So You Say You Want a (Cultural) Revolution: Women, Part 1

I'm not Anita Sarkeesian's Biggest Fan.

Honestly, I disagree with her more than I agree. I will give her credit for bringing up some good and rather thought provoking points, but I haven't been impressed with her Tropes VS Women series so far. One of my biggest problems with her project is many people gave money to it not because they thought it was a good idea, but because she had been horribly harassed. My other big problem is that she is somewhat becoming the face of “women in games”, which I feel is wrong since she is a media critic and not a developer. That would be akin to Roger Ebert being the face of movies, despite never having directed or produced one in his life. She doesn't necessarily speak for me, and likewise I don't speak for her.

Those points aside, the events surrounding her project really paint the video game community in a terrible light. I may not agree with her 100%, but I have no interest in stopping her project or taking her videos down. I found the harassment she faced to be disgusting and awful. Anita by all means should continue making these videos as she has every right to. And for so-called gamers to take them down by claiming YouTube violations or sending her rape/death threats for voicing her views only perpetuates this concept that the video game community is a misogynist cesspool of ilk that “sensible people” would not partake in. Anita shouldn't have to deal with such attacks. No one should. And if you think you're somehow “saving gaming” by participating in such attacks, then you're part of the problem, not the solution.

Because of these attacks comments on her videos are, understandably so, disabled. I fully understand and support her decision because odds are they'd be filled with hateful words. But at the same time it also drowns out what could be positive yet constructive criticism of her works in the comments. Nothing like a few jerks to ruin things for everyone.

On that note, I'm also heavily bothered by “gaming journalism's” almost blind praise for her works. Anything seen as remotely critical of her videos, even if they have valid points or if they're respectfully disagreeing with her views and not making rude or derogatory statements in her general direction will get nearly equally filled with commentary. Much of it along the lines of how the critique is missing the point, or doesn't understand, or is sexist, or doesn't count because of some privilege of the writer/YouTuber/what have you. To me, that shuts off an entire avenue of discussion and personal attacks have been made towards these critics of her works (as I'm sure will be made at some point against me) in almost the same fashion as trolls did to Anita. Perhaps not to the same extent, but still. It seems on that front, if you're not with her 100%, you're an enemy, you're wrong, you're a sexist idiot and your opinion doesn't get to count. Even if all you did was say “I liked this part for these reasons but disagreed with her on these points.” In short, I'd like Anita to continue her project and not be harassed. I'd also like to be able to state that I disagree with her without some weird backlash for it.

Switching Gears for a Moment...

I'd now like to direct your attention to a Forbes Fashion blog post from a few weeks ago about what female developers should wear at E3 to stand out from the crowd. http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstylefile/2013/06/04/going-to-e3-2013-heres-what-to-wear/ (It appears now that the writer of the post has tried to apologize for how it came off, which is nice) I'll let that sink in for a moment. This is a prime example of how people not from our industry are trying to directly change affect our industry, almost to suit “conventional social norms” if you will. If you happened to see the article before the removal of the “steampunk but not actually steampunk party outfit”, you could almost feel the “style matters before substance” tone of the article. The current outfit is not a bad outfit, although I feel a little pricey for just roaming about a trade show floor.

I'm not mad that the Forbes writer didn't know what steampunk was. I'm not even too mad about the idea of wanting to look nice at an event like this. I understand the sentiment of wanting to look presentable. No, I'm mad that the writer feels in order for a female dev to stand out, she must be a slave to fashion. She must look better than her peers, rather than have better ideas, or produce better work. “But in an industry trying to attract more female gamers, its worthwhile to spend some time thinking about how what you wear can help you stand out as the savvy gaming industry expert that you are.” That's an actual quote from the article. If you want to dress fashionably to such an event, awesome, go right ahead. If you don't, that's fine too.I feel that is one of the big draws of our industry culture-wise, for everyone: it doesn't matter too much how you look, just that your skills are up to par, you're a hard worker, and you make contributions to your team. Oh, and that you shower occasionally. I've been to GDC wearing rather nice business outfits. I've gone in jeans and t-shirts. I saw dozen of people in suits. I saw an entire set of men in kilts. I met a lovely lady who was talking about how she just got hired with a company on the spot, and she was wearing an R2-D2 Black Milk Clothing tank top dress. Skills mattered, opinions mattered, how you dressed, not so much.

I wish you could have seen the text for the now removed second outfit in the article. Part of it was about a pair of sneaker-heels, and how this outfit would help you turn heads as you show off your dance moves at various after-parties for developers. I don't know about you folks, but every industry party I went to, I had a better time chatting with people over food and drink. If there was a DJ, turning heads on the dance floor seemed to be the last thing on everyone's mind.

Some Final Thoughts...

I'm excited that more women are getting into the industry. During college I was always happy to see an increasing amount of female students enrolling in either of the game development degrees offered. I'm excited we're encouraging young girls to get into game making through things like the Girl Scout Patch and various summer camps. I can't wait for the day that we don't have to talk about 'women in games' because we'll be so commonplace that it'd be almost as odd as talking about 'men in games'. Unfortunately it's just going to take time, but we are making strides. Take a look at backlash Duke Nukem Forever got for some of its sexist humor. Had the game come out 12 years ago I feel there wouldn't have been such a backlash as women would have been afraid to speak out about it or not taken seriously. I'm even excited that women I don't necessarily agree with 100% of the time are making some sort of commotion and not being quiet. But we need to extend this inexplicably mythical concept of women playing games to beyond our industry.

I feel that one of the big issues dealing with women in games is that we as a society at large still try to discourage young girls away from an interest in games when they are young. I can see why, our marketing and PR tends to paint us as a very stereotypically young male form of entertainment. So let's encourage girls to take an interest in playing games, and encourage them to make them if they so desire. Let's also put an end to the 'mythical gamer girl' stereotype, since nearly half of game players are in fact women, and I feel we'll start to see more positive change for us all.

The next topic I have planned to discuss is marketing, PR, and game journalism. As always, critiques, comments, et all are welcome.