Whenever she makes statements suggesting that videogames themselves have an active hand in perpetuating whatever it is she thinks is being perpetuated. One example: She is suggesting that games' depictions of abuse against women have a causal effect of molding the beliefs and attitudes of people who play these games. I'm not closed off to that possibility, but I'm going to need to see some compelling evidence beyond any shadow of doubt.
I don't remember the exact wording she used, as it's been a while since I saw that clip, but I remember it sounded like the context was about violent/gory games, not games in general.

Yes. I was a game developer, I'd only listen to the audience for technical issues but as far as narratives and content are concerned, I'd do whatever I like and I sincerely hope all game developers make the kind of games they themselves want to play and don't water down their vision to cater entitled demands. If people don't like it, then they are free to not buy it but they are not entitled to influencing the narratives.

If garden dwarfs passive aggressively came complaining to me that they feel left out because the only garden dwarf in my game stood somewhere in the background as decoration and wasn't a playable badass hero, then I'd simply ignore their pleas. If they want a game with a badass garden dwarf hero then they can make one themselves. No one is stopping them.

EDIT: I meant If I was a game developer, so annoying to find typos in a post that change the meaning of a sentence and the browser's proof readinf system can't pick up those kinda typos.

OK, sure.
And if we lived in an alternate reality where garden dwarfs were real and played video games, and one of the really popular ones, or one of the popular garden gnome supporters wrote an article (or did a webseries) about how games don't seem to cater to them at all, and seem to actively ignore them at best, or portray them in negative or subservient roles, and used your game as a typical example, would you start screaming about slander and corruption and how you don't have anything against garden dwarfs, but you really hate corruption in game journalism and how they should be more objective?

I dunno, solzariv. I see "X works to reinforce Y, which already exists" not really being the same as "X causes and molds Y".

You are of course, correct in that she does not provide any evidence for the statement (at least that I can remember, of what you quoted), but either way, I dunno, I didn't really consider what she said to be such an outlandish statement. A second of googling brought up an OSU study that showed that playing as a black character in video games can reinforce racist stereotypes about black people (prone to violence, crude behaviour, etc).

People often compare and conflate opposition to video games due to violence with critique of video games due to sexist stereotypes ("SAYING VIDEO GAMES CAUSE SEXISM IS LIKE SAYING VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE, AND WE KNOW THAT IS NOT TRUE!"), but the point is that most of us (thankfully) don't live in a violent society where beating people up and gloating over headshots is normal. So even if video games COULD perpetuate the idea of the normalcy of violence in society, reality disagrees with that, so they don't.

Culture and history, however, have undoubtedly left us with a reality where traditionally, women were sidelined, viewed as prizes, felt to require rescuing and protection in roles as victims, etc. etc.
Of course, a single game that featured such depictions of women wouldn't be meaningful of anything, but the general trend of such kinds of games and game narratives is quite illuminating as to her point.

As I've said earlier, even disregarding all this benefit to women and equality and all that, I'm all for game developers putting a little more thought into the stories of their games, because almost nobody intentionally makes a misogynistic game, it is usually just the result of tired and lazy storytelling, and over-reliance on tropes.
So you didn't really answer my initial question (or answered it with reference to a point that doesn't seem really relevant). You said it depends on whether it is education or indoctrination, and gave an example of indoctrination as being unevidenced claims.

So for you, to phrase my initial question a little differently, would you feel there'd be anything wrong if there was a general trend in games and by game developers towards more inclusive (or less exclusive) game narratives and stories?

But the thing is it's like Someone saying all games are bad because First-person Shooter's are not turn-based strategy games.

Anita doesn't seem to like violent games, so instead of playing the non-violent games available she decided to video rant & used feminism to try to needlessly harm violent games

I wouldn't honor current day game journalism or its existence with a comment or a feeling about it unless my game contains technical bugs in which case I'll simply fix the bugs and release an update.
But maybe the next patch would add an easter egg into the game, maybe a cook book for garden trolls about the proper culinary preparation of garden dwarfs. Garden dwarfs with a sense of humor will love it. And the other ones will generate free PR for the game.

And group all men into the violent category as well because we play those kind of games.

You're operating under the assumption that games as a whole are inherently misogynistic, though. Even Anita had to misrepresent certain games (most notably when she claimed that some strippers in a Hitman game were deliberately placed there as representations of female sexuality to be punished by the player for their sexual gratification, ignoring the fact that you're not supposed to kill random people in Hitman games) to make them appear so. Isn't it possible that gaming isn't as terrible a space for women as these people are claiming?

I'd like to see more female protagonists, personally, but I disagree with the way these people go about things. Symbolic victories and shaming (see #shirtstorm for a recent example of what these very same people are all about) aren't anywhere near as constructive as making developers aware that there's a demand for more well-written female characters. Even then, I'm not willing to pretend the great female characters of Remember Me, Memoria, Transistor, Child of Light, and so many other games, many of them recent, don't exist in order to equate the whole of gaming with dudebro shooters and Mario-esque "save the princess" scenarios.

There are already games that suit everyone's tastes out there. The more mainstream games' focus will inevitably shift with the demographics to better accommodate their new audience. So no, I don't think developers need to be "educated" on how to make "inclusive" games, nor do I believe that games that don't perfectly reflect their audience are inherently exclusionary.

Oh, another one of these -- Fun!

I suspect I'm one of the last "gamers" on the web with no real idea what this gamergate thing is all about.

And no, I don't really care to find out. *backs away slowly*

To use an analogy, if you exert momentum to an object already moving, there's still a direct link of causality happening; and she was claiming that videogames add some degree of momentum to the phenomenon (be it real or imagined). I found an article but can't seem to find the actual study. I'd be interested to know how their participants were sampled, were the participants of this study chiefly OSU students, were they pooled from a statistically large and random selection of people from a wider outside area, has this study been replicated, or if the methodologies and measurements used in the study are even reliable means of objectively measuring prejudice. Psychology has always kind of hovered in the murky gray area between hard science and pseudoscience, though neuroscience will hopefully advance enough in a way to pull Psychology into the light side within the next few decades. And if these are the stark realities of a story's setting, no matter how uncomfortable, it shouldn't be glossed-over in the presentation. It'd be like not including any racist characters in a story that takes place in 1880's Mississippi. Isn't this what people were protesting about Disney's "Song of the South"? Trying to avoid tropes when writing is like trying to avoid stepping on twigs and leaves when walking through the forest. After millions of creative writers born over the past several thousands of years, true originality is an expired luxury at this point. Just because overabundance of tropes is frequently seen in poor writing does not itself mean the tropes themselves are the cause of the writing's poor quality. Plenty, if not most, of the 20th century's best authors' works have been full of tropes. I would be dishonest if I answered an easy one-word Yes or No to this question because I still don't accept the premise: I'm still not convinced that merely depicting a character in a negative role is the same thing as enforcing stereotypes or endorsing negative attitudes of that character's, for lack of a better term, "categorical" traits (race/sex/etc/whatever). And, thus, I don't accept that concepts like "non-inclusive" or "inclusive" are ones a writer has any obligation to be concerned about.

Even accepting the premise for argument, I'll answer No, it won't be "wrong", aside from the fact that the variable that changed is one that probably had nothing to do with the average quality of writing generally seen everywhere. Writers who are mediocre now will still be mediocre writers even after altering their styles to conform to the credo of "less tropes/more inclusivity/etc." Instead of writing stories that feel like cheap Saturday morning cartoons, they'll write stories that feel like hamfisted after-school TV specials.

Gamergate is an easy "to get angry" mob, that is so convenient for people like Anita Sarkesian in order to make MONEY

http://feelsandreals.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/what-salon-com-got-wrong-about-ocarina-of-time/

Enough with this drama.

I'll make some points very direct, despite that meaning they will misrepresent my actual beliefs.

Your emotional investment comes in as a refusal to consider that "no gender or race should feel ostracised by the entertainment media they consume" may already be true. The existence of the feelings does not prove the feelings are reasonable. Get it? Games don't do ostracism, they have zero moral agency, they are media.

Your emotional investment comes in when you admit it "troubles [you] when people start talking about and arguing against what they interpret [you] might be implying". Maybe you should become a hermit... It's your choice how to respond, I'd suggest politely confirming, denying or refusing to comment.

I must say I had noticed that when we get close to the core of any disagreement you get 'bored' and lose interest. I would recommend you challenge yourself a bit more, it should help you connect more intimately and in my experiences the rewards of such commitment to another person are very enriching. Huzzah for diversity! ;)

Have you watched Clockwork Orange? Do you know about the book's ending? Never mind... I don't know your age and it's nearing 50 years... let's just say back in the seventies the controversy had much more to do with themes of education, indoctrination, brainwashing. Apropos don't you think?

You assumed I wanted you to mention other political ideologies, I actually had no presumed answer in mind. Diversity is an ideology mate, some of its offshoots presently are multiculturalism, and gender diversity. I told you that education about diversity may be good or bad depending on the methods (Clockwork Orange wink wink - get it?). I guess you wanted a more black and white answer, since you appear emotionally uncomfortable that I don't "fall in line" denouncing something you believe is bad. Still, that's my answer, feel free to follow up.

And please answer my question, since you haven't. What other ideologies apart from diversity do you thing media creators and audiences should be educated on?

Indeed, and they are created in the void, and come to us directly and fully-formed from the great gogbox in the sky.

I dunno, I'd like to think that I live in a reality where a situation where me saying something along the lines of "The colour red is nice" being responded to with "Oh, so you're a communist" could be universally acknowledged to be totally daft.

This being the internet, with so much information to consume and stuff to read, when I start getting into looping arguments, or am asked to participate in vague experiments culminating in a request to read and compare walls of text that have intentionally been stripped of their readability, I have to admit that yes, I get bored, and don't find it enriching. I don't get "emotionally uncomfortable" about most stuff I voluntarily participate with in the forums, I mean, to be totally honest, at the end of the day, this is just an internet forum full of strangers. I don't have any emotional investment in this, I'm just here for fun, and if I learn something new along the way, yay.

I have watched it, yes, and the book with the original ending. As for the controversy, I wasn't around to experience it firsthand, no, but popular historical opinion (insofar as can be exemplified by a wikipedia article) disagrees with you.

I dunno. Haven't considered it.

Certainly, it isn't. It would be unfair to the vast multitude of interesting stories and narratives we can come up with to desire that some specific group never ever be cast in a specific role or used in a specific way. But I was never talking about any specific single game, which is why I used words like "general trend" and "games" and "developers".

I'm operating under the assumption that most games today, in general, are terribly written, and writers seem to lazily fall back on tired and overused tropes that probably due to historical reasons and "tradition", very often just so happen to portray women in sexist ways. I suppose if you want to cut out the entire middle of the previous sentence, you could get what you said.

While some of her older videos possibly do indicate she doesn't like violent video games, her recent series, the one that caused all this furore, doesn't really say anything against violence in video games unless she's talking about something specific relating to violence against women. I'm not sure it is relevant.

Ah, your racism analogy failed to reflect the nuances of your argument. Let me cut to the heart of this, then.

If this is such a huge problem and women make up ~50% of gamers these days, is this something we even have to bother dealing with ourselves? Won't those who believe this to be a problem buy the games that appeal to them and avoid the ones that they feel are sexist, forcing developers to adapt to their audience or fail? Remember, Ubisoft dropped their always-on DRM because they saw a sharp decline in sales when they were using it. Why is this the only issue that requires circumventing the traditional "speak with your wallet" method of making developers change their ways?