@Smokescreened84 I'm actually pretty surprised you wrote that, Smokescreened. Practically all the comments I've seen from you are something along the lines of "say you're a girl on the internet, all guys ask for pics". It's very insulting, completely untrue and makes you, speaking on behalf of women in general, come across as incredibly arrogant.

@harlow86 I think as a whole, everyone is all for improving the portrayal of women in video games but at the same time, we think Sarkeesian is overstating the problem. For example, Nariko from Heavenly Sword is one of the characters she takes issue with ... all because of what she wears. I think this is incredibly shallow. If someone asked me to point to a positive portrayal of a female character in a video game, Nariko would be very close to the top of my list. She's strong, tough, has a memorable appearance, a great voice, etc, so I think it's remarkable that someone who claims to be a feminist would dismiss her so readily because of the clothes she wears.

@Smokescreened84 Smokescreened, I'm not sure which gossip magazine you get your "facts" from but no, plenty of guys don't like being portrayed that way and many concerns have been raised. That's the same dumbass argument people use when trying to justify men being drawn unrealistically in comic books while arguing that women shouldn't be.

Although in games, it tends to be pretty boys from Japanese games I dislike more. ALL Final Fantasy male main characters, Octavianus (Shadow Of Rome), Dante (DMC3 and DmC), Nero (DMC4), Jin (Tekken), Soki (Onimusha: Dawn Of Dreams) and many, many more. I take more of an issue with that because it's more unrealistic to expect the average guy to look incredibly feminine than to look big and muscular and because, more often than not, these characters are close to being Mary Sues.

@fist_a_cuffs You're right. There's even been a commenter here who has discussed how male gamers are just perverts. I think anyone with that attitude really needs to grow up; about half of the people on my PS3 Friends' list are female and I'm sure they have plenty of guys on their friends lists too.

I'm even opposed to the term "girl gamer". Just the name is segregative. Why not just "gamer"? Let's show the other forms of media that we're above segregation! ... We're not but let's pretend that we are!

@sergiodoom She does ... but not for the reasons powerhungryfool says. It's nothing to do with being emotional or unstable, it's just because she's a Mary Sue (which male characters can be too).

I agree with Smokescreened84. Emotions are what makes a character relateable and actually, a ton of male video game characters could do with having more emotions. Cole McGrath, Isaac Clarke, Alex Mercer, Commander Shepard (female too! Boring no matter what sex they are!) and, if Ubisoft's Watch Dogs is to be believed, we're going to get more male characters like that in the future. Dull people with dull names.

@Falzonn My response to that would probably be "so what". Mods are made by very small numbers of people and, since they're free, are probably something plenty of people will try "just for fun". It's hardly indicative of some horrible institutionalised sexism in the gaming industry.

@ERoBB Well as stories go, you're right, it's pretty standard. Having said that, themes or not, we do still get a storyline where a woman becomes the "chosen one" and defeats the nasty emperor. I think if Nariko can be criticised, she can be defended and criticising her appearance is only one of her qualities.

@ERoBB Alright, how about this: in the entire game, there are only two competent characters; Nariko and her sister, Kai. Everyone else in the otherwise all-male army is useless.

In fact, Heavenly Sword isn't so much a feminist game as it is a misandrist game: of the thousands of enemies Nariko fights in the game, only one of them is female. Nariko and Kai's father -- who tries to kill Nariko at the start of the game -- ends up being kidnapped and having to be rescued by the sisters. And to defeat the final boss, Nariko stabs him in the genitals. Twice.

@Kaobasa Yeah, I want to plug a blog post from over four years ago and haven't updated for two. ¬_¬

Kaobasa, you just need to grow up. I went down to the comments because I WAS keen to debate this point but watching the video then reading the following answer comes across as contradictory. If you think I wrote it just to be "hard-hitting" rather than because it's an issue I'm actually interested in, whatever, it just shows your ignorance. Even if you continue to believe that, the fact will remain that while I just commented because I waned to write something "hard-hitting", you just commented to be childish and snide. Find your babysitter to talk to, I'm finished chatting now.

@ERoBB

But a lot of the arguments are completely subjective. Look at the "Too Many Dicks" video (always a great thing to put in the middle of an article after someone has pleaded a case about how non-sexist against guys they are. The word "patriarchy" is even in the description!). In that video, we see Nariko from Heavenly Sword as an example of an overly-sexualised female. However, Nariko has a ton of elements that feminist gamers should praise; strong character, good voice, memorable appearance and so on. There's even a moment at the beginning of the game where Nariko runs into a new area and one of the enemies, a guard captain, calls her an "under-dressed angel". I liked that a lot. It's clever and self-deprecating, willing to joke about one of the minor features that so many messageboards would be up in arms over; yes, the main character is female and yes, she's wearing somewhat "inappropriate" clothing for battle.

So Heavenly Sword and Nariko are two things that I don't think people who support heroines would criticise ... but Sarkeesian does just because of her outfit. That comes across as incredibly shallow to me, a feminist being so willing to dismiss a female character based on how she's dressed.