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[Ted Belmont]

[Classic]

If you keep this shit up Thad's going to ground us all for a week.

[Royal☭]

One can only hope.

[Joxam]

He's gonna turn this car around and then we'll never go to Disneyland :(

[Ted Belmont]

Another take on Tomb Raider.

The game’s not Tomb Raider. It’s I Spit on your Tomb.

[Beat Bandit]

Is there a name for the trope where a respectable female character gets turned in to a supermodel for a sequel?

See: Ashley Williams, Shaundi from Saint's Row.

[Bal]

Did Ashley have a different model between games? I remember her looking the same, though I did barely see her. I think Shaundi was always supposed to be hot, but she was a dirty hippy in SR2, and all cleaned up gangster girl in SR3, plus new engine.

I can't think of any examples that aren't, like, generational gaps, or new artists. Though I'm sure it's happened.

[Ted Belmont]

TVTropes calls it "Fanservice Pack".

[Bal]

Oh man, as soon as I saw the picture I remembered like a hundred examples from Namco alone. NEVERMIND.

[Brentai]

Storywise Shaundi actually managed to close her legs a bit between SR3 and SR2.  The redesign is more or less due to the fact that everybody looks completely different in SR3, which I guess is an extended gag about the fluidity of people's appearances throughout the series.

[Beat Bandit]

More than a Damsel in a Dress: A Response

Another opinion on the damsel in distress.

[Mongrel]

A little repetitive and she's trying a bit too hard to use overwrought language (sometimes it feels like you're in an HR seminar) which basically amounted to filler, but I thought it was really good when she cited factual data and invited Anita to do the same.

[Classic]

That response not only features glaring spelling and arithmetic errors ("rite" is not right; 7-5.5 million is not 2 million.) Which annoys the shit out of me, but more importantly it misrepresents the assertions of the video it's commenting on.

A few major "misconceptions" being rebutted by the following:

• It's a series called "Tropes Vs. Women in Videogames" it doesn't make sense to discuss non-examples of a trope unless they better define what the trope is and how those tropes portray women. The "other side" of this discussion (if it could be said to exist because this is ostensibly an educational video) is not the listing of under-represented positive female dramatis personae.
• Sarkeesian refuses the idea that a woman being in distress overrides any positive traits at about 14:45, and at about 12:45, and implicitly in the opening when she suggests that enjoying media does not preclude criticizing its problematic elements (nor does Sarkeesian suggest it should be retired in the video, though she does complain about its ubiquity).
• KiteTales doesn't seem to understand what a character or story arc is, or how by the game focusing on the player character and not the DiD's struggles in captivity the narrative is implicitly making the DiD's struggle or anxiety irrelevant. It's also ambiguous whether or not KiteTales understands that the trope being invoked regardless of the motivations of the other dramatis personae (DP for short) around the DiD. Granted, Sarkeesian's definition of DiD is slightly different than the one implicit at TVTropes (linked, because I'm in a foul mood and want you to waste your time) in that she describes it as requiring the DiD is saved by an outside DP.

I don't think I need to reiterate how "Its goal is to make money! It's not sexist/racist/homophobic!" is a great crock on it's own.
Nor how, by misrepresenting the assertions of the video KiteTales is devaluing Sarkeesian's work and research. The response seeks a source of offense while at the same time condemning Sarkeesian as doing the same for discussing DiD in the first place.

The editing glitz and pretense of being respectful are nice and put the video way above a lot of the other horseshit "rebuttals" rolling around the youTube scene, but it's still complaining about Tropes Vs. Women being something that it is not.

[Mongrel]

I don't think I need to reiterate how "Its goal is to make money! It's not sexist/racist/homophobic!" is a great crock on it's own.

Haha, yeah, that was pretty bullshit, as was the "Well I have a different opinion, so clearly there is a wide range of opinions on this issue" statement.

I think Kite's premise of "Start with data and then make assumptions make conclusions" was actually quite good, but I suppose she doesn't actually follow through with that herself.

[Büge]

KiteTales doesn't seem to understand what a character or story arc is, or how by the game focusing on the player character and not the DiD's struggles in captivity the narrative is implicitly making the DiD's struggle or anxiety irrelevant.

This was a big red flag that popped up around two minutes into the video. It became clear after this that her argument against TvW was built on sand.

[Classic]

@Mongrel:
The problem with that is this video is ostensibly educational.

[Not diverging from the topic] is actually good classroom practice my mom says. She's a teacher and she says that its best to only deal with one aspect of something at once for people to learn properly.

That's the rough equivalent of begging people to "teach the controversy" over evolutionary theory (implying, that there is an academic controversy). Alright, to be fair, that is slightly hyperbolic. A better analogy would be suggesting talking about Haeckel's drawings, Nebraska and Piltdown Man, and the rampant misinformation bullshit of Owens in the first lecture of Biology 101. Or complaining that the first lecture doesn't provide the exhaustive list of 200+ years of findings confirming evolutionary theory.


Worse, as far as I can tell, KiteTales is arguing that Sarkeesian's video is not persuasive because "it's not really that bad"

the "side" of, "shut ups!" and "nu-uhs!" and "this oppression isn't that bad!" isn't being massively represented by every tweet and response video.

Or (more likely) because Sarkeesian hasn't provided the "assumptions" that go into her worldview (e.g. there was a thing called "The Patriarchy" that conferred privilege to men over women and its legacy still exists even if its overt mechanisms do not).

[Mongrel]

This was a big red flag that popped up around two minutes into the video. It became clear after this that her argument against TvW was built on sand.

That raises an interesting question.

Say you still want to make an old-style game where character A is kidnapped and character B has to rescue them. I mean, that can be a valid motivation. It seems a bit silly to just ban kidnappings forever in video games, or to retain them, but invert things so that only men are kidnapped and recused by women. So in what ways could you show someone (male or female) being kidnapped and have them still be an objective for the main protagonist, but still give the victim agency? How much time would a game need to spend to flesh out that character?

It seems like if the victim is going to remain the secondary character, then sequences where escape is attempted aren't really the best idea (it could be frustrating to the player to have to play out a pointless escape attempt which they know will fail).

[Classic]

I don't get why you're engaging in this "Ubiquitous vs. Banned" binary.

Anyway, I'm still annoyed at how SMBWii doesn't use the Doki Doki Mario 2 character differences in its design. Bowser could just as easily have stolen an inanimate macguffin. I've taken to asking myself, "Would this instance of DiD be dramatically changed by replacing the Distressee with a macguffin?"

[Büge]

It seems like if the victim is going to remain the secondary character, then sequences where escape is attempted aren't really the best idea (it could be frustrating to the player to have to play out a pointless escape attempt which they know will fail).

It doesn't have to fail. It could be an integral part of the game. The hostage might sabotage the enemy's fortress or escape on their own and meet the rescuer with valuable intel, or the hostage busts out and then the rescuer sneaks in to find an empty cell and then the rescuer gets captured and as the former hostage, you have to use your knowledge of the enemy's fortress to break back in and rescue the rescuer!

You could make it a two-player thing with split-screen or take turns or something.

[A²]

It seems like if the victim is going to remain the secondary character, then sequences where escape is attempted aren't really the best idea (it could be frustrating to the player to have to play out a pointless escape attempt which they know will fail).

It doesn't have to fail. It could be an integral part of the game. The hostage might sabotage the enemy's fortress or escape on their own and meet the rescuer with valuable intel, or the hostage busts out and then the rescuer sneaks in to find an empty cell and then the rescuer gets captured and as the former hostage, you have to use your knowledge of the enemy's fortress to break back in and rescue the rescuer!

You could make it a two-player thing with split-screen or take turns or something.

if i recall there was a very old co-op western (both as in, 'made in the west' and 'cowboys') game that tried that.

it wasn't every good.