Awesome! Well, folks, you heard it. I guess we can close this thread now, there's no arguing with an expert on all things feminine. ;)

I've named others. Back to the Future: The Game (you have to save Doc Brown), or Wing Commander IV, where you have to save your shot up comrade Catscratch. Ad hoc I can name Heavy Rain (save your son), Fallout 3 (your father dies and you have to watch) and Custom Quest (save your brother, if you're playing as the sister - yes, you can choose) as well. That's already six games I know without doing research and without even thinking about it. And what does she come with? Super Mario Bros -.- But only those titles where Peach gets captured, the others don't count to show that Peach always gets captured... The most simplistic "Insert coin" arcade style games that don't have a real story. Great.

No. Did I say this? But what is "bad" if you have to save a woman? That she can't do it on her own? Men can't either, just look at those titles above! To be honest, in recent games I think it's nearly balanced. Damn it, I can remember more recent games where you have to save men (or can choose, as in Custom Quest) than those where you have to save women oO

Thanks. Thank you soooooo much. That's exactly what I'm talking about. But if you watch her videos you start to think it is the deepest black you've ever seen.

A big +1 to this.

I think you're exaggerating here. I can imagine FAR worse claims than what she's laid out so far.

Can you? :D

Easily.

As a man I'm offended by this woman's videos. She's a damn sexist!

And Doc Brown falls in love with you, and you live happily ever after. He is your reward.

And Catscratch falls in love with you, you live happily ever after. He is your reward.

And so on and so forth.

Double Fine are good, they are exceptional developers :)

And she is highlighting a problem from a very feminist perspective. It works well for what it is and it does start a discussion :)

And I do think it is better to paint this picture a little to much black and white then making out that it does not exist. It does still exist even if in a handful of games you can rescue some men. But also consider this, what are the circumstances around their imprisonment? And how is it portrayed?

ANyway, I know it exist because my partner tells me it does, and she is not a feminist at all. She is talking about her own gaming experience, and she agrees with a lot of this. That you manage to find some games where

Here's a nice take on the objectification issue:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7290-Objectification-And-Men

Also tying into this:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7044-The-Creepy-Cull-of-Female-Protagonists

Examples :P

No, they don't fall in love with me. And no, they're not "my reward". No, wait, that's wrong... They are my reward. But only as much as my freed girlfriend is. By the way: I wouldn't see my girlfriend as my reward, but Anita seems to do so!?

I'll try to explain... Your girlfriend already felt in love with you earlier to the events leading to your adventure. She's not your girlfriend because you saved her, but you saved her because she's your girlfriend. That's an important difference! We're not speaking of Han and Leia here. There's no "Oh, thanks for saving me you beautiful stranger. I'm your sex slave forever."

Such video games (get a girlfriend as reward) are somewhat problematic, there I'll agree with you. But they are the exception, even in the games Anita showed as examples. I think Devil May Cry did end like this, but I'm not sure about that. It's not even a clear case in her overly criticised Super Mario games. What are Peach and Mario anyway? Good friends? A couple? If they are: Is she his girlfriend because he freed her or did he free her because she's his girlfriend? We'll never know... Peach is just the princess at the end of the game and Mario is just the funny bouncing fatso. Not much "story" at all. Just as in every other arcade hall game... No wonder there's so much space, to turn it into a symbol of our patriarchic world order :/

You're right, it is a good thing to start a discussion. She should have involved publishers and developers (150.000 Dollar should suffice to visit and interview one or two of them), but maybe she'll do that in her upcoming videos.

I didn't deny that sexism in video games exists. But not that much with the Damsel in Distress scenario. Furthermore her choice of examples is poor and does make her look like an extremist. If you have a game for an arcade machine, where a guy has to beat up his enemys (doesn't matter if your enemies are turtles as in Mario or thugs as in Double Dragon), what "story" would you tell if your boss gives you 5 seconds of screentime for it? Lord of the Rings? A Song of Ice and Fire?

Modern games don't use Damsel in Distress plots that much. Yes, there can be moments where you have to help a woman... But this isn't the whole story anymore. In Two Worlds the story is "save your sister", yes. But please don't say your sister is your sex reward. There are more games where the plot is a captivated woman, I know, but I can't name them right now. That's not that often anymore. And you can't completely forbid it as a story.

I agree with Anita's points about the "woman in the refrigerator". Killing your girlfriend/wife/daughter just to have an excuse to kill some people is... well... not exactly a "bad" plot device, but definitely worn out (in some games it's not a question IF it will happen, but WHEN it will happen) and nearly always with women as victims. There are a few exceptions, but they are mainly military shooters. But I suppose that's just because you don't take your girlfriend with you into a warzone... Otherwise they would prefer to kill her instead of one of your comrades. So she's right with that one, although I think it's something different than the Damsel in Distress. A dead woman hardly is a sex reward...

One more point:
That's exactly what I was expecting from her videos and not Super Mario Bros, Borderlands 2 and japanese video games where you can't tell man from woman. How those women are portrayed is the real sexism-problem in video games. Not that they're helpless... No, hostages have to be helpless. But usually the presentation of helpless women is very suggestive. Lips slightly opened (exhaustion or lust?), begging eyes ("help me" or "I want you"?), moaning (from suffering or of pleasure?)... Anita did touch this subject, but only slightly. Maybe she's keeping that kind of illustration for her "Woman as reward" episode.

wtf are you talking about? Did I say somewhere that it is okay to wish she would be gang raped or something? I'm talking about the content of here videos, about what she's saying. Not about any pubertal reactions of youtubers who are known for their charming behaviour.

Not everyone who isn't agreeing with her on one single topic (!) is one of those douchbags. You don't have to agree with a person just because there are people hating her. I'm not one of them. Heck, I don't even know her, so why should I hate her? What have I to do with those people? Read my posts again. I think she's exaggerating with the Damsel in Distress. That's all *rolleyes*

Another thought:
Many characters in modern computer games are off to live through extreme things. They will see horrible stuff and keep on going.
Why? Because they have an extreme motivation - save the world/kingdom, save the love of your life/your child, don't get killed/eaten and so on. And they often react to these extreme motivations with extreme measures - going on a killing spree, facing the evil mage, going into hell and so on.
(OK, some are just stupid or reckless...)

Max Payne going into therapy after his wife's death and then trying to continue to live his life as normal as possible might not have been the most exciting game.
So maybe many modern computer games NEED extreme motivation for their characters and the number of extreme things that can happen to a person are kind of limited and one of the easiest things that people can really understand is the loss of a beloved one.
So it's easy to write and understandable for a broad audience.

Still, in Prey, this having to kill your girlfriend (out of mercy) just seemed unnecessary cruel to me.
I was like: OK, let's see where on this fantastic alien ship we can get her treated or into stasis or something like that. I'm good at forcing people/aliens at gun point.
And the game was like: Nope, I won't let you continue until you killed her.
WTF?
Admittedly the protagonist was stupid. But was he really that stupid?

If the plot device, if the motivation is really needed for a game, I wished they would take a lot of care how they present it. And I sometimes feel that that isn't the case.

Her death means not having to write about her anymore so...I'm sure the writers were just being lazy. Because I don't think the main character would of given up that easily.

Geez, just trying to help you understand why she gets so much attention.