The Hidden Side of Progress: A Look at Sexism in the Modern Gaming Industry
I came across something yesterday that really disturbed me and caused me to look back on the gaming industry and how we're missing the forest for the trees.
I'll be making a fully in depth post about said upsetting topic later, but it was an IGN article from 2002 about the game, Mary Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16, I'll briefly talk about later in this post.
That and the release of the Epstein files, the connections to Second Life, Bobby Kotick (the whole Blizzard situation in general) and more paint a disturbing picture for me. The same companies that try to appeal to women, queer and girl gamers, that claim to be 'woke', that remove 'sexism' from their games. These companies don't actually care and, in my tinfoil hat opinion, they have taken the original complaints laid out by Sarkeesian and warped them into a sort of toxic feminism. They use that to claim some moral high-ground to try and get people to buy their games that are struggling in every other catagory (quality-wise) because they're nothing but greedy and lay off their talent left and right. Meanwhile, the author of that IGN review, Chris Roper, has faced zero repercussions and is working on 'empowering' games with female leads like The Last of Us: Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima for Sony/Playstation.
When I speak of this 'toxic gamer feminism' I want to be very clear, I am not anti-feminist, I am a woman who has been gaming since I was 5, I fully support (mostly indie because its genuine) feminists games and inclusive games. 100% full stop.
That being said how do I define this toxic feminism? Oh the best kind, the kind where we only focus on looks and how men view us sexually.
'The writing is bad' -> its an empowered feminist lead! Why aren't you happy?!
'It's not passing the Bechdel test' -> We have romance though! Look at how hot the male companions are!
'Larger breasts aren't inherently sexual and it's unrealistic and exclusionary for every woman to be have small breasts' -> There's no boob armor though, take that chuds! We're so progressive!
Obviously these are a bit exaggerated but not by that much to be honest. In fact I could probably find reviews and articles with this exact language if I gave enough of a damn to dig for it.
Like I said, forest for the trees, they focus on how virtuous they are for doing things we never asked for. They stir up discord between male and female gamers that need not exist to the extent it does (it's quite sexist to assume all male gamers are sexualizing and oppressive towards women especially when not all men are cisgender and may have faced misogyny themselves / homophobia is an equally pressing issue that effects men in gaming similarly to how sexism affects women). And if you don't agree with their interpretation of what fictional women are supposed to be and act like, they try to lump you in with the men they claim to hate while secretly protecting those men behind the scenes.
I grew up on IMVU, Second Life, Pixie Hollow, GirlsGoGames, the Sims, Bratz, and many others. That was the core foundation of my aesthetic preferences in a virtual world. Makeup, beauty, fashion these have been dominated by the feminine among us for a long time. Growing up I never saw those things and thought 'oh man, guys might jerk off this, better change what I like' I saw them and thought 'wow that's really cool, I can't believe you made those work together, I love your aesthetics'. Changing what you like, or how you dress a virtual character because of how men might perceive women because of it, or because they might find it sexually pleasing is no better than saying women need to cover up to avoid harassment in my eyes.
By taking Sarkeesian's comments and trying to bluntly apply them without (imo) understanding it, they have excluded even other feminists, queer people and women. No group of people is a monolith with the same thought and opinions. I don't think Lara Croft or Bayonetta are exclusively male sexual fantasies, I don't think fashionable yet unrealistic armor needs to be changed because it wouldn't offer proper boob support in real life, I don't think female specific animations or higher pitched voices are inherently sexist. So while I agree with her on many things, I find many of her complaints to be pedantic and/or subjective and unfortunately those are what the industry has latched onto.
I also feel like it has sanitized stories of women and their suffering in and of itself which is just... such a cop out. Compare Dragon Age: Origins to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, if Origins came out today we likely wouldn't have the broodmother and Hespith, we wouldn't have Shiani and the alienage, Flemeth would just be a strict mother, Sten and Oghren would be unrecognizable despite the growth your player can cause in them, and I doubt the Dalish quest line would have seen the light of day. Now instead of even attempting to cover these very difficult and nuanced subjects that make up a woman's fears and experience in life and how they are discriminated against, they sweep it under the rug and pat themselves on the back for being so very progressive. There are different genres of games for a reason, there's no need to shy away from heavy topics entirely. It's also something that exposes people to these topics in a way that's more personal since they're relating to the character, this isn't a blanket statement but I've seen more than one discussion where someone's eyes were opened because of roleplay.
Now that I've discussed the trees... let's talk about the forest.
It's 2002, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are 16 years old. A branded game is released (MKA Sweet 16). Let's see a few snippets from IGN's review of said game:
Disgusting. Disgraceful. Who authorized this? What kind of work culture allows this to occur? How was the man who wrote this [3/10 Gods Hand, Chris Roper] still employed at IGN for 10 years after this? Why is he still employed at Sony/Playstation with credits on 50+ of their so called 'progressive' games. Oh and IGN? They've been covering it up, I've counted no fewer than 4 edits since it was originally posted, each one becoming more watered down until it was basically re-written entirely as of 2023 with no mention of what the real reason was.
How can you virtue signal while covering up your own sexist filth, its not even entirely deleted because all your edits are all individual pages you can still access, I didn't even need the archive you sloppy buffoons. As long as you search with google and not your built in search they are still there lol. You only changed it because you had to, that's why it's got progressively more sanitized as time went on and you didn't just fucking rewrite it in 2012 or earlier when you first started making edits. So I question the entire organization, the work culture, and I will never take them seriously ever again. Likewise I will never buy another Sony product until they address this.
And that's only the tip of the iceberg. You could make a 10 part mini series on what happened with Blizzard, so I'm not even touching that, but please do look it up. It is vile. The cherry on top is that Bobby Kotick was rubbing shoulders with Epstein himself. Are we surprised? No.
Kerri Moynihan, we have not forgotten, may your soul rest in peace.
In 2012 there was a Street Fighter x Tekken Cross Assault competition (reality show where the lived together and the prize was 25k), Miranda Pakozdi (one of only two female participants) was subjected to repeated disturbing sexual harassment from her team coach that included focusing the tournaments web camera on different parts of her body, asking her to remove her shirt, asking her questions about her bra size and more. She ended up having to leave the competition on day 5 because neither Capcom nor the events organizers apparently saw an issue with this while it was livestreamed over several days. Capcom later released the standard PR statement. Aris Bakhtanians, the aforementioned coach, went on to be a commentator for Tekken tournaments and championships until 2019, he is now a streamer who still has a platform. In essence, he too faced zero repercussions and went on to continue his involvement with Capcom and Tekken.
There is also a recurring issue for women, especially on the business side, where they face legitimate safety issues at conventions. Are treated unfairly and have meetings turn into dates, or a deals come with special favors, attending a companies after party might land them drugged and in the hospital like twitch streamer Sam Seum at Pax East / 2020.
And there are even more examples of workplace discrimination, exclusion of women from even being able to compete in tournaments, harassment against cosplayers, online bullying in fps games (I played competitive Valorant as a Battle Sage main with a pink loadout and mic on for 2 years, felt like leaving an abusive relationship when I stopped playing. I also did party finder raiding in MMOs and never had issues despite it being way higher stakes and more stressful which is why I'm, singling out FPS games for having a SHIT playerbase.)
There are real tangible issues with misogyny, racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, etc in the gaming community. Ones that lead to lives cut short, ones that lose people their jobs or promotions, ones that cause people real life trauma and harm, ones that genuinely exclude women from participating or even being safe. And to add on, now, whenever you search for say 'sexism in the gaming community' you're met with the same meaningless opinion pieces while the real issues get buried more and more every day. It feels so intentional I would laugh if it weren't so horrible.
And while those issues remain entirely unaddressed beyond meaningless settlements or dull PR statements (that are often deleted within a year or two while other pages and posts from 20 years prior are still around), those same companies turn around and claim to cater to and support women and beg for our money so they can fund the paychecks of men like Chris Roper.
It was never about actually fighting against sexism in gaming, it was about the fact that capitalist corporations and investors expect infinite growth and men are only 50% of the population. And I find it humorous that the only things they like changing are the things that require less work for them, making both body types share armor, animations and grunting sounds and giving watered down stories while you fire your writers saves a lot of money doesn't it? Sailing the high seas was supposed to be about saving money, not a moral imperative.
We need to see the forest, we need to stop trusting corporations just because they start agreeing with us, we need to focus on tangible sexism and discrimination, not focusing on the players who might think a dress in game shows too much cleavage and is therefor sexist because that is exactly what the corporations want.
A/N: For the sake of length, I have not expanded on edge cases or genuine sexist/pedophilic depictions of women in games that very much do exist. Like I said, I agree with Sarkeesian on a lot of her points. I wrote this with mostly AAA games, especially recent ones, in mind. I was a bit angered while writing this so I apologize. This is also not trying to silence discussion from individuals or say that anyone's opinions are invalid because they don't align with own personal opinions, this is a criticism of corporations.
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