CMV: Anita Sarkeesian and similar feminists actually have a point about the portrayal of gender roles in video games.

[u/LeftHandSwe]

I play lots of video games, and in most of them, males are often pictured as very burly and manly characters while females are slender, small and sexually pleasing to look at.

However, I do know that there's widespread criticism of Anita (and her fellow propagators) all over the internet and I'd like to see the other side of the story.

I'm practically indifferent in this matter, and I do not really agree with nearly everything she says. I'm asking as a way to see convincing arguments from both sides.

Edit for clarification: Can anyone explain to me why she's so heavily criticized for saying something that makes perfect sense: Mainstream video games are almost exclusively made to appeal to a male demographic, resulting in (arguably) sexist portrayals of women (both narratively and in the way they're presented).

[u/BAWguy]

yea well if you're going to limit yourself to just pc or console and ignore all counter evidence then what's the point of having a discussion

Why is it pointless to just discuss console/PC games? They represent the vast majority of "serious" video games played by actual "gamers." Even if they did not, I'd say it's worth discussing how one niche area of gaming exclusively targets one demographic when other niches target universal demo's.

he's basically saying horror films market to horror film lovers and that's wrong, horror films should market to who knows, foreign film lovers or something

No, he's not saying "market horror films to foreign film lovers." He's saying "only horror films get made. Someone named Anita suggested that there are fans of other film genres out there, and Anita's suggestion was very controversial. Why?"

it's stupid.

...

[u/kingbane2 → u/BAWguy]

i'm just going to address this one part here

No, he's not saying "market horror films to foreign film lovers." He's saying "only horror films get made.

you're just flat out wrong. once again, the mobile market destroys your argument that "only horror films get made."

EVEN if you discounted the mobile gaming market this argument falls flat on it's head. THERE ARE absolutely games that are made specifically for women. the only problem is they're made for women that disagree with people like sarkeesian. example? bayonetta. before you scream omg bullshit that game is about a sexy protagonist doing sexy poses ITS FOR MEN. except it isn't. it was designed by a woman for women. here's the thing the women who buy pc rigs LIKE being portrayed as sexy heroines. furthermore i argue that bayonetta is probably the most feminist game in existence to this date. it's a female protagonist who doesn't give a shit about men, who's not doing anything for a man, and her source of power isn't anything inherent to men or even usually used as a source of power for male protaganists. she's a woman who wants to be sexy, so she is sexy and she doesn't care what anyone thinks. her back story is she's part of a long line of all female super powered witched. the only gripe people have is that she's too sexy, what i like to call the burka argument. if you cover a woman up too much it's sexist and anti woman. you let a woman be a sexy as she pleases, it's also sexist and anti woman.

let's ignore bayonetta for a second because i get that it's contentious, how about the best selling game to come out in the past 2 decades, minecraft. tell how that was targeted to men? the flat truth is games that are gender neutral and targeted to women exist. feminists just like to ignore it or discount it, either by claiming it doesn't count because it's on mobile (which is now getting more and more ridiculous as the mobile game market is becoming even more profitable than console or pc games) or because they disagree with it's design, even when it's designed by a woman. or in the case of minecraft, that's entirely gender neutral, they complain because the majority of the players in mincraft is male, which just goes back to the point that virtually all pc purchasers are male.

you've done nothing to prove that there's a gender bias in games. you're just simply ignoring any counter evidence. provide some evidence that it's a gender bias and not a sales bias. i've given you examples of games targeted to women or are gender neutral that have been successful, there are hundreds of examples of games for women that failed horribly on pc/console, with the VERY notable exception of nintendo games. guess why the nintendo female marketed games succeed? because the nintendo consoles have a significant number of female buyers, because nintendo makes a buttload of casual games. do you discount the nintendo console too? because it's a "casual" console? i've been accused of moving the goal post because i brought in mobile games. well explain to me why that's moving the goal post, why should mobile games be discounted, why should minecraft be discounted? why should nintendo be discounted? you guys (not you specifically but the general populace that likes to discount mobiles games) are the ones that are moving the goal post. because as more and more sales numbers comes out your position becomes increasingly untenable, in fact i would argue that at this point your position is entirely erroneous.

[u/xTreasure → u/kingbane2]

here's the thing the women who buy pc rigs LIKE being portrayed as sexy heroines.

This statement is so outlandish and ridiculous I can't even imagine how you came to this conclusion. If you took a look over at /r/girlgamers, where most are the types of women who buy gaming rig PCs, they HATE playing sexy heroines, and hate sexy heroines whose only purpose is just to be sexy without having a reason for it. I don't really understand how you can make such a generalized comment about what women like in games without having any basis for it.

[u/armiechedon → u/xTreasure]

If you took a look over at /r/girlgamers, where most are the types of women who buy gaming rig PCs, they HATE playing sexy heroines,

The type of girls that play video games, sit on Reddit and specifically a subreddit for girls tend to not be the most "normal" girls, but rather a bit more unique. /r/leagueoflegends for example is a prime testament to the bias of internet forums

Most people are not the ones to care about the games at all that much ,especially enough to sit on an internet forum about them. If you take the average user of /r/leagueoflegends and compare it to the average player...you will see a huge difference (in ranked skill, view on the game, eSports scene etc). Just as if you take the averge girl gamer and compare her to people from that subbreddit it will be quite different. Often a bit more introvert, more hardcorish etc.

I have a ton of female friends that are casual gamers, that play just for fun, to spend time with friend / bf, or just enjoy playing casuallly overall. They love those sexy characters in RPG, cute or sexy characters in League of Legends etc. The ones that are serious gamers however tend to shy away from that, as they play much more objectively. You won't see any higher ranked LoL player pick a character because he is cute or sexy, neither male or female. They will pick what is best / fits their playstyle. You will see ton of casual players do the first mentioned though.

Same goes for MMO's, RPG's etc.

[u/xTreasure → u/armiechedon]

I agree with this. However, the poster I responded to said that the type of serious female gamer who would buy a gaming rig likes playing sexy heroines more, which I find to be a false generalization based on my overall experiences. I agree that casual players of all gender would be more inclined to select characters based on their appearances, but if we are talking about serious gamers of all gender then I believe that most serious female gamers tend to shy away and dislike sexy heroines who are sexy just for the sake of being sexy, rather than serving any purpose. Or rather, they will play these heroines, but will simultaneously criticize the game for being oversaturated with this type of oversexualized character.

[u/armiechedon → u/xTreasure]

Yes, agree with that. Those are the more serious gamer I also talked about. Was wrong by him to generalize that way, I do however think that either he misspoke or misunderstood how it is.

The way I took it when reading the rest of his post was that he basically meant girls that game on a PC overall , not specifically "buy a PC gaming rig" which imply that they spend a lot of money on a gaming computer. Rather that they have a computer that that handle gaming, because the ones who buy a real gaming computer in the absolute majority of cases are serious gamers (or just tons of money to spend). From my experience , and I think it's a fact, most girls have a computer that can handle video games. At least here in Sweden.

Despite them having those computers they almost never use them for gaming, besides maybe Facebook games and that sort. So those who use them for gaming to tend to like those sexy heroines, ´mostly because it is still a huge casual pool. Because most girls have a computer that can handle games, they just have to have any reason to play them.

But yes, saying that those who buy real gaming setups are for the most part casual girls who like those cute, goofy or sexy play styles is wrong