The title of the video was a bit misleading. It focused on a single character, rather than characters. Although, I do hope more videos like this are produced. It has been a primary criticism of her efforts to not show both sides and this was a good start. Although, Maybe there just aren't a lot of good examples that fit her point of view to work with.
It's the name of the series. As the OP says, this video is the debut of that series.
And I think this is exactly the point that she is trying to address: that you think having a female protagonist requires very specific reasons - and all the reasons you list are just about selling the game, because somehow the developers can't simply want a female protagonist. If the game had a male protagonist, you likely wouldn't even think about reasons, it's just the default, even in games where it really doesn't matter.
To be fair, the person didn't say it requires very specific reasons to make a female protagonist, but that developers have their reasons. And while the person indeed listed only financial reasons, it's sort of true, unfortunately. Whether the reason is related to financial matters, or simply about a will to be conscious about that the protagonist can be female just fine too, there is almost always some reason. This is because the assumption that the hero is male isn't just on the player side, but it's also on the developer side. When a developer starts to create a game and thinks of the protagonist, the default gender for that hero will, very very likely, be male (this might not be true for everyone, but I strongly believe it's like that for the vast majority, because as the person you quoted said, that's how it has generally been for thousands of years in humanity's history).
This obviously doesn't mean it's a bad thing to fight that and make the conscious decision to make the character female . On the contrary, if we want to get rid of the assumption, we need to make more female characters. It will still take time, but when we get really used to it, we can get rid of the default male assumption.
My question was laughable? That is an attack, especially since my question was in good faith.
I'm reasonable, especially when I'm wrong, but what happened common courtesy?
@Dog Problems: Being a gamer does have an effect, though. I never said or implied it invalidated her opinion, either. Only enhanced it. And I'm not that one guy. I'm an interested party sharing his opinion and asking a question.
I'll just stay out of these threads. Too much tension, maybe.
Nobody called your question laughable, but the person called the word "hardcore" used with the word gamer laughable.
Honestly, no offense, I think you might be imagining some of that tension. These threads can be a bit tense sometimes because of gamergate being an actual thing and so many people ready to attack Sarkeesian or undermine her in any possible way or whoever talks about social issues in games. But really, when you look at this thread, it's fairly chill. No need to take everything so seriously.
Regardless though, it's very unfortunately that you feel this way.
Sorry I'm still a noob here and multiquotes are a little beyond my attention threshold. Please know that I fully respect your points, I'm not dismissing them or anything.
Anyway, I agree that there are gender stereotypes, and therefore we perceive the character as a male. I'm not sure that there is any problem in particular with that, though. Both men and women should both be given the same amount of respect. I just don't see that big of an issue here.
I'm not trying to say she's making a mountain out of a molehill, but I mean, I remember myself in college writing papers and making allusions to other works that probably didn't actually have a lot in common with the point of my paper despite a few transitory superficial similarities. At the time, I would agree with my professor that better examples could be made.
With this video I simply feel like this is a similar situation. It's done with earnest, but I'm not sure that this is entirely a gender stereotypes game.
When I look at the game and the character, despite being female, I have no problem with the character. I don't stop playing the game, and I even think it's perfectly normal and believable. I perhaps might just be looking at this from my own limited point of view, but I can't imagine that there'd be many other people who would take offense to this either. I certainly can't imagine anyone saying "this is silly", or "unrealistic" or anything like that because indeed like history we do have examples of courageous females, along with barbarous males, and many other tropes both positive and negative.
I think my problem with this whole commentary is that I personally don't see females unsuitable for the role, and so I find Anita's vision to be somewhat overly scrutinizing. It's just a game with a character and clever references and story.
Or maybe it's more subtle than I imagine. Admittedly I haven't actually played the game. But there have been games where I've stopped and thought, "this is a gender commentary". I just don't really see this being one of them.
I guess the question I need to answer is whether or not having a female character follows with gender commentary, or whether it's that the character is dressed as a male?
I don't know.
In itself it's not really that big a problem that there is the assumption that protagonists are male by default. However, it does quite heavily tie into multiple things in our society, that hold us back from reaching equality between genders. But that's quite a large topic and I could write an essay on it, so I won't touch it that much here (going to sleep anyway after this).
One direct problem regarding it though, is that women (and also other groups than white straight males) might and often do feel excluded because there aren't anywhere near that many good characters representing their gender, race or sexuality.
I don't think anyone would think of anything like "this is silly" when they learn that the character is female. But hopefully, it might make someone examine why they had the assumption that it was male and think about the whole subject more openly. That's (part of the reason) why the game is also gender commentary.
