Eh, by "poor design", they mean stuff like...giving people skill specializations that don't match their stats, or giving people skills that don't compliment each other well (like making your low strength, low speed guy focus on melee). As long as you can handle basic RPG stuff (specialize your characters with…

Having played the beta, it's really not that bad. It's basically RPG 101 stuff: you want characters whose skill sets compliment each other without too much overlap. Specialization is often preferred to having a team of generalists. You probably won't be able to do everything perfectly well (unlike in a Bethesda game),…

Actually, in one of her videos, she cites a number of studies (including a relatively recent Stanford study) drawing a correlation between immersion in misogynistic imagery and subtle changes to perception and attitudes.

Beyond that, the idea that images in the media have some effect on us is...not particularly…

This is clearly a subjective opinion, not a fact. That's where twitter's #GamerGate and #NotYourShield come in. There are a a sizable group of women and minorities of all sorts that refuses her point of view.

Ah, yes. The Hitman example.

Whether or not content is "optional" is irrelevant to her point. As I recall, she never claimed that players gained points for killing civilians; rather, her argument is as follows:

Game design is about the possible. In any sufficiently open design, the player is tacitly encouraged to…

"Alarmist" - How so? She's not saying anything that hasn't been said over and over again in mainstream cultural critique for the past 40+ years. "The images in the media we consume has a role in shaping our perceptions and attitudes." That is...about as uncontroversial as critical axioms get.

I honestly don't really care why she's doing it. I'm not a mind reader, and neither, presumably, are you. What I care about is the critique and whether it's valid. Having played the vast majority of the games she's discussing, and having done a lot of this exact sort of critique myself (in a different context,…

Exactly. They're basically "Feminism and Gaming 101"- a primer for people with limited familiarity with the subject (and possibly games in general). They're useful for other people, too; as mentioned, I've heard some developers commenting on how it was a sort of "Ah hah" moment for them.

But to act like she's some…

That still puzzles me, though. The "way it's delivered" is...pretty calm and professorial.

I dunno, I mean, I recognize that personal taste is a factor, but I genuinely don't get what's so objectionable about her videos. I feel like a lot of people are doing the whole "attack the messenger" thing because ultimately…

Uh. I've watched all of Sarkeesian's videos and I'm familiar with Quinn and her work. I genuinely do not get how you get "misandry" from either of them.

"Obnoxious" is such a loaded, subject term that I can't really contest it, but I strongly disagree with that particular assessment too. Nothing Sarkeesian is doing is…

It's not just about representation. It's about endemic sexism/racism/homophobia. I've experienced some of this myself.

There's nothing about gaming that is inherently male, any more than movies or books or TV shows are inherently male. However, if you design X with demographic Y in mind, you market almost exclusively…

Man, I dunno. From where I'm sitting, "the industry has a pretty significant diversity problem" is something of a no-brainer. If the "agenda" Kotaku is being accused of pushing is "Let's treat people with basic human dignity", which is what a lot of the "SJW" stuff that people are complaining boils down to, I'm not…

There is a surprising amount of ad hominem being thrown around. Even those attempts to debunk her arguments are usually couched in stuff like "She's a liar and a con-artist!" which would absolutely not fly in most critical discussions in other forms of media.

I can only hope that you're right and these are just the…

I never said critique is censorship, I said the idea that certain works of art, or even certain "Trends" in art is so inherently dangerous that they need to be stopped and people need to be protected from them is the perspective and idea that drives censorship. Which is why people respond to it like censorship,…

They are asking them to "consider what their art is saying/doing" to what end? Do you think they intend for developers to say "yeah okay got it!" and then go back to making the same stuff? Of course not they want certain things to stop, that's why they sometimes go as far as disrespecting the people who make them. Do…

The big difference here is that games are governed by greedy and insecure corporations and so these debates can lead to the art in games being compromised from its original intent to incorporate views that are shoehorned in because it might broaden the audience and thus theoretically earning more money by tearing the…

Okay, a couple of points:

I think I disagree with you about those articles. Those articles are specifically about a larger issue: harassment and toxicity within the game industry. Now, some of that came to light partly as a result of the Zoe Quinn thing, yes, but they're not about the Zoe Quinn thing.

As for Anita…

I would genuinely like to see that. The more scholarly, serious, well-researched work there is on games, the better. There's obviously nothing wrong with differing perspectives; I just wish more of those differing perspectives were actually well-researched and logically sound instead of attacking the same old straw…

Yes, exactly. You can talk about problematic elements within a work without condemning the whole text. She makes this point herself at the start of a lot of her videos, with her "It is entirely possible to enjoy things with problematic elements" disclaimer.

It feels to me like people are simply approaching her…

That's fair. I apologize that I didn't include the context of your full quote. The reason I bring it up is your mention of Grayson/Hernandez/Plunkett (particularly Hernandez, who often gets pilloried online for daring to write about social issues in the industry.)

Op-eds are pretty standard practice, though.

There's…