I don't agree with Sarkesian's thoughts on Bayonetta.

Ah special interest groups... are never right and always work for self interest. And feminism is one of the most cancerous atm.

Besides, Bayonetta is a female powerhouse, her sexuality just amplifies that.

That's not true either, she just dominates everyone, mostly non humans (and not Rodin who is male). Well there's Enzo, but... he's Enzo. :p

She's an example of powerful, empowered female character, no more no less.

And yes, the sooner people stop paying attention to Anita and stop giving her attention and money, the better.

Because a videogame is a videogame and all videogames are therefore videogames, hence the same...?

ignore anything and everything she says, problem solved. She is the definition of garbage feminist and is making money out of it.

@Chozofication

Yeah thats never gona happen.... The only reason Anita exist in the first place is because of this medium toxicity towards just about everyone, especially women. Ignoring Anita is not gona stop people from being mysoginistic assholes, women who have been victimized will naturally find their way to her. Shes never going away whether people ignore her or not.... She exists because of Ignorance.

@elheber: Anita Sarkesian has no sources or evidence in her so called research. Her videos have been debunked several times by thunderf00t and MrRepzion. She's full of crap.

Pretty much this. Also i am surprised she did not go to bed with some guys to have negative press for the game xD It's what she does, isn't it?

I have heard of this woman, last year. I even watched some of her videos, on her youtube channel. While I agree with her about a few things, I think she over-analyzes everything. But I don't think she has much of an impact on the gaming community.

What? What would make you accuse her of that?

i really dislike her, she is everything wrong with feminism bs, but you are mistaking her with another feminist.

Which is why I don't read Reviews anymore. I rely on my own research, opinions based on what I see of gameplay and such and a few times what my friends who share the same interest for Videogames think and feel about a game. If a game I enjoy got a 5/10 by one site but a 9/10 on another is for me irrelevant, likewise if it's a game I think is aweful.

Reviews are opinion based and therefor will always have the " What I feel right now" aspect from the one writing it.

@thatnordicguy: so true... Too true. If this is a big issue feminists are dealing with ,then they aren't dealing with jack

Yeah, she should just roll over and take it!

Listen, she had a fundraiser to make critique videos about the portrayal of women in videogames. She wasn't making a big deal out of it. Then some group of people started a backlash against her going so far as to try to shut down the fundraiser. Tropes vs. Women, if you really look at it from afar, is still only critique videos about the portrayal of women in video games. It's not a big deal. The death threats, doxxing, and hacking are a big deal. And the backlash against Sarkeesian has also turned into a big deal. She didn't turn it into a big deal herself (unless you're one of those conspiracy believers that thinks she's making the threats herself and either the FBI hasn't figured it out or is "in on it").

Just because there are bigger problems elsewhere in the world doesn't mean we have to ignore the smaller ones where we live.

Can I tell you this every time you pop in an RPG thread ?

And yea, who is this hag ??

@bussinrounds

Sure why not... But you might have to alter it abit to compensate for the fact that I actually do care.... :)

@bussinrounds

And don't call her a "hag", her name is Anita.

@Krelian-co (can't quote on mobile it seems?)

Oh I am really sorry if I confused them, really. So who was it then? Was it that depression quest girl? I got them mixed up, I am sorry

yes, that's the one.

Well, I see that several of her supporters have trouble siding with her once it comes down to the actual games ;)

I don't buy the argument that one just so happens to disagree on this particular game. Her rhetoric in critiquing Bayonetta is the exact same as in her critique of everything else. I.e. she just says it's sexist and misogynistic instead of explaining why she thinks it is (she's does'nt really know).

@Treflis: well in my previous deleted post, I will repeat:

It doesn't have to be that way. They should follow a procedure or guideline to mitigate the effect of personal bias. At the very least that is what SHOULD be practiced. That way every single game no matter what genre, will be forced to be subjected to criticism in each and every category. Like why is it that every GTA game review never mention the stale gameplay after the story is completed? It really is simple as:

• creating a data table in Excel
• list all of the categories
• jot down explanations as how you came to your conclusion
• assign a numerical number to the category.
• Average

Plethora of the reviews don't even bother do this and ignore certain categories altogether because they deem it at that point and time to be irrelevant. This most obvious in the reviews where it hardly talks about endgame (Wildstar) and reviews that ignore the obvious (BF4).

Agreed. It's the people who are wishing and/or threatening death or harm upon her who are the real problem. You don't do that just because you don't agree with what she says or thinks else you behave just like terrorists do.

So essentially Anita thinks women need to be sexually repressed. Lovely...

Actually i don't think Dumb and Dumber Quinn and Sarkastic is so sad that they get those threats since they are also what keeps them in business, who knew Quinn before that? almost no one except the few who personally knew her or actually tried the thing some call a game. Same with Anita if it wasn´t for all the trolls or people who keep posting her videos on forums and also the threats because as far as her kickstarter i heard it almost did nothing until some threats suddenly appeared

But with that said sending deaththreats and other threats are insane and those people need their head examined.

Yeah it's hard to say how many are real. I'd be willing to bet that most threats are just empty rantings of people online due to the nature of internet anonimity but still those people should stop doing that because that is what draws heat to these things and pose real consequences to all involved. There are some real crazies out there who just might take it upon themselves to make good on these threats.

No, I said I disagree with about 20% of the things she's said in her Tropes vs. Women. Bayonetta isn't the only thing I disagree with Sarkeesian on. Also, the way you say she doesn't explain why the things she critiques are unfavorable to women in general, makes me believe you either haven't watched her videos or at least payed attention to what she says in them. Because she does.

I've seen her take things entirely out of context and obsess over banalities. She really does'nt explain exactly why her examples are sexistic.

Remember what she said about Ms. Pacman for example? She that the game is sexist because it uses a stereotype to distinguish Ms. Pacman as female. Or could it just be that the 8-bit graphics needed something simple to make the distinction, and that the game is from 1982? Are toilet signs sexist too?

How about the Hitman strippers? Have you actually played the game or seen that particular sequence? There's nothing encouraging you to touch them at all, and the game actually penalizes you for killing civilians. And that's ignoring that there's nothing gender specific about killing anyone in the game (apart from the vast majority of potential victims being men).

And do you really think that Bayonetta is meant to turn you on? I think it's meant to be a funny, exaggerated caricature.

Here's Midway's reasoning behind the concept of Ms Pacman according to Wikipedia:

"Shortly before release, Stan Jarocki of Midway stated that Ms. Pac-Man was conceived in response to the original Pac-Man being "the first commercial videogame to involve large numbers of women as players" and that it is "our way of thanking all those lady arcaders who have played and enjoyed Pac-Man.""

They specifically reskinned "Crazy Otto" (an enhanced version of Pacman) as a way of thanking their female customers and in 1982, that was well received.

Edit:

I don't see the big deal about the "Damsel in Distress" trope either.. Is it really worse than the "Badass McHandsome" trope? In reality, most men are either skinny or overweight and quite weak.

Guybrush Threepwood is the "Incompetent Dude" trope but I still love him.

@MlauTheDaft: I'm not arguing that she's infallible. I already said I don't always agree with her. You said she doesn't explain herself, when she does. If I wasn't sneaking onto here while I'm at work, I'd pull up a video and send you the timestamp of when she says why having cookie cutout female versions of the "normal" male protagonist is not ideal. Because she does.

Well I guess I'm just on the opposite side of the fence ;)

I'm not saying she does'nt have any valid points at all, just that her prominent ones are biased or downright wrong.

I would simply ask her is there any sexualization of a woman that you would be ok with or are you simply uncomfortable with sexuality period?

Yeah this 1000%.. I honestly didn't really care what she had to say, some things she had a point on others not so much.. But what is really telling is the amount of manchildren out there that have threatened her with violence.. Fucking pathetic, apparently she canceled a talk at a college because some coward PoS phoned in a death threat/shooting spree if she spoke.. Wtf is wrong with people? Don't they realize they are fucking proving her point and the worse criticisms leveled at the community true?

Yeah, I'm not really sure she's in tune with what the average woman wants. Or that's she's entirely sure what she wants herself.

Personally, I'd probably fight the fashion industry instead if I had the time, money and energy to be an activist.

@sSubZerOo: the person who made those threats was exposed already, a Brazilian games journalist, his name is out there already.

I can't find this, though. Got a link?

I thought Bayonetta was a tranny. No?

I couldn't disagree more. The guy who did the polygon review should be given a friggen medal by GamerGate. If they are serious about this who cluster <edit> being about journalist integrity the Bayonetta review should be celebrated. There is NO way to objectively review anything and trying to do so would be disingenuous. The best the reviewer can do is give the reader / viewer a completely honest accounting of the game while being upfront and honest about why the reviewer judged the game as he/she did. While people have wildly different opinions about what makes as good game and what is acceptable in a game, the review made it clear that to this person the sexual content affected his enjoyment of the game and that was why he rated the game as he did. He didn't try to blame it on something else, he didn't try to gloss it over or try to guess at what score he would have given it if he felt otherwise.

He was honest in rating the game based on what he thought and he was honest in letting the reader know why so the reader could make his or her own informed opinion. Anyone reading the review will know that the reviewer thought the game play was world class they will also know that the game breaks to norm in how it uses sexuality. In other words, the review gives the gamer all the needed tools to make an informed choice. That ultimately is the highest goal of a reviewer, to enable the consumer to make an informed decision.

As for the second article... are you kidding me. Some guy having a kumbaya with supposed 'devs' telling each other how much they are agree with one another and how great GG is? The idea that this is about integrity but then embracing an 'interview' with that level of bias while keeping the names secret. The interview could be the poster child for lack of integrity, really it makes the worst of Kotaku look mild in comparison. Imagine if Kotaku interviewed Sarkeesian under the guise of talking to 'someone in the industry' and then present her opinions and ideas as being representative of devs in general? THAT would be a good example of dishonestly, corruption and collusion.

The guy who did the review is a disgrace. He didn't remotely even try to produce an objective review. Honesty is not the goal - INTEGRITY and OBJECTIVITY is. Keep your agenda out of your reviews. This new narrative espoused by anti-gamergate people that "objectivity is impossible" is absolute nonsense. Yes, true objectivity is impossible, but your mission is to be as objective as possible. There wasn't even an attempt to do so in the Polygon review.

What almost every single professional game reviewer out there fails to realize is their purpose.

A professional review is not supposed to tell me whether the reviewer liked the game. A professional review is supposed to tell me whether *I* will like the game. You do this by objectively analyzing the technical merits of the game, comparing and contrasting the game with others like it, and then perhaps going into what does or does not work about the story/characters/etc from a structural level. NOT injecting your own personal ideology, because your ideology is probably not my ideology and thus serves no purpose in informing me properly about the reviewed game. If you want to mention what elements of the game may be of interest or disinterest to me then so be it (ex: feminists may not like the themes in this game = ok. This game has sexist themes = not ok) but keep your politics in your pocket.

Game reviewers almost never understand this, and most go with a "This is what I liked and didn't like" review which is of limited use to anyone. That's why people in large consider game reviews to be a joke.

And you know what the icing on the cake is? The Polygon reviewer is a MASSIVE hypocrite.

http://theralphretort.com/polygon-writer-slut-shames-bayo-loves-porn/

And no one likes a hypocrite.

Insecurity.

Ever notice how the feminists that complain about stupid shit (like video games/movies) are usually ugly/unattractive?

They are anti-sexuality in general.

@Thanatos2k: I agree 100% that it's a reviewer's job to tell me, to the best of his ability, if I will like the game. Not how much he did. But that begs the question: What type of reader does Polygon have? If they generally share his mindset, then he did great. In fact, without people like him representing a minority of gamers that find Bayonetta's sexuality off-putting, then the aggregated score (Metacritic and such) would not include their minority opinion.

An extreme example would be a site dedicated to disabled gamers knocking points off of a game for having complex and uncustomizable controls. Even they deserve their own standards and to be counted in the overall average score.

I admit that my argument only works if Polygon is indeed a home for readers who share the "that's demeaning!" point of view, and that this is a huge "if" in itself. I don't read Polygon.

The only things you can review objectively are things that can be measured. You can judge a game on it's resolution and its frame rate. Even then you still have to make a subjective judgment on whether that resolution or frame rate affects the game play experience. Imagine if movies or books couldn't be judged on their message. The idea that this is a new idea is crazy, its a central dilemma and source of debate in journalism and it has been for decades if not centuries. The polygon reviewer is honest about how he's judging the game. He doesn't like about his bias instead of attempting to hide it or lie about it. That a clear example of journalistic integrity. If the reviewer shouldn't be allowed to use his own personal opinion, who's going to write the check list that defines what a good or a bad game is? What about games that have a political message (there's several examples, games that tries to deal with homosexuality, games that deal with religion, games that deal with immigration).

You're saying that "A professional review is not supposed to tell me whether the reviewer liked the game. A professional review is supposed to tell me whether *I* will like the game". That basically mean that every well known book, movie or art reviewer is useless and incompetent. Someone like Robert Ebert, one of the most famous reviewers of any media based his reviews, his ratings and his comments, first and foremost on whether HE liked the movie. He then explain why and why not. He explain why he judged the movie like he did. That is what a professional reviewer does. He presents his personal option and then explains why he holds that opinion.

Whether or not he's a member of some porn site is again completely irrelevant. He has an opinion, he was honest about the opinion and he didn't try to hide that the game was otherwise an outstanding game. He did EXACTLY what a good reviewer does. He was honest, he presented his opinion and he presented his bias.

Which is fair.

The more I watch her videos...I don't really have much issue with her actually. What I do disagree with was her little rant that all critics should have slammed the game. If a critic had their own personal issue with it fine, but their role is not to be our moral guardians.

Yeah, I agree. I don't think any critics ignored the hyper-sexualization presented in the game, doing so would be leaving out something integral to the game.

I'm not sure how you can wave that off as irrelevant. The game was outstanding, yet he knocks two and a half points off for sexuality as far as I can figure, and his membership to Suicide Girls is reflective of his taste, that he does indeed enjoy sexuality. This is like saying you love all things Italian, but when you're asked to review a Lamborghini, you make all these wonderful praises about it being a fast and powerful car, but then deduce points for it being Italian in design. His membership to Suicide Girls is most certainly relevant, because it taints his honesty, it taints his opinion and taints his bias. In fact, it can be suggested that the only reason why a member of a porn site decries sexuality in the game is to earn favor from feminists. I'm sure Anita is proud to read his review, but I wonder if she's proud of him being a Suicide Girls member.

@JustPlainLucas:

It's irrelevant because there is no reason to suspect that it's affecting his enjoyment of the game. To use your example, someone could love Italian things but for some reason dislike Italian car design, or Lamborghinis in perticular. You might wonder why you have someone who dislike Italian cars review a Lamborghini, but as long as he make sure to tell his readers that this is his bias and as long as he's otherwise honest about his experience (The car handles great, goes really fast, but the design really doesn't look good to me). The you've been given the practical details (handling and speed), you've been given the personal opinion (I don't like the design) and you've been informed of any existing bias (I normally like Italian stuff).

It might not make sense that he's deducting point for it's Italian design, but as long as he tells you that it's the Italian design you can make up your own mind based on what you personally think of Italian design.

As for whether Anitia is proud of the review, I don't think there's anyone outside the GamerGate crowd that really care what Anita Sarkeesian thinks about Bayonetta 2.

But once his preference has been exposed, it indeed becomes relevant. This is why people dig up dirt on each other during political campaigns. The person you're voting for may say one thing, but his past actions go against what he believes. Before I knew Arthur was a Suicide Girls member, I thought the man was just a traditional conservative who didn't like sex in his video games as it was distracting. I was fine with that. But now that I know his preference, his review does not make sense. I have browsed Suicide Girls years ago, so I know what kind of sexuality goes on there and to be honest, Bayonetta fits right in, right down to the glasses. The sexuality should have been right up Arthur's alley. Instead, it became a roadblock for some reason, and "for some reason" is not a good excuse in a review.

To revisit my example, I now know that Arthur enjoys Lamborghinis. I know he likes their sleek Italian design, their contours, their edges, their slopes. All of a sudden, a new Lamborghini comes out, and he reviews it like it's supposed it to be an economy sedan. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Journalistic integrity requires journalists to remove their personal biases from their reporting as much as possible. I understand absolute removal is impossible, but it doesn't stop journalists from attempting it. If the public expects non-bias, it's the outlet's responsibility to try to achieve that. There's room for bias and personal views in opinion pieces and editorials.

But, of course, this is only for press outlets that claim to be fair. This pressure isn't placed onto outlets that are openly bias. People listen to Rush Limbaugh because they are conservative and know he is conservative. That's fine. If people go to Polygon because they are open about their views on sexism and videogames and the readers want to go there for it, that's fine.

But a journalist whose readers expect objective reporting has to remove his personal biases as much as possible. I'm not saying this is Polygon. I don't know what Polygon is, since I don't follow them.

@JustPlainLucas:

I have no idea what his sexual preferences are. I don't know why he disliked the sexuality on display in Bayonetta 2, I'm not sure why he likes the Suicide Girls site, hell I don't even know if it is him, (his name doesn't appear to be listed so I'm not sure if we know for sure that its him).

My point is that since we know that he up front about deducted the game for the sexual content, we we can make the choice of ignoring his preference. If we know that we don't care about sexual content and that he would have given the game a much higher score if he didn't care, the it doesn't really matter why he have that preference since the review also makes it clear that its an otherwise awesome game.

Incidentally it looks like they've posted a podcast about the Bayonetta 2 review and why it was reviewed the way it was. I haven't listened to it myself so I don't know if its any good.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/16/6990847/we-talk-about-our-bayonetta-2-review-on-our-podcast-quality-control

When we're are talking about Rush Limbaugh, we're talking a news outlet (without touching on the criticism of the guy). A video game is about having fun and enjoying a piece of media. That is not something that can really be properly quantified, and tying to do so is going to result is a lacking review. Take for example the trailer that was posted today from someone making a mass murder game where you apparently run around killing cops and unarmed civilians. It would be crazy to expect anyone to play or review a game like that without trying to address how they feel about the subject matter.

So if a reviewer was unhappy and frustrated with a game because of the level of violence, or the sex or the politics or the color of princess peaches dress, what is he supposed to do? Lie to the reader and try to pretend and guess at how much fun he would have had if he had a different opinions or different priorities? Or should he be honest about how much he did or didn't enjoyed the game and try to be up front with the reader about why he did / didn't enjoy it?

I'm afraid I can't go any further without being able to listen to that podcast. I just don't have the time for it right now.

I'm also going to bow out and call it a night. Thanks for the discussion.

No, it isn't. Ever been to redlettermedia.com? They have the best movie review site out there. In their Half in the Bag series, they talk about movies, what was good about them, what they hated, what the director did before, how the actors performed, what the climate of the production was, and at the end of every review, they ask each other if they'd recommend it. They then completely divorce their personal opinion and approach it from a hypothetical audience. "If you're just looking for a dumb popcorn flick then you'll get what you're looking for so I recommend it to those people" "If you're a fan of this kind of horror movie it will be a disappointment" and so on.

This is integrity in reviewing. Roger Ebert had it too. You know what else Roger Ebert had? Ethics:

http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/rogers-little-rule-book

Go on, read the list. Then ask yourself how many game journalists break those rules every single day?

Whether or not he's a member of some porn site is again completely irrelevant. He has an opinion, he was honest about the opinion and he didn't try to hide that the game was otherwise an outstanding game. He did EXACTLY what a good reviewer does. He was honest, he presented his opinion and he presented his bias.

It's completely relevant. It makes him a hypocrite of the highest order and undermines every point he makes. See, the issue with reviews is CREDIBILITY. Can I TRUST what this person is saying? When you find out stuff like this that trust is gone, and credibility destroyed.