Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games

The first video from Anita Sarkeesian’s kickstarter project “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” is up and running, covering the “Damsel in Distress” trope.

You might remember that when Sarkeesian started this Kickstarter project, there was a huge surge of harassment directed at her for even starting the research, before she had even expressed her ideas on the subject [Slate article: Online Misogyny: Can’t Ignore It, Can’t Not Ignore It]

Sarkeesian’s story is a doozy, by the way. She started a Kickstarter page to raise money to make a documentary about the tropes used by video game designers to portray female characters. She hadn’t expressed an opinion about video games yet, but simply by stating that she would at some point in the future do so, she had to endure an absolute avalanche of misogynist abuse from men who hoped they could silence her before her too-scary-to-be-heard opinion could be voiced. Every access point they could exploit was used to try to get to her, especially her YouTube page. Her Wikipedia page was repeatedly vandalized with lies, links out to porn sites, and pornographic pictures.* Eventually, Wikipedia shut it down. Unfortunately for the misogynists, this sort of thing generated a lot of sympathy for Sarkeesian, and she was able to fundraise well beyond her original goals. Like, more than $90,000 beyond what she originally wanted to raise.

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So much to blog, so little time

I actually have things to write about lately, but haven’t geared up to do it. Lets see, where were we when we last tuned in? Oh, yeah, I was probably playing Packrat. Well, the gloss has come off that Facebook game somewhat, as I got collected most of the cards I could get a hold of easily and was stuck gold mining endlessly and hoping the rare cards would pop up for me, which they weren’t. It didn’t help that the developers changed several rules of the game and it’s not quite as fun, and pretty uneven on the fairness scale. And discovering that there are only 100 of the very rare Leopard card that once popped up for me but I couldn’t pick up due to a glitch in the game was disheartening. If only 100 people can win, it kinda sucks.

We’re far behind in wedding planning, but we finally got registered a couple of places. (They’re listed at our wedding page; you can get there from the image on the right.) Of course, we still need to add lots of items to the registries.

Stephanie went to Wyandotte, Michigan for a figure skating competition. We initially thought I’d go with her, but decided not to farm out the dog, so I stayed home and ran some errands and went (gasp) wedding dress shopping. Yes, I’m wearing a dress to our wedding. Don’t act all crazy. It’s the one and only day I will. I can be a princess on my wedding day, even if i don’t want to be any other day. (Okay, I actually own a tiara, so I act like a princess on other days, too. But just while vacuuming.)

Anyways, you may already know this, but wedding dress shopping can be crazy. I only found one thing I liked, and they didn’t have it in my size. You have to make an appointment for a sales person, and there was a 45 minute wait for dressing rooms. At one of the other places, you had to register with them to even set foot in the door. All I wanted to do was look, but they wouldn’t let me. I was planning on going to a few more places, but I think I’ve run down an alternative that, if it works as planned, will complement Stephanie’s dress nicely.

There are lots of other things we need to get in order, but if I start making a list here, I’m get an upset stomach with worry, so I won’t.

In other news – SJR7 – the marriage discrimination amendment is effectively dead at the Statehouse. On Friday, Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City refused to hear the bill in committee, meaning that it’s dead for this legislative session, and they’d have to take at least 4 years to get it through the Statehouse again.

This still doesn’t mean we can get legally married in Indiana, because there is a law on the books saying we can’t. It just means that the state can’t double-plus super deny us marriage. So, you know, that’s nice. Or something. Clearly, we’re getting married anyway. (See above shocking paragraph about me wearing a dress!) We just can’t get a piece of paper from the government saying so, which just seems sort of arbitrarily bitchy of them, when you look at it that way. But the nice Canadian government will give us a piece of paper saying we’re married, which is why we’re honeymooning in Toronto. Those Canadians are darned nice. And Massachusetts will recognized that we’re married with the piece of paper from Canada, but only if we live there. Also California, Vermont and a couple other states will say we’re civil-unioned. Which is like marriage, but without all the same legal rights. So, not really like marriage at all, but basically our own water fountain. Yay! At least we can get a drink. Except not here in Indiana. We don’t even get our own water fountains.

Whatever. I’m thinking pink and lavender gladiolas for my bouquet. What do you think?

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Rumor: Katamari for Wii?

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The rumor is flying on all the gaming sites out there on the interweb tubes, but the article has been pulled from the original source:
Beautiful Katamari is set to be released in the USA on October 17th for $39.99 on the PS3 (with SIXAXIS support) and XBOX 360. The Wii version will arrive shortly after on November 14th on the Wii for $29.99.
God, I hope that’s true – that would tip me off of my current “which platform to get next?” dilemma over into getting a Wii.

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links for 2006-12-08

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Video Games I’d Love to Play

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I’ve picked these up several times in the store, but they’re PC games, and I have a Mac, so I haven’t bought ’em. I wish they made more games like this for the Xbox — I tend to not be interested in the “kill kill kill, die die die” shooting games, but that’s most of what you find for Xbox players. In retrospect, I think one of the other gaming consoles would have been a better choice for me. PC owners can play W888 games instead. Visit levelupcasino.com if you would like to give casino gaming a try. And if you want to win exciting prizes, check out slot gacor today! Stephanie’s offered several times to let me play games on her PC, but I hate to monopolize her machine for something as frivolous as video games. Check out slot gacor games here.

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie’s world-famous novel, And Then There Were None, is brought to the PC with all of its original baffling suspense! Ten people, strangers to each other, are invited to a lavish estate on an island. Through a recording, their mysterious host accuses each of his “guests” of murder and proceeds to exact “justice.” The tension mounts as, one-by-one, the number of people are reduced through the ingenious plotting of the unseen killer. Prepare to play the video game based on the best-selling murder mystery of all time! This game includes the original book.

Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave
In Nancy Drew: The Creature Of Kapu Cave, Nancy travels to Hawaii as a research assistant for Dr. Quigley Kim to determine why the population of native caterpillars has exploded. The Hardy Boys, on a separate covert operation, are also visiting — and both stumble across the mystery of the Hilihili research compound and its evil vibes. Some believe it’s linked to the legend of Kane ?Okala. Local legend has it that a long time ago, a man was sacrificed to the hungry volcano to appease it. Kane ?Okala, or “the rough-skinned man,” later escaped from the volcano, but he was scarred for life with a rough-skinned and frightening appearance. When Nancy arrives at Camp Quigley, she sees a monster ravaging the camp, and soon discovers that Dr. Quigley is missing! Could the monster she saw be Kane ?Okala? She’ll have to team up with the Hardy Boys to find out!

Mystery Case Files: Huntsville
Crime spree baffles Huntsville police! Do you have a keen eye for details? See if you can locate enough hidden clues to solve the crimes and become a Master Detective! For more immersive games similar to this, you can click links like 해외배팅사이트.

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Video Game encouraging killing gay people

A description of the new “Left Behind” video game, based on the series of books, the game will be release in October 0f 2006, just in time for Christmas. The synopsis is from the “Talk to Action” website. The game has been previewed at video game exhibitions.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

If the purpose of your life is to kill or convert me, you’re in for a very short and unhappy existence, people.

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Destroy All Humans

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EB Games finally had the Xbox game “Destroy All Humans” on sale used when I went in there this weekend, so I got it. It’s loads of fun. You’re an alien tasked with invading the planet earth and gathering human DNA, which contains the pure DNA pattern for your alien race, which has degraded over the years. You start by invading a farm (It’s a first-person shooter game) — the Turnipseed Farm — and using brain scans, telekinetic powers, a zapping gun and a few anal probes, you knock off the humans and steal their brain stems. And you throw a few cows around, too. Then you move on to knocking over the state fair and luring the fair queen to your saucer to get “probed.” Its a lot of fun so far; easy to figure out and play, and follows control conventions of other games I’ve played, with a lot of creative flair. Definitely a keeper.

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World of Warcraft and GLBT Guilds

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Interesting… Blizzard Entertainment, the company that produces the World of Warcraft MMORPG is penalizing players for identifying themselves as gay in the game, saying that they are doing it for the “protection” of gay players:

While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a ‘GLBT friendly’ guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise.

So rather than deal with the people who do the harassing, they’re just not letting gay people be openly gay inside the game.

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Wild Divine

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When I first started looking at this bio-feedback game called Wild Divine I thought it was pretty hokey, (I tend to take Deepak Chopra with a grain of salt) but watching the demo made me think it might be pretty fun to play around with. You have a machine hooked up to your fingertips that measures your bio feedback, and when you’ve reached a meditative state you move to next levels in the game. Visually, it’s nicely done with a lot of cool graphics and things to explore.

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