, the street workers will have unique conversations with each other and on the phone. If you have your player character follow them around for a time, they will call the police and your character will get a wanted level. In the opening cutscene to the heist the game has been building up to, there is a cutscene between Nikki and Juliet in which we get to hear more of their backstory and their plan to commit tax fraud. There a jokes in the strip club and the strippers say that made me laugh and that would fly over most players' heads. (the joke about wing sauce, the poster on the caulk board telling the dancers they have to pay for an ad t-shirt for the club, Nikki's UTI joke) Like these characters don't feel like background stock characters. Like the world's other NPCs and peds, they feel like living breathing people with lives, feelings, goals, personalities, etc. We actually use this game as an example of how to do sex worker characters like these. There are also several characters in the game who are current or former sex workers who are important to the story and also show us how these industries do prey on women in vulnerable positions and how the society around us has placed value on how women look and their value is based on how they can serve men. Characters like Tracey De Santa are preyed upon and we see how her friends she looks up to impact how she sees herself, what she values, and why she does what she does. I could go on but I would rather people played this game for themselves and had an open mind when doing so to see what I mean. To put these two games on the same level never fails to tick me off. These are not even close to the same thing and pretending they are is not only frustrating but actively puts us in danger because when we try to talk about these ourselves we get harassed brutally and shut down because we are "exploited women who just don't know any better." It also shuts down and overshadows genuine criticisms to be lodged at the game. (for instance, the problematic power dynamics in the lap dance mini-games that perpetuate tropes that strippers will want to sleep with you if you give them more money and attention or how it does contribute to the "Women as Reward" trope she was discussing in another video) This also opens another conversation about how so often people love to talk about sex worker characters but how often do you see them actually interviewing us or having us come on to write an article about what we think? Oh yeah...never. I would have loved to have seen a segment in Feminist Frequency that was written and presented by a sex worker. I would have loved to have seen her reference a source written by a sex worker to back of her claims. (they weren't hard to find, especially in relation to Grand Theft Auto V) I don't know if I am making much sense here?
For me, Gamergate will always be the thing that ruined my friendship with one of my closest friends. We met on the way to BootCamp, became friends, then eventually deployed together. I just remember hearing and seeing him slowly transform into this angry person who blamed all his problems on "liberals" and women.
Out of all the comments under this video, this is the one that made me the saddest. I'm sorry that happened, losing a friend is the worst. I hope your old buddy snapped out of it eventually, and I'm glad you at least didn't get dragged down with him. Hope all is well with you.
I'm going to be honest... Anita making that point about that hitman level makes me think she didn't actually play it and she stole her footage. The correct criticism for women as background decoration is that you are *supposed* to listen to those women chat, you learn a lot of things about the target - of course while they talk the player is given a view of their T&A. So it meets the criteria for tropes vs women, the scene could have 100% been done with them fully dressed and changed NOTHING bout the game content, the game *was* aimed at Cis Males, this is obvious in its marketing. If that's your criticism, bang on, you got it in one; but saying that the developers intended for you to get a sexual thrill dragging around dead women is super cringe. Do they intend you to get a sexual thrill for dragging around a dead guy in nothing but a ball hammock? That happens in hitman games too
I'm a bit ashamed to say that I used to be an avid watcher of InternetAristocrat back in the day. He eventually changed his name to MisterMetokur and eventually died of cancer. He went from being someone who I thought was super funny to someone whom I won't miss at all. Funny how things change.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS Update: I heard he died, but that might not be the case. I've heard that he's been dealing with health issues for a while and that he "retired." It's hard to say since he's extremely anonymous.
Yo I remember watching that guy, at the time I thought he was cool nowadays with him being a doomer and being so depressed has turned me off and among other things It's bizarre seeing people making meterkor guy as a hero while I think he's boring
@@jibakoma3029 I remember my friends souring on him when he basically thought GG was a lost cause and told (8chan) /pol/ to get fucked and was the first to call out grifters. They pointed out that this happened after they caught him finger banging his girlfriend during a late night stream. He is known for burning everything he made and starting over with a new persona every so often and they also criticized him for hypocritically profiting on his own videos. What's interesting is that his colleague HBomberguy used to be part of some troll group called Metokur and seemed to have troll's remorse of his own leading him to also voice his opposition to Gamergate, but is now being blamed for contributing to (an apparent) suicide of a plagiarist James Somerton after making his own 4 hour video on the man. Which is really interesting given the subject matter and could be a discussion all on its own in regards to what exactly is one's actions on the Internet could be responsible for.
He’s not dead yet, he did a stream on RU-vid on Valentine’s Day. And I think he still posts to social media/makes appearances on other streams. I used to be a fan of his too, grew out of it once I actually interacted with other political opinions than the ones I was raised with.
As a femme presenting gamer, Anita Sarkeesian’s video series pointed out actual systemic problems in video games, she had valid well thought out criticisms. But her lack of knowledge of those games opened her up to points of valid criticism that when combined with the myriad of misogyny made everything messier as the misogynists often came with a point that could be agreed with allowing their misogyny to be overlooked easier. She couldn’t make good defense of her arguments precisely because she used some games that weren’t as clearly backing up her argument and she wasn’t prepared for the counter arguments. As for her argument of straight men being the audience was weak in that it didn’t account for other people who play the games, what I think she was intending to communicate was that the default intended audience is a straight (often white) male player and games are made to cater to them first and foremost; other audience’s enjoyment is often unintentionally catered to if catered to at all. Take Bayonetta, this was a bad example for her to use because the character design was created by a woman, but there is a valid criticism of the very intentional use of the male gaze camera. If Bayonetta was one game in a field of various female main characters it wouldn’t be particularly problematic after all owning sexuality like she does can be empowering to some women, but it is fair to look at the camera use critically and it is also valid for women to feel that it is objectifying rather than empowering. The problem here is a critique of Bayonetta needs a full essay with an understanding of the game and the motivations in the creation of the game and a lot of nuance. Again picking Street Fighter in particular that does have some (if small) variation from the attractive female body model in muscle definition as a bad choice for her point. Again the focus should be on the lack of body diversity and frequency of impractical outfits. At the very least sexy armor shouldn’t increase the likelihood of death for a female character as then it isn’t really armor. Because of how prevalent the boob armor is I understand why many people even women would look at it uncritically as it ‘holds down the boobs’, but as I’m sure other commenters have said, it is literally a bullseye target for you heart and thus not functional nor can be called armor at that point. There are ways to accommodate a large chest in armor, but the boobs would be obscured by a pointed breast plate. A better metric of critique in these cases would be: is the male armor practical? Then the female armor should be too. Is the male armor impractical then it’s fine for the female armor to be too.
That Chuck Tingle game sounds fuckin incredible, I’m more mad about that being put into my head as an idea and then being deprived of it than I am about most of this nightmare
and to think that all of this happened because someone dared to think critically of a video game instead of simply echoing what corporations who sell games want us to... actually absurd how blind some gamer demographics can be to how the world works tbh
Critically... It's racist it's sexist it's homophobic it's transphobic it doesn't represent enough of us it's not an fps it's not an RPG. Nothing about these things are actually critique. They're claims of something without any nuance. Critique requires something called nuance. Telling us why it is that way is critique. None of those people thought or currently think critically, that's why nearly none of the old games journalist sites are dead or on life support.
@@soul_of_a_gamerbut pointing out bigotry in media absolutely is thinking critically of it. thinking critically is questioning why something exists the way it does and proposing an answer to that through a nuanced understanding of bigotry. this was what anita sarkeesian was attempting to do -- i don't think she did so very well because she didn't present a nuanced understanding of either feminism or the games she was talking about, but it was still critical thinking nonetheless. what NOT thinking critically looks like is simply accepting something for the way it is. not thinking critically is one person saying "just shut up and play the game" when another person points out that women in video games are often used as an accessory to a male character's story instead of having their own story, for example. there absolutely was terrible reporting on both sides, but denying that social commentary is part of critical analysis of video games is simply incorrect.
@@Jaminux do you know why baldurs gate was successful? It has nothing to do with representation. It was a well made game. Meanwhile in 2023 Hogwarts legacy I literally witnessed LGBTQ members harass people off of streaming because they felt offended by the existence of the game. You people don't have critical thinking capacity. You shout racist sexist homophobic transphobic and that's why people hate your kind. You aren't critical.
@@Jaminux critical thinking demands more then nuanced thought, she told the world I find it sexist. And even if I agreed I'd tell her no, she didn't critique a video game.
I was casual acquaintances with some people who were working in the gaming industry when gamergate was going down. One of them reported getting death threats just because they were a woman and made video games for a living. They didn't even do anything big or controversial, but that was all that was necessary for them to be attacked.
Ok, so I have two main issues that I want to bring up. 1.) Attacking Anita Sarkeesian's "gamer" credentials using Ad hominems is NOT considered fallacious reasoning in this particular situation. Many people forget, or were not even aware in the first place, that there is ONE MAJOR EXCEPTION for utilizing non-fallacious Ad hominem arguments. In the Informal Rules of Logic Ad hominem argumentation is legitimate only as a rebuttal to Arguments from Authority (sometimes called Appeals to Authority). If someone says (or implies) that their argument holds weight because they are an expert or hold authority/skill in a particular field (aka, argument from authority), than it's perfectly valid to attack the source of that authority to undermine the entire argument. When Anita presents herself as a gamer she, intentionally or not, uses her "gamer cred" to add credibility and weight to her main arguments. So attacking her gaming credentials (her source of authority) using Ad hominems is in fact logically valid and not considered fallacious reasoning. 2.) Since you're a self-proclaimed feminist and LGBTQ, I'm not surprised that you mostly took the side of anti-gamergate. I'm not complaining, as a moderate I need to balance my content intake with those on the left. My issue is that for being this long, you definitely skipped a BUNCH of things that painted the anti-gamergate side in a bad light. Although you gave valid criticism of Zoe Quinn being a scammer, you never quite explained or even fully understood exactly WHY so many people were so fixated on destroying her (it wasn't just for the lulz). Now I'm against doxxing and targeted harassment of specific individuals, but I can definitely understand why so many people made it their mission in life to torment her. From what I understand of the time-line, which are backed up by various logs and eyewitness testimony, she sounds like an awful human being. You didn't mention the harassment and doxxing campaign that Zoe orchestrated with her company Crash Override Network nor their group chats leaked by former member Ian Cheong exposing them as racist online cyber bullies themselves, making them complete hypocrites. Her harassment of Candance Owens because of the kick-starter group "Social Autopsy" which literally pushed Candance from being a liberal to the now face of modern black Conservatism. Her provably false SA allegations against Alec Holowka which resulted in him TAKING HIS OWN LIFE! And much more... If she did even 10% of the things people are accusing her off, and based on the evidence it seems likely, I have absolutely NO SYMPATHY for the online back-lash she received. But don't take my word for it... Read it yourself... Google Document containing evidence: docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/e/2PACX-1vS0P-qgef5zu8D76fy1tC9PnPL_Hujyojs8d9glrcQirjgQv9ubJrz7QLjgEqPVYeO3p9LOBKczaO-c/pub?pli=1 RU-vid video putting the Google Document into context: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z3uYx8mHFkM.html
I was in the tail-end of my cringy teenage New Atheism phase when GamerGate broke. Watching channels i used to follow - channels which, during the atheist boom of the early 2000s, had prided themselves on their supposed "rationality" - make the hard pivot to the anti-SJW grift gave me the final reason to ditch that increasingly toxic community for good.
I know you said to wait until I've seen the video to engage with it, but I just want to say thank you for taking the time to go this in depth on the topic. Every time I try to actually figure out what exactly happened during Gamergate, it's always an extremely subjective source.
thank you!! i definitely have my own opinions on the topic (which i definitely insert into the video), but i also agree that it's hard to find a source that breaks down the arguments in full without glossing over parts they didn't like. maybe the reason is that it would take THIS LONG TO DO IT haha
@@ThennaryNakThat or rabid/sick puppies w/ the Hugo’s but it really does feel like Sweet Baby Inc is big and it happening in an election year is a little convenient =\
@@DefaultProphet :( I just wish everyone could respect each other and stop being weirdos about women existing, or people of color existing, or trans people existing, or disabled people existing. It would be nice.
@@JoelSyverud The answer is, misguided progs are still infiltrating the gaming industry. At least they're trying. Sweet Baby shenanigans are quite funny, since they backfire.
I’m half an hour into this video and OMG I feel seen and validated in such a powerful way ❤ as a neurodivergent asexual woman struggling to find a purpose, in college I was swept into the Anita Sarkeesian hate mob. It resulted in a brief period of time where I was a pro capitalist NLOG (not like other girls/pick me/etc) and I’ve had a lot of unacknowledged shame about that time in my life. Thank you for being so visible Savy, and for being so open about your growth and work and change. I’m never going to be the person to make a six hour gamergate video, but I feel so empowered that you did 🎉
1:45:30 she was saying that exposure to images of overly sexualized women, not specifically women in video games. It’s very easy to find these studies on the links between sexualized imagery and mental health, and exposure to sexually explicit and objectifying material is a recognized contributing factor to sexual violence.
It's been a valid topic of discussion that games causes inlfuence on younger children or younger teens. However, almost every single survey and study has shown less than satsifactory results due to the methods or pre-conclusion seeking compared to bigger, longer and more method focused study shown that games cause not sexism nor violence.
@@TheRealVordox again, the studies she was talking about weren’t about video games at all. they were about sexually objectifying images of women, usually in advertising.
I'd like a source for "exposure to sexually explicit material is a recognized contributing factor to sexual violence" because that sounds way too broad and context-free to be the consensus
So glad for this in-depth explanation of what GamerGate actually is. I have been hearing about it for years and, as an afab gamer, knew it had something to do with women in video games, but have had no idea what actually happened. This video was amazing and also sets a lot of the context for the current state of the gaming community, especially as a streamer and someone who consistently plays indie games and criticizes them. The harassment I got has been very, very minor in comparison, only on a few small occasions, but at the end of the day, has still made me uncomfortable and questioning my space in the gaming industry. Thank you for this video. It was so well made that I hardly even noticed that 6 hours went by. Amazing work!
If there's one thing about GamerGate that still irritates me, is the fact that the movement lead to a lot of people in the anime fandom making the fandom more reactionary and more towards the far-right and even to this day, there's little to no people in AniTube that's willing to talk about how the impact of GamerGate lead to how current anime fandoms are perceived. I'm not saying that the entire anime fanbase has been turned into right-wing jackasses, but seeing as how those people on that side of the fence keep preaching "keep your politics out of my anime!" have been shutting down anime fans on the left who just want to express themselves...yeah. And that's not even considering the amount of damage GamerGate has done to other fandoms!
Well of course!, remember when at a time conservatives told people how to live? When to marry? Have sons? Etc?. The left is doing that since 10 years ago, and goes deeper every time. They will end up like old conservatives.
35:00 - Maybe its not a 100% accurate example, but I still believe life is strange was given way too much leniency just for throwing lesbians at a representation-starved audience of the 2010s
This is unrelated to your point but Life is Strange is really inaccessible to folks like me who have ADHD. I cannot enjoy a game that is forcing time limits on me, all it does is create stress and makes me want to quit playing. I really wanted to play it though.
@@introusasthat’s interesting. I don’t remember time limits in the game and I played it all the way through and it’s only the second game I’ve played all the way through. I also have ADHD. I’m not saying you’re lying about it, just that 1, I have a poor memory and 2, it’s interesting how we can experience things differently even with the same disorder. I did get completely sucked into the game though, so it was possibly just hyper focus.
@@introusas i started out really excited for the game and really wanting to play it, but with how the story was mid, gameplay boring, and chloe horrendous, my enthusiasm got absolutely crushed ToT
@@jaybee4118 It’s like the whole interface of the game. You have to find clues and memorize things in a certain time frame, and if you get it wrong they make you repeat it over and over again until you get it right. There’s no way to bypass the time limits
Just want to say that I really appreciate your opening section here. So far the most clarifying piece of media I'd seen relative to GG was Innuendo Studio's talk on the subject, so, naturally (not knowing where you're coming from), I wondered whether or not that info would be covered here. _Not only_ did you include clips from that piece in the intro, but you spliced it in with other footage from tJRE and Chris Ray Gun's (Still a fan of his, check the post script) Rubin Report interview. You _deliberately went out of your way_ *not* to alienate anyone from the outset, and while I can't yet speak to the impact this video is going to have over its lifetime, the fact you put that together how you did, already puts you _leagues_ above other commentators in terms of your potential reach. All that just to say, "Good job!" But know that you're seen in that regard. ______________________ But anyway to prove my point about Chris, I made a 'Shooting Stars' meme for him back in.. jesus christ, _2017._ And while I don't particularly stand by it _now_ (I scrapped my other content from the time).. The edit's still pretty funny I think- _Definitely don't check it out_
The major flaws with Innuendo Studio's talk is that Ian blames Gamergate for a series of heinous (and specific!) crimes that they wound up having nothing to do with. The press initially blamed gamergate supporters for SWATing, and for making shooting/bombing threats based on nothing but speculation. And when the people behind them were actually caught, they turned out to have no history with GG. They acted on their own. It just comes across as bad faith since Ian was made aware of this even before that video, but chose to block anyone pointing it out.
@@11111110 Refresh my memory, what threats against who and why? I'm assuming they 'disavowed' just as much as every other 'lone actor'. Explain it like I'm five.
@@ThatTallBrendan A shooting threat was faxed to Utah State University protesting Anita's planned speech. The press initially blamed Gamergate for the threat, but when the police published the full letter, it made no mention of GG. It didn't even mention video games. Anita also received a meme-filled guerrilla warfare letter threatening to "drop over 9000 bombs" on her, which she reported to the authorities. The FBI investigated, it was signed with the name of a Gamergate supporter. After interviewing him, they concluded he was not the author. They discovered that the actual author was a literal teenager living several states away, who had signed it with someone else's name to troll GG supporters and sic the feds on them. The FBI had also interviewed a guy who was responsible for 99% of the harassing and threatening emails that Brianna Wu had received. He was asked about Gamergate, he said he wasn't involved and only heard of them through media reports and was harassing Brianna long before GG existed Not sure why you put 'lone actor' in quotes.
I really enjoyed this video. I was in my late 30s when GamerGate broke out and I was very online at the time. I understood the wider situation that prompted the "Gamers are Dead" articles but lots of my friends did not. It led to some tensions in my friend group because many of them read those articles in isolation and felt attacked. They saw GamerGate as a rebellion against the mainstream game media that was pushing an agenda on them. I would get very frustrated with them while trying to explain the whole Zoe situation to them but they had no clue of the larger context. I literally face-palmed when I read some of those articles. They did so much more harm than good. Also, something touched on this video was the shift away from traditional media to more amateur reviews and game media. While this had many genuine upsides, as mentioned in the video, it also has some glaring issues. When you abandon curation of content in favor of an anything goes approach, the quality of the media varies wildly. While this can be relatively harmless, poor quality videos with substandard audio, it can also be dangerous. Especially as this trend spread into media in general. The lack of curation causes an increase in misinformation, sometimes intended and sometimes not. As we have seen over the last several years, that level of misinformation can have dangerous consequences.
Overall I did think this was a very good video that managed to actually have multiple perspectives. I think you correctly identified not just a lot of *what* went down, but *why* it went down, when, like you said, most people just have no idea what this original dramageddon was and how much we are still seeing... basically all the same tactics, often utilised by the same people, used to this day. I hve my quibbles about certain portions of this video, but I do think it was Fair and Balanced (tm)(c)(r) as usual
Total side note I LOVE the red hair on you! Looks so good with your skin tone! Amazing video as always! I was around for gamergate but I could never get a grip on what all encompassed it.
Oh my gosh Savy, this is epic! Looking forward to checking it out. Anecdote: In my wayward single days, pretty much the only time I *ever* didn't try to make an incompatible relationship work was when I was hooking up with a Gamergater 😆 I put up with so much awful stuff from other people but that was my line in the sand.
Having spent all of the 2010’s dissociated and not using Twitter, wow. So many things make sense. That gag on Community makes sense. The feminist memes and stereotypes make sense. My friends going alt right and me not really wanting to talk to them ever again makes sense. I feel like I’ve just woken up from a dream into a scarier reality. That feeling you get of being lost in a book none of your friends have read, not knowing what to do with yourself, but feeling like you have a deeper understanding of life, the universe, and everything. I don’t know what to do with myself now. Thank you for this wonderful piece of video literature. I need therapy now.
When white men are told they cannot criticize minorities because they do not understand our situation and may be missing some context they claim they are best placed to criticize groups they don't belong to because we cannot be objective about our own issues. Its hilarious how angry and violent they become when someone outside their fandom comes to critique it. The hypocrisy of white men would be funny if it was not dangerous. You don't have to play a video game to survive. We need access to quality healthcare to survive so no I will not be taking criticisms from you on whether I need an abortion or not. The privileged entitlement of it all.
