Fever_Discordia: Games and movies are not identical but I disagree that the differences make the tools and techniques for analyzing cinema and television completely invalid for application to video games.
For example, there are many games, off the top of my head lets give the examples of Enter The Matrix and Max Payne that are basically just sequences of exposition in cut scenes with extended interactive action sequences in between
It goes much further than that. Even in interactive sequences, the modes of exposition remain similar if not identical. Game designers borrow narrative mechanics from literature and film, and how could they not? Narrative is inherently non-interactive, while games inherently are.
As soon as there's a story, the tools of literature and film apply.
This is almost the same question we've faced 100 years ago. With a medium as audio/visual as film, are we even allowed to measure the characters by the standards of literature? The answer is, yes of course, if they apply. What the characters say and do remains unchanged, be it book, movie or game.
Suffice to say, those tools alone are not
enough.
Fever_Discordia: Plus Anita should maybe get something of a 'pioneer pass'
More than you think. The tools we have to talk about the probably vastly subjective impressions that certain 'self executed' actions and interactive dialog have on us are, at present, crude to say the least. That is why Sarkeesian [name written correctly for further reference] in part attempts to carve her own tools. Which is an exciting and interesting 'pioneer' thing to do, even taking all the risks of generalization into account.
For example, Sarkeesian presents a theory concerning the emotional response to and interactive appeal of dragging the corpses of highly sexualized women around in a video game. She asserts that this elicits, and is designed to elicit a sexual jolt in heterosexual men. Naturally, that is a subjective assumption. A
theory. I personally think she is correct here, yet won't see "proof" in my lifetime for sure. For all purposes, we can assume that there are other, contradicting theories which may or may not sound equally plausible.
We don't get to see these other theories though, we get outrage and personal attacks, nothing that furthers the discussion. Instead of focusing on the emotional response to the individual situation, we get told that there are other, supposedly mitigating circumstances in the same game (that have no bearing on this individual situation or 'trope', of course). We get told that mere media criticism entails a call for censorship, a direct influence on game designers (who are seldom even mentioned by name in those videos) via public shaming, and assorted other things.
In short, the theory itself is attacked impotently, supposedly stifling the discussion instead of adding to it.
Sarkeesian's enemies (I'm not saying 'critics', because the term seldom even applies) would like to dissect those new tools she's crafting while they are in the making. Indeed, maybe Sarkeesian's work would profit from more of an academic involvement, and constructive criticism from there — yet, sadly, due to the cultural suicide that gamergate constitutes, academics is becoming continuously less interested in games.
In literature, I've seen methods of analysis masterfully taken apart and their usefulness strongly questioned. I did the same thing myself countless times. Yet all this from a necessary distance, without the kind of extreme emotional involvement that geek culture seems to draw on as a basis for their statements.
In short, there is no sense in discussing the theoretical basis for the Tropes vs. Women videos with the people who start their interpretation
with the assumption of dishonesty or 'trolling' on the side of the presenter, try to paint criticism as more than just a necessarily subjective interpretation, or make up crude conspiracy theories as to political goals of their fictional enemies.
They don't have the necessary scientific integrity.
