Aside from that she's stolen artwork more than once (Once or more as thumbnail art for her videos and she stole a peice of artwork to use in her kickstarter logo) which is legitimate theft of real property and sort of compounds on the negative image made by the footage usage.
I know what you're talking about as far as her kickstarter logo and she made a post about it, she found it on a forum IIRC without a signature or credit, she believed it to be official art because it was that good, although she could have continued to use it under fair use, she changed it as a sign of good will. The author though, I find it funny how offended she was at not being credited and yet she made "fan art" of a copyrighted character. Again though, no "legitimate theft" let alone of "real property" as the character did not belong to the author. This is the first time I'm hearing that she stole thumbnail art though? Her thumbnails are custom
I don't particularly understand why you're so up in arms though, this isn't an argument against her on any merits with a basis on sexism as you see a lot, these are legitimate gripes against her actions
I'm not "up in arms" I'm just trying to dismiss some myths and false information being spread, these gripes while from your perspective might seem legit, are actually false.
Lies is harsh but she does use a lot of information that's... false? As in, one famous thing she's sad is a long anecdote about how you're capable of killing a stripper in a hitman game and using her corpse as a distraction for police to get into an area. The thing about that being that it's just a combination of behaviors in a sandbox game- the game does not give you the direct option of doing that, rather it's a result of: corpses (regardless of who's corpse) distract police officer npcs, there are stipper NPCs on the map, you are capable of killing any NPC you encounter, one option to complete a mission is to enter the location guarded by the police with/without killing npcs?
She clarifies this
https://videos.theconference.se/anita-sarkeesian-hate-and-heroism 10:40
It's the same as if you were to kill a female npc in skyrim and throw the corpse off a cliff? It's possible to do that in the game as a result of a long string of cause and effect without that being entirely intended and purely as a result of player choice to go off an do something they could do to any character using any string of actions.
NPC's in Skyrim are clothed unless you remove their clothes in which you can do the same with men and women in skyrim, in Hitman, only the women are in lingerie, obviously cause it's a strip club but only because that's what the devs wanted, the devs created this entire situation. That's the issue. And let's not even go into the Hitman bonus WoW challenge where you can snipe certain items and then get a stripper to dance in front of a window before shooting her.
Context ABSOLUTELY does matter with tropes, tropes are a familiar set of circumstances in any given media and the context around them (especially when things are subverted) matters a lot about that particular piece of representation. Every possible personality for a character and event/action in a narrative is a separate trope. A video game about a princess rescuing herself after being captured and a video game about saving a princess who's been captured both use the same trope and share many other tropes about princess saving but are VASTLY different in context and meaning,
These are tropes - they're fragments of a whole. By definition they don't make up the entirety of a work of art by themselves, but are instead definable cultural touchstones which artists, writers, developers etc, can use when creating a fictional reality. In other words, Anita Sarkeesian only presents sections of games as sexist because she's only talking about the sexist bits of games, and how, of the tropes developers choose to put in their games when designing for female characters, they frequently fall back on sexist ones. Seriously, she couldn't be clearer about this - in the introduction to the very first video she says: "This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects." and indeed she says that at the start of every video but it just doesn't get through to some people I guess.
Countless unconscious and conscious compromises get made as a game is developed - just like a film - and it's easy to miss that, sometimes, the sum effect of those decisions can be that Assassin's Creed 2 ends up with a sequence where sex workers get their throats slit as a way of marking checkpoints. Pointing out how messed up this is isn't tangential to experiencing games as art, it's necessary.
She earned a significant amount more than she expected and underdelivered by a large amount of time on her promised videos with as far as i'm aware not all of them still out yet 3(+?) years on due to expanding her scope, which in itself isn't a huge problem as that sort of thing happens all the time but it's still a little iffy that she's expanded her vision for 10-20 minute short videos on tropes in video games into hour-y long productions now and the idea they don't contain any kind of padding/suffer from the tripling in length seems a little far fetched. As for finances, $69 925 (~50%) of the kickstarter money she obtained has gone into salary for her and her team with presumably any more money obtained in the meantime being split the same way. She has DEFINITELY profited from her kickstarter though if it's to an undue extent vs the effort she puts into her videos or not isn't really for me to decide.
Her project was overfunded, overfunded projects face longer delays
https://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/07/17/only-25-of-kickstarter-projects-ship-on-time/ also upon seeing this, she changed the format of the videos, instead of short ones covering a few topics, she's taking the time to make longer ones with more research and slightly different subjects, this was all posted on her kickstarted page in the updates but guess I'm the only one that reads that stuff. Also she never expected to get as large as she is now, she's doing public talks and going to events which I'm sure takes up more of her time from doing videos but the backers aren't complaining so why are others who don't even have an investment? On the opposite side people like Sargon and Thunderf00t make a killing off their patreons for making videos ranting about her, Thunderf00t was losing subs actually till he made an Anita video and almost single handedly revived his channel (you can check the dates and stats if you don't believe me) and since then he can't shut up about her.
A lot of things she tends to cover does fall under that umbrella of games she claims she hasn't played and doesn't enjoy, though? To be fair that sort of thing is most indulgent in more casual sexism and the issues from that but to claim that just because she's played nintendo as a child means she plays all the games she has claimed she detests and uses other people's footage for to make her points is not particularly honest? That is an overblown issue though as it's not something hard to see someone in her position overcoming, even though a lot of criticisms levelled at games under that umbrella tends to look like they're based entirely on synopsis that she/her writers have read.
That clip was from 2010, she didn't start her kickstarter till 2012, she has had time to change and expand her views, this is a normal thing people do, she didn't play all the games she detests, well not back then. She grew up with Nintendo and then once she decided she wanted to do sexism in video games, she got more into gaming as a whole.
I wanted to take this part out in particular because it's.. weird? Tomb raider was busty, in fact the female protagonist night on invented the concept of large breasts in video games, but as far as i'm aware they're actually examples of good representations of women, Lara Croft is more or less a female indiana jones who is a very capable and powerful female character who is, usually, not at all sexualized. The large controversy surrounding some sexist-ish comments from a developer about the reboot series serves this point enough not to elaborate on. And i mean, really, there are examples of non-violent conflict resolution within that specific series if you looked it up but is it really necessary to? The point being made is that a shooter about tomb raiding starring a capable woman who's trying to steal/nab macguffins she wants should have some form of gameplay non-violence feature, it seems really... weird?
Tomb Raider was made for male gamers, not to appeal to female gamers, she is not a very good example of a "powerful/capable woman" most men would see that, but the point is basically that, a guy with breasts, a female indiana jones, made to appeal to male gamers. Her reboot was fantastic imo, made her much more relatable as a person and not just all guns and breasts. She's what would be called a mary sue.
https://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/tomb-raider-lara-croft-now-battling-video-game-stereotypes/#/0
She is a "notable feminist" and was before she began her kickstarter (as far as im aware that's why her kickstarter was so successful- because she was already a public person). Maybe she does believe what she's saying- that doesn't really excuse it being wrong or laser focused on things without context or being too caught up in really basic low hanging fruit (Semi-reguarly non)issues rather than trying to tackle legitimate actual problems within the video game industry and the mindset behind those issues.
Except that IS what she's trying to do and no, she became a "notable feminist" because of the backlash of hate which garnered her attention, more people became aware of her as people started ranting, they found her and she got overfunded that way, so yeah all the people that hate her so much and rant about her, it's their fault she's at where she is ironically.
How often princess peach gets saved from bowser (ignoring the context behind that complicated relationship, the times she saves herself and all her relevance in plotlines outside of the intial kidnapping in a lot of games) isn't really something that is that relevant in the face of, say, encouraging games with good female leads or pointing out common flaws in female characters (Or even the common mistakes people make when trying to create empowered women as characters and end up making them just as bad or bland as a busty personality less sidekick or demonizing femininity while trying to artificially pump up a female character as relevant and good representation)
She makes positive female figures in games videos. Peach is an object to save, you can replace her with treasure, all it is is a reason for the protag to go through the game. Peach in spin off games is hardly a good counter-argument to her damsel trope.
I feel as though in this thread that's all people have tried to do with this little tangent but you are right that she has vocal opposition that's firmly dudebro whining that she's a woman making a show pointing out sexism in video games rather than discussion on why she seems to be barking up the wrong tree too much with what she talks about
Just want to point out how crazy it is that people misunderstand her, either on purpose or unintentionally so much so that she has had to remove all humor from her more recent videos because people mistake it for ignorance or take it out of context. I understand her completely, I'm not sure why it's so difficult for others, like I feel these people just hold gaming far too close to their personal selves and I'm more laid back when it comes to criticism of something I like, if it's valid, sure go for it, if I don't understand the criticism (even if I think I do) I try to further understand and get a better view of it, if it's just blatantly false like these myths, I feel the need to point them out in a constructive manner.
