I've already discussed some of this before, and I've actually watched the video a number of times, but since it keeps coming up, but let's break it down.
1:43: Counter-examples as applied to males don't make examples as applied to females non-existent.
1:49: Prostitute abuse is still there. The context is the player does not actively engage in the abuse, but has the option to simply sit back and watch it. Again... you have the option to not act and it's not game over.
These first two I don't know enough about to comment.
1:49: Sandbox: Yes, you can drag around male bodies. But not scantily clad male hooker bodies. As pointed out in the Sarkeesian video, female bodies are, indeed, glamorized in the promotional material.
Two things for this then:
1. Scantily clad male hookers (aren't they strippers? The women I mean)
Right so I haven't played Hitman, but I assume there are no half naked male strippers, and that makes sense to me. If I had to take a guess I'd say Hitman is a game with a primarily male target audience (which apparently is a horrible thing to do these days) so I can understand not including male strippers.
2. Females glamorized in the promotional material
Sorta ties in to point one, if this game is targeted towards males, is it really so horrible to have glamorized women in the promotional material? Sex sells after all.
I'm not trying to come off as saying it's okay to objectify women (or anybody for that matter), I just don't see what is so horrible about sexual things and acts. Call me crazy but being open about sexuality seems fine to me (it's not like this game is made for children).
1:53: Again: Do you need to watch a sex-trafficking floorshow in order to bust a sex-trafficking ring? Think back again to my child pornography comment. Good point there by the rebuttal that this is also in GTA yet not criticized... as it really is something to criticize there.
Do you need to see the sex trafficking show floor? No I suppose technically not, but I can get why they did in the context of WatchDogs. The game is all about hacking so it makes sense for the main character to try to get as close to what/who is he trying to find out information about, so having you walk the show floor to find out info, again, makes sense (to me). About your CP comment, two things again. The first is the obvious legal troubles if you were going to try to depict something like that. Secondly, it depends on the context just like with the sex trafficking ring as I hopefully already explained. And the GTA comment, I get that it's not exactly in the best of tastes but it's a bit of an industry in joke at this point that you can get a hooker and then kill her when you're done in GTA. Not the greatest of jokes for sure, but it's really not meant as something serious either.
Again: the fact that you are rescuing these women does not change the fact that they're treated as background props and objects in the game narrative. You are not rescuing a woman you know or personally interact with or who has special significance for you. These scantily clad women are merely a game objective.
Indeed they are background props, but is that something so worthy of getting upset about? Are games only allowed to have women if they take, in some way, and "active" roll in the game's narrative? Is women as background decoration a trope? Yup. Is it a trope exclusive to women? I'd say no. Not the greatest of examples, but off the top of my head it's the best I could come up with, think of all of the background soldiers in games like CoD and Battlefield and all other shooters that see allies that are of no real use or value (as in, they are incapable of killing any enemies and basically just shoot blanks and die). So you could consider that as men as background decoration, really.
Again, I'm not trying to discount that this trope exists, I'm just saying it goes both ways. And in all fairness, you're almost always going to have something that is just "background decoration" in a game, and sometimes it's going to be people.
3:10: A score disincentive is simply a score disincentive. You are given a wanted level for mowing down cops and civilians in GTA. Who honestly believes that this is a disincentive for anyone? Granted, it's a reach to claim that the ability to do any of these things leads to anti-social or psychotic behavior in real life (something rightly pointed out by Michael Moore in "Bowling for Columbine" ), but these games allow you to express these behaviors with no real consequences.
The wanted level vs less cash for innocent causalities in Hitman isn't really the same for two reasons though. In GTA the wanted level is almost actually an incentive to mow down cops and civilians just to see how long you can last against them (it's pretty fun). In Hitman the game actively lowers your score for doing things you aren't supposed to. Yeah some people might not care and just kill anything and everything anyway, but why is that so bad? And to be fair I think it makes sense to only have it as detracting from the score (as opposed to say, failing the mission) because it allows for more player freedom in how you play. You can choose to be the professional only taking out those you are instructed to, the loose cannon who kills all life, or anything in between. It's a Jack Thompson-esque claim to say the game will lead to psychotic behaviour in real life. Why should the game have any
real consequences if the game's narrative doesn't call for it?
3:30: Play-throughs: Idealized methods for finishing the game level. Nobody is going to purposely mess up a play-through.
I do agree, that you are not actively encouraged to perform these actions. Which makes the claim something of a reach. But again, points docking is not a disincentive. The inability to finish a story objective, for example, was no disincentive to finding out if you could blow up your brother in the hotel room in the first Deus Ex. Or finding out how many gory ways you could die in GTA. Or blow up. Or smashing a scientist's head into a pulp in Half-Life... or...
See above for my opinion on the points disincentive. The second bit, I think what you're saying can be explained by saying that players are always going to try and find the limits of what they can and can't do in a game are. I feel that's a pretty fair thing to say.
7:08: She isn't saying that you are going to kill a stripper in real life from doing this. That's a strawman argument. And yes, if you can fall to your death in a videogame, many people are going to try it just to see what happens.
I think how he said didn't really do justice to what he meant. From what I gathered, up until 7:14 he was referring to exactly what Anita said in the clip prior, while after that he was referring to the "the more you think you aren't affected (effected?), the more you are affected" claim from the clip right after (because from what I gather, she's claiming that because you can beat the women in the game, if you think it's just harmless fun, that you're actually going to think that it's okay to behave like that in real life, so what Thunderf00t is saying is the same situation, but beating a woman being replaced by jumping from a building). If that's what you meant as what the strawman was then, oh, that didn't really come off as one to me.
7:39: Definitely, you aren't going to jump to your death after doing so in a video game. But cultural memes can be internalized. (I've mentioned White Man Envy here... but again... that's going away now that the global cultural paradigm is more inclusive... it's something that's difficult to understand for Westerners... being half-American, it's fascinating to see this in action, and how it's affected the survivability of entertainment produced outside the United States)
Cultural memes can be internalized sure, but if Anita is going to claim that because in some games you happen to be able to hit women that it is going to make you more likely to do so in real life, I'll bring up Jack Thompson again. Just because you go around killing people in video games doesn't mean you're more likely to do it in real life. I think the problem is that, yes, cultural memes can be internalized, but people can also distinguish reality from fantasy (something Anita and others don't seem to realize), and damn near everyone know that being violent in real life is a horrible act all around. I don't think anyone is going to learn "beating women is okay" from video games and media unless EVERYTHING they're brought up on is constantly about beating women, and no one in their life tells them "this isn't good behaviour", which I really don't think we have to worry about.
In the end... cherry-picked? Hell yes. Still there, however? Unfortunately.
But it kinda begs the question of, if the problem was really so prevalent, why cherry pick examples that people are going to be able to debunk so thoroughly? Surely it shouldn't be difficult to find legitimate examples (especially with $160k to spend on R&D).
He posts things that honestly look like satire constantly. It's kind of terrifying how disconnected he is from reality (god I hope you weren't being sarcastic just then or I'm going to sound stupid
).
People can change their minds, actually.
They indeed can, but it's still quite the change.
Not to say that there is no vested interest in running the web series, mind you, nor that the series is not wired to get a rise from people. It's obvious it is.
I'm not as generous as you though, I wouldn't call it a vested interest, I'd call it an agenda.
Now this one... this is good criticism. I'd like to note that the "pink palette swap", however... even if she does wear pink, and ear-rings... is actually a valid trope, and a very lazy way of defining female characters, and something very common back in the day. Nobody stereotypes green as a male color (blue sometimes, but not as pervasively as pink). The stereotype is so pervasive that women can't help but be shaped by it. Heels, ear-rings, the whole shebang. Whether you're comfortable with it or not, doesn't change the fact that it amounts to indoctrination by popular media.
It's a valid trope, but one can't help but see her hypocrisy in condemning it while perpetuating it perfectly. If she was doing it ironically I would actually give her points for it, but since she has the same "gender signifiers" on in each video I can't do that. But yes, it's a very prevalent trope and getting rid of it would hardly be bad.
It's only in recent years that female characters have been getting the same expressive range of palettes and looks that male characters have been getting. (Legend of Korra... excellent example) There's still more sexualization, for some (unless you count some Japanese games, where male characters are excessively-sexualized, too), but that's changing.
I'm on the younger side (20) so I'll have to claim ignorance as to most of the games pre-ps2
. For all the sexualized Janes in games I've seen I'd say there is probably a pretty close to equal amount of plain and uninteresting Joes (super buff, raspy voice, no character depth). Maybe not 50/50, but probably pretty close. I welcome better characters of all colours and creeds though (assuming the game actually calls for it).
And also, there is something wrong about having a gender swap for the game character and not having that affect how you go through the game, if that game is an RPG. Actually... your gender and ethnicity should, in the real world, affect how other characters interact with you. It's not even a novel idea... writers (male, white, non-social justice warriors) have been punting it about in fiction for decades now, back to the times when games were very simple things, both visually and in terms of gameplay.
I get what you're saying but I also get what the video is saying, wouldn't you want to experience the game the same either way? Unless I suppose you wanted to play the game twice, once as either gender to get both experiences. The video brings up another point I agree with though, I don't think it's outlandish to assume that if Mass Effect changed the way the characters within the game interact with the player depending on what gender you choose, that Anita and others would be upset about that if it were the case.
It's very lazily rendered in some games like (again) Fallout3, where you're given the option of sleeping with a female prostitute, whether you're a male or female. Pretty lazy game design... as it is more immersive if your choice of gender and/or ethnicity affects how other characters interact with you.
For the Fallout 3 point that indeed seems like lazy game design, but for your other point. Isn't sort of what feminists and SJWs (claim to) want is for everyone to be treated the same regardless of gender/race/etc.? Don't get me wrong I understand your point, it would definitely be neat to see if done right.
Still, a very good video rebuttal, and one of the few I can agree with. Better than the one that keeps getting brought up. And, the ending basically wraps up the whole Sarkeesian issue - if she has a valid point, people will watch. If she runs out of them, people will stop watching.
The trouble is though, any and all
valid criticism of Anita (or others) is shot down as trolling, harassment, or outright ignored in any sort of press (mainstream gaming and traditional media) making honest, reasoned discussion almost impossible to be seen by the larger public.
There will always be those "Think about the Children" types who will point out each and every real or perceived flaw with anything. That's okay. If they have a point, it will resonate, and it can and will give people something to think about. If it's a reach, it's a reach. The problem with the Sarkeesian debates is that there's a lot of material there. Some of it may be relevant, some may not be. But the fact that it has people talking (at least where they're talking and not fighting) is a good thing, in and of itself.
It would be okay if it weren't for the "think about the children" type actively smearing those who saying anything against their narritive, which is what is happening in gaming. If you don't follow the current status-quo then be prepared to be label a misogynist and other horrible things.
By the way, in saying that, I'm not saying Anita and others don't receive actual abuse, they do, but the abuse they get does not represent gamers as a whole as the gaming media so very much likes to say.
RE: Bayonetta 2: That's funny. I got the over-sexualized vibe from B1, but B2 feels a lot like it has a woman's touch, actually. I guess the fact that a woman worked on the design has a lot to do with it.
I think the link I posted about the character artist was actually about Bayonetta 1, I would guess it was the same person who worked on her for Bayonetta 2. Unfortunately even if the sexualization is toned down from the first game, it's not going to stop the feminists and SJWs from saying it's heinous to have Bayonette be sexualized at all.
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I'd just like to say, it's VERY refreshing to be able to have calm, reasoned discussion on this topic with people on all sides as is is so very rare anywhere else.
But yes, presenting people as background "objects" is a thing, and a problem. NPCs in shooters, well, they're often given personalities, at least, or the semblance of personalities, now that we have enough processing power to do it. You're meant to build up some empathy for them before they kick the bucket. Enemy NPCs... not... as in all war games, depersonalization* is an important part of the narrative... which is why many games avoid using Arabic terrorists as enemies. It's a politically sensitive issue, and trivializing that issue into a game inflames emotions on both sides of the conflict. 
