babark: I've watched Anita's videos, and again, what chincilla says at the beginning of this page seems to hold true. Anita is neither claiming the games are not good, or that gamers are bad, or that she wants to take away your games and freedom or whatever. What I've seen repeatedly is the claim that the games contain tropes that perpetuate a culture of sexism and objectification and general all-around degradation of women. And it really is impossible to disagree with that. There are obviously notable exceptions...and look! Isn't it interesting how all those exceptions are the results of WELL WRITTEN stories and narratives? Maybe if more devs stopped relying on boring and overused tropes (that yes, perpetuate a culture of sexism), we'd get even MORE great games.
You want great games, don't you? DON'T YOU?! Because obviously if you disagree with me, then you hate games and gamers and think we're all ignoramuses and someone needs to start an internet campaign against you. </sarcasm>
I have not seen her work, though I plan on changing that. However, I am somewhat leery of the proposition that certain tropes in and of themselves perpetuate sexism in gaming. While it might be true as a general tendency, there are certain instances where an otherwise headdesky trope can be used to good effect; then again, you do bring up the exceptions, so hush my mouth I guess, and let's get on to one of those exceptions.
Take Silent Hill 2, for instance. The protagonist is a white male looking for his wife. Thus far, it's a textbook example of the "damsel in distress" trope, except for the little problem where the wife in question is stated to be dead at the beginning of the game. The main character is also tormented by watching a female character who is strongly reminiscent of his wife dying as he is unable to help her, over and over again. It could be argued that this is demeaning the female character in question, since she is defined by suffering to torment the male protagonist; however, the reason that this is the case isn't that the writers were lazy, but because the torture she represented was meant to play off of Mary's death. The tropes that are ordinarily irritating in their tendencies used to good effect by subverting the traditional trope (Mary doesn't actually need saving) and using it as a source of horror (Maria is in a position where the protagonist feels a need to help her, but that need isn't used in a traditional sense, but instead used to torment James and the player).
That's not even going into the reading of the game as
a parallel to the Orpheus myth. It's not that far off, when you think about it; Orpheus/James goes into The Underworld/Silent Hill to look for a dead Eurydice/Mary, and along the way Orpheus/James is tormented ironically; Orpheus looks at Eurydice before traveling the distance that Hades has said he must travel without doing so for him to succeed in bringing her back to life, and James is tormented by the town poking and prodding at him with symbolic reminders of what actually happened to Mary before revealing it and leaving him, emotionally broken, to his ultimate fate. In paralleling that myth, the story uses the tropes at issue, but does so elegantly.
Just to be clear, this is Samus Aran sans all the Other M nonsense?
Novotnus: Annah (Planescape: Torment)
Much as I love PST, Annah and Grace get the short end of the stick in that game. Neither has much in the way of a subplot compared to the likes of Dak'kon or Morte, and their personalities, while distinct and well fleshed out, feel a little limited. Maybe it's something to do with how "Annah and Fall-From-Grace were inspired by Betty and Veronica from Archie comics, embarrassingly enough", to quote Chris Avellone.