Anita's Attack On Dying Light

Pardon the tardiness for the topic of this blog. I am trying to get back into writing gaming blogs, and this has been an issue that I wanted to speak about for a while now.

At the end of January, Anita Sarkeesian attacked Dying Light with a tweet. In this tweet, she stated that Dying Light has a Damsel In Distress storyline, and developers should be embarrassed to still employ such a narrative, it being 2015 and all.

A week ago, I came across the scene she was referring to. If you haven't yet finished Dying Light, or plan to play it, be advised. There are ***SPOILERS***. So, here we go.

Anita's claim to Dying Light's damsel trope storyline is when the game's villain Rais kidnaps Jade and the game's hero Crane has to go rescue her. Without any given context, sure, this seems like a trope. "Helpless" woman character can't defend herself, so the strong masculine hero has to save the day, but Anita is a poor critic, because she'll never give proper context to anyone. She's unfairly vilified the game, and now her audience will steer clear of it. So, let me paint the entire picture.

To start things off, within the first five to ten minutes of the game, Crane himself is the one saved by Jade. Crane parachutes into Harran, the game's city, and is attacked by thugs and bitten by a zombie. Jade and her partner come to the rescue. The partner dies holding off the zombie horde, and Jade drags Crane to safety. Yes, the "damsel in distress" is the one saving the hero first, right off the bat.

So, later on in the game, Crane finds Rais and is forced to work for him, Crane eventually is captured and thrown into a pit full of ravenous zombies and has to fight for his life. Managing to kill every last monster in the pit, Rais jumps down from on high to finish off Crane himself, but it goes south. Crane chops off Rais's hand during the struggle, and runs off.

Over the course of the game, Crane begins to start caring more for Jade, especially since he felt partly responsible for the death of her brother. Rais kidnaps Jade in an attempt to lure Crane into a new trap, and he utters a quote "You took something of mine," referring to the amputated hand, "so now I take something of yours." Actually, let me just link Anita tweeting the quote.

She also follows it up with this complaint:

That Dying Light quote is damning because regardless of her strengths she is still reduced to an object in a competition between men.

Let's focus on the "competition" part of her complaint, because this is where the problem occurs. This isn't a competition between men. This is an act of revenge. She is not some object that the two are fighting over. Rais has no interest in conquering her for his own desires, to enslave her, rape her or any of that. He could have just as easily kidnapped Crane's brother if he was in the game for the exact same purpose: to inflict pain upon Crane by taking someone he cares about.

To be fair, the writing of that scene wasn't very original, as Rais continues to say, "...will you be a man and save the maiden?" So at first glance, it does just seem to be a stereotypical case of "damsel in distress". Let's continue on, though, because I still have my brush out and the paint is still wet.

After Crane rescues Jade (and again, it could have been his brother for the same purpose), they're locked in a room with wave after wave of zombies. Here's where the "damsel in distress" trope is no longer an issue. During the whole fight, NOT ONCE do you need to rescue Jade. Her character manages to hold her own.

Following the final wave of zombies, it's soon discovered that she was bitten earlier, but was not given any Antizen, the drug that fends off zombification for a limited amount of time. Crane's last dose was quite some time ago, so he and Jade are beginning to turn at near the same time. Rais, toying with the two characters, throws them a vial of Antizen, and now it would be expected that Crane would give it to Jade, but that wasn't what happened. He wanted to, but Jade refused, and fought Crane and injected him with the Antizen, sacrificing her own life to save his. Then, even as she's turning, she fights off a new wave of zombies and saves Crane yet again, fighting until the last second she turns.

So where exactly is this Damsel In Distress storyline? Even if the game did use that trope, the focus of the story isn't even about Jade. It was always about saving the city and the people within it. Jade was just a small portion of that. Let's also not forget that Jade not only saved Crane once, but three times. THREE times, in comparison to Crane's one. So, what's the opposite of that? Dude in distress?

And also, there are plenty of "dudes" in distress all throughout Dying Light that need help fending off zombies, thugs, even running across town to find their spare pair of glasses. Everyone in the town is helpless and you save everyone. When Jade, a woman, gets kidnapped, suddenly it becomes a major issue, regardless of the fact that she saves Crane at the beginning and near the end of the game.

So why did Anita Sarkeesian attack Dying Light? Because a woman needed rescuing. She would not have had an issue with the game at all, if again, it was Crane's brother, kidnapped for the exact same purpose of exacting revenge on a hero who injured the villain.

Anita Sarkeesian has ignored a very large part of the game, and actually sends the wrong message with her tweet. Apparently, it's okay to be a man rescued by a woman, and not a woman being rescued by a man. Men can get captured (and Crane does twice), but women can't. It honestly makes me question whether or not the trope is even a bad thing. Replace the damsel with a family member and it's still an incentive to go rescue them. You help the people you care about it, and that's a good thing, right? So why does Anita continue to try to make this a negative thing?

I would like to close this by expressing a thought on the game's ending. I did enjoy the game overall, but the ending was a real let down for me. When you finally confront Rais at the end of the game, control is taken away from you. You should have been given a fight worthy of the amount of time you invested in this game (and if you spent the time doing all the side stuff, you'd see it was a pretty big game). Instead, the final confrontation is reduced to nothing more than a QTE cutscene. This is the same issue I had with Shadow of Mordor's end boss fight, and I've been hearing it's an issue with The Order: 1886. In my opinion, this kind of lazy game designing is more troublesome than making use of tropes, because it's anti-climatic and fails to deliver an exciting moment of gaming to be remembered for all time.

So, if I was going to tweet about Dying Light, this is what my tweet would have looked liked.

Anyone still cares about garbage feminists have to say about gaming?

Thanks for the spoiler warning, couldn´t you have at least written "spoilers in the tweet"

But who cares what Anita thinks or tweets, game developers will keep making their games and the only ones paying attention to her is the people in the indie scene who sees a chance for a bigger audience.

Eh. It was just something I wanted to talk about. You are free to ignore the post.

If you are referring to the first tweet I linked, there were no spoilers therein. When I mentioned there would be spoilers, that pretty much covered the rest of the blog since I never included an ***END SPOILERS***

Who cares?

Just exit the thread. How hard is that?

@JustPlainLucas: you need to learn that nobody cares

The story is pure garbage and is full of stereotypical tropes. Most games and movies are swimming with them, though.

She's just an attention whore.

I've never understood what's "wrong" with the "damsel in distress" story archetype. Not all women are strong people, and not all of them could defend themselves against kidnappers of significantly greater strength.

She's a blight on the world. Woman like her are currently in every industry, trying for the politically correct route, though most often it has nothing to do with political correctness, but rather their own personal agenda's.

Well said.

I guess she shouldn't play Resident Evil 4 then lol.

this game is freaken sweet.

Lol. Next joke please.

Both of you need to learn to ignore shit you don't care about. The fact that both of you say "Who cares?" yet both of you are in here says that you care to some degree as you clicked on the thread to read what it was about. What else did you think this post would be about, if you already knew that "no one cares" about it? Sorry, but I'm a little sick of this attitude on the Internet. If you don't care, then shut up.

Yeah, but who cares? Haha just messin' with ya. :P

but, who cares?

if you are sick of this attitude then get out of the internet because i have news for you, you can't do a thing about it.

Oh my GOD! those supporting tweets are making my eyes bleed!

People who do want Anita to say what every she want since it is the only way she can win. People who want non--gamers to have a negative view point of gaming and want to show the non-gamers the other side. People who want good games.

They won't bother you if you just ignore them and stop responding to them.

You're right. It just annoyed me because I finally built up the motivation to write a blog after not writing one in months. I got excited to get my first reply notification, opened it up and it was "Who cares?"

Not always. The only way for Anita to win is for gamers to ignore her.

Referring to criticism of a game as an attack. Dear gamers, it's 2015 aren't you embarrassed by this yet?!

Anyway, I haven't played this game yet and can't speak to its story with any authority, but it sounds like the definition of the "damsel in distress" trope does happen in the game. This trope is not necessarily a bad thing, but tends to be lazy and trite, and can be a wee bit sexist. Context does matter there. Based on your description, I agree with you, Dying Light doesn't seem to be a particularly egregious use of the trope. It can take agency and power away from the character it happens to, but that doesn't seem to be much of an issue in this game.

Now I'm thinking about Raven's Cry, in which the protagonist is the one behaving like an irredeemable psychotic shitbag and the developer wants you to think the guy's being a badass while threatening and physically assaulting a woman and stabbing a guy for no good reason. Captain Christopher Raven. Man, what a piece of shit that game is. Feel bad for the people who made the environments, they did a good job.

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to write a real reply. I appreciate it.

Attack may have been too strong of a word, but that's how I viewed it. If she just said "Dying Light contains a Damsel in Distress trope", I may have left it alone. I will admit, by basic definition, that's exactly what that act was, but it's how Anita presented her criticism that I took issue with. She ignored everything else in the game and left out context completely. It went beyond mere criticism, and in my eyes, became an attack on the game as a whole. She also tried to guilt trip the developers in making them feel embarrassed by their storytelling, again, by ignoring the rest of the story. She knows her audience is hungry for the next game to latch on to and try to tear it apart and call it another piece of misogynistic trash.

I agree with you that the "damsel in distress" trope isn't necessarily bad, but it's being framed by Anita and her supporters as such. It's like a taboo, to never have a woman kidnapped and have a man go in and save her. But again, if it were any other male character taking her place, it wouldn't have been an issue. In fact a doctor is kidnapped and you have to go rescue him so it's not like it's only women that need rescuing. Also, how many times have we played a game where the president was abducted and we had to go rescue the president. But, he's the president, and he's a man, so obviously, he should be able to save himself! :P

I haven't played Raven's Cry, but I did watch the Jimquisition on it. It looked and sounded like a very awful game, and I don't think I'll ever understand why it was written in such a way.

As TvTropes.org says tropes are too they are not good or bad. They are just tools. The problem with Anita is that sh trying to hid her viewpoint into "Techno-babble" to make it look more that what it is.

What pisses me off is that Anita is taking a character heroic sacrifice and trying to turn it into a "male developer is attack female" message. The scene works even if Jade was a male in fact I think it would have been better into Jade and her brother switch places.

In Dying Light, Jade and Crane has both been infected. Crane want to inject the antizin (the drug keeping the bitten turned into zombie) into Jade because he was involved her brother death and was feeling guilty. Jade stole the antizin and and force the antizin into Crane because Crane has better contacts on the outside. It was not a damsel in distress but two humans stuck in a twisted form of the prisoner dilemma. It ending with a human making a choice that gives the best chances of save lives including children. It is not different from Spoke in Start Trek 2.

Should've just had the main character go " Tough shit" and see how much backlash would happen if you weren't sent to help.

There's also Jade's brother that you have to save. In fact, you probably spend more time saving guys than girls. The whole game is about saving people because, at least for that city, it's the fucking apocalypse....what kind of quests do you expect? You're gonna have to rescue someone, an there's a 50% chance that that someone is female.

But logic and reason are never welcome in these kinds of discussions, so beyond the cathartic aspects of writing a blog, there's little use in even arguing over it. You'll find yourself reiterating the same points only to have them completely ignored. For people like Anita, they thrive on creating controversy, using it to increase their visibility and fuel their income. In the end, this is Anita's career more than her cause...think of her like any politician - it's about staying on the stage more than anything else, which should make you immediately suspect anything that comes out of her mouth. She probably doesn't even buy into half of what she's shoveling.

We are not going to limit our games so that only men can be put into dire situations. **** you to whoever that applies.

Who could possible still take that bitch seriously anymore. lol

@JustPlainLucas Hmmm, why can't I quote your text?

Anyway, good job on the blog, although I would suggest you take on something a little more challenging next time. There's very little to actually discuss here. I mean, it's a tweet. You're countering an argument that isn't an argument. It's incredibly short-sighted and limited, which is, well, typically twitter. Anyone who takes anything anyone says on twitter at face value should be very critical of themselves.

But hey, to be the Sarkeesian of this thread: you know you don't actually control Jade, right? That's the whole problem. Sure, there might be a strong female character who saves the protagonist, but I can't play as her, which makes everything she does less of a big deal. You are not the woman saving the man. This is also why the dude in distress argument doesn't mean anything, because a dude saving a dude still means a dude is in the lead. If you were a woman saving a man, now that would actually be a dude in distress, but that hardly ever happens. And that's unfair and I want all games to actually have dudes in distress. ;-P

Look, the argument that you're constantly saving or killing dudes is irrelevant to Sarkeesian, because the person who's doing the saving and the killing is still a dude. Sure, men are being constantly saved and killed in videogames, but that's done by another man, which means it's not an actual role reversal. That in turn means that you can't use it as an argument against the fact that women are being victimized and mistreated. The vicitmization and mistreatment of men in videogames still happens because of another man.

So there are two things to consider: 1) you can't play as the woman saving the man and 2) a man killing or saving another man is not the same as a man killing or saving a woman or a woman killing or saving a man.

Because GS's formatting is the work of the devil. :P

Yeah, I know. Maybe if I can keep up the habit of blogging, I will tackle something a little more meatier.

Yes, I know you can't control Jade, but the point of the blog was to illustrate that the game wasn't entirely about a damsel in distress trope. Regardless of whether or not you have control of these characters, Jade still saves Crane more than Crane saves her. And a dude in distress is still a dude in distress regardless of who is saving him. If the main character was female and developed a lesbian relationship with Jade, Rais kidnapping her to get back at the heroine would still make Jade a damsel in distress.

Yes, I know it's irrelevant to Sarkeesian, and that's the whole problem. Sarkeesian never takes the entirety of a game into consideration when formulating her critiques against games. I mean, she didn't even understand what the character Bayonetta is about. All she got out of it was flaunted T&A. I know female gamers that LOVE women characters in full control of their sexuality. It's just annoying to hear Anita continuously try to win people over with such one-sided stances. I will admit that I would love to play more games with strong female leads saving/killing other dudes (enjoyed the shit out of Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge), but it also isn't inherently bad when game developers still want to make games with male leads. If ever given the opportunity to make a game, I will most likely make the character male, because I'm a male myself. It's just me relating to my own gender. It's no worse than giving a woman a chance to make a game who will most likely make the lead female.

I've considered those two things. 1) Jade was still a strong character, though. She was even nicknamed Scorpion because of her deadly fighting spirit. Even though she wasn't playable, she still saved you three times, and that should at least count for something. 2)The thing is, these are people in need regardless of gender. Even if you were a woman, you'd still be saving them. How does change anything? Lara Croft managed to save all her friends in Tomb Raider, which really is no different than Nathan Drake saving his in Uncharted. If the role of the hero in Dying Light was female, you'd still be doing the same thing: saving people. There are strong men. There are weak men. There are strong women. There are weak women. Strong people can sometimes have failings, while weak people can sometimes overcome incredible odds.

Thanks for the reply. :)

She can talk for all I care, I just enjoy seeing these wash up male developers just bow down to her will when she makes a statements on the feminist crap and when I see game developers give in and try to make there games less feminist, they are weak and pathetic just because she makes a statement when they can just do one thing, don't listen to her it's just that simple. I already play Dying Light and I just got pass the whole rescuing Jade yesterday so I can say that's less of the issue with the whole Damsel In Distress.

Does this woman have anything else to do with her life? If she wants to see oppression for what it really is, she should head for the Middle East or South Asia. Western women have it easy, trust me. They can vote, participate in politics, get married and divorced freely, dress how they wish, join the military, get an education, and a billion other things.

Saying that Western women are oppressed is a slap in the face to women who are actually oppressed. The fact that so many radical Western feminists spend their time male bashing and bitching about the portrayal of women in the media proves that they aren't oppressed, since they already have far more rights and privileges that many other women around the world could only dream of having. In other words, they're almost out of relevant issues to take on, so they resort to male bashing among other things out of boredom.

Feminism is hardly relevant in the West anymore, and it should be in places where it's actually needed. While the portrayal of women in Western media is an issue, it doesn't hold water compared to issues like women getting stoned to death for trying to get into an educational institute or not being able to vote or being forced into arranged marriages and prostitution. Western feminists need to realize how good they have it and advocate that women abroad get the same rights and privileges that they have.

i have already talked about this and these people are never satisfied

This, I think, is the only true tragedy. As bigger companies form their own aggressive online presence, court enthusiast press and Youtubers, the AAA scene ends up becoming more free than indie development, because indies can't really sweep their message all over the internet as effectively as bigger companies, which is all manner of fucked up.

So the only things that the SJWs have achieved are poisoning indie development (with few exceptions), tarnishing academia and all but destroying the liberal media's legitimacy.

@JustPlainLucas: if you don't like my opinion ur welcome to get over it

The real issue here is that everyone but gamers care. And you can already see it in full motion in games like DA Inquisition where all the women are boring and ordinary compared to prior games in the series and all to cater to these fools that don't even play games to begin with.

There are a bunch of articles from SJW's gloating over these changes like for example:

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/11/18/dragon-age-inquisitions-women-and-the-remarkable-ordinary/

In contrast this is the reaction from gamers:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/718650-dragon-age-inquisition/70615988

What opinion? Your post was a literal waste of space. You offered up nothing of value, so I have nothing to get over.

@JustPlainLucas: my opinion was a simple one, no one cares, srry if that got ur panties in a twist :D

How are the women in DA:I boring compared to previous games? Why is having gender diversity a bad thing?

If you don't like her, ignore her. Yeah, she's going to have her fans, but haters give her another platform. Anita's comments have zero effect on the success of the games she criticizes. People still buy Dying Light, GTA, Watch Dogs, and whatever. I'm pretty sure the money coming in is worth much more than her opinion.

@i-rock-socks: The only way to show you don't care is to not respond at all. (as you'll see when you make some half baked brainless reply to this post that can be summed up as "lol no ur stoopid lame me am right derp", and I never respond to it) Taking the time to reply to say you don't care is moronic and self defeating. In your case this little quote is sage advice...

"Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt"

Anyway, generic internet troll who will never amount to anything in life aside, I find it funny that person is always screaming about how terrible the damsel in distress trope is when she has made many thousands of dollars by turning herself into a damsel in distress in need of help in the form of monetary donations.

Cool way to bro up bro.

Way to automatically assume that anyone who is a feminist can only "say garbage". Very open minded of you.

You gamergate bros are the biggest whiners on the white-internet.

Well the story did suck... And anyone who think otherwise don't know what good story is. But who the **** cares. Gameplay is solid on this one.

@popeanonymousxv: or I can say I don't care, which is what Im doing now by informing u that I don't care about ur post so much that I didn't get passed ur first sentence

You're welcome. If you'd like I could continue by saying the balance is unfair and that among main characters there are always more damsels and weak women and if men are damsels or weak everything is still happening from a male perspective. 48% of gamers are female, you know. 1) It doesn't count for anything, because I can't play as Jade. And she's still saved once. Isolated incident reinforces negative stereotype. People are stupid and gullible. If I can strip away all the context surrounding this instance, then other people can aswell. Reason enough to be very concerned. 2) Men in need of men are not men in need of women. That's the whole point. Lara Croft saving her friend is different from Nathan Drake saving his friends, because Lara is a woman. You don't understand, because you're one of those weirdos who appreciates both male and female characters. You're not a woman, so you can't possibly know how it feels to be solely negatively represented in a videogame, because men are never solely negatively represented. Negative representations of women are much more common than negative representations of men, because the regular negative representations of men are always compensated by positive representations of men, whereas there are not enough positive representations of women to compensate for the amount of negative representations of women.

You can't win this battle. ;-P

Anita still didn't play the game and criticized it

Yep, the balance is off. Even though there are many games featuring female leads, I know the games with male leads far outnumber them. I'm aware of that fact. Also, I debated this many moons ago, and I'll bring it up again. It isn't inherently a bad thing if developers want to continue to make games with male leads. Being forced to start making games with female leads to check a box and meet a quota is not the way to handle the problem, and also stifles creativity and compromises artistic integrity. I don't ever want to feel pressured into making a game with a female lead. If anything, I want to be inspired to make one. If I can come up with a good story that involves a female, I will.

The number 48%, though, does not represent the same kinds of gamers as males. I forget the article, but there's one out there (sorry, just no time to research) that breaks it down and shows a good portion of that percentage as social and mobile players. Maybe a good number of those female gamers just don't like the violent games and won't play them regardless of the gender of the main character. That statistic isn't a reliable one because there's just too many variables involved.

And here it comes. The privilege card. Yes, I'll never understand what it's like to be a woman, although I do understand that not all women hold those views of saving damsel in distresses as inherently bad. I've talked to some female gamers who honestly couldn't care less what the gender is. They view the situations the same way I do, as people just needing help. So if that makes us weirdos, we're weirdos. We're more concerned about the games themselves than the politics behind it, and it's actually the people making issues out of the games that's the problem, not the games themselves. And the privilege card again. You know, I'd be called racist, since I'm white, because I take issue with the new Human Torch being black. Yet...

How can there be black people who object to the new Human Torch being black? So where does someone come off and call me a racist for saying that I don't agree with the new Human Torch being black? It's because of their own perceptions. "You'll never understand, because you're white." You're essentially saying the same thing. "You'll never understand, because you're a man," even though there are female gamers that share my view and don't necessarily see it as a bad thing.

Ok, I'll never win this battle, because I'm a guy. Fair enough.

Stupid internet and text conversations do force me to ask: you did know I was joking, right...? What I said did not deserve such a seemingly serious response...

I was wondering. Thanks for confirming. :)