I think the problem here is that with people that define themselves for fighting for 'Equality' and 'Social Justice', is that I don't think they both understand the difference of culture and reading and understanding. It comes across to me that they want this big homogenous culture, and it's never come across to me as a positive one. They've been creating a culture of victims, people who don't have to think for themselves, or take responsibility for their own issues because someone else is oppressing them. And those fighting for Social Justice will be there to protect them, to fight the oppressors, to fight for them.

And when there aren't oppressors? They'll find a group and create them. They will show you exactly who is messing you up, and they will fight them for you, you don't even have to think, just blindly follow their ideals.

I'm basically typing this from my head, but I get the distinct feeling that I just described a cult. A cult where these defenders will have all of the power, because they will be the ones guarding everyone.

The funny thing is when I read the Witcher books (at least those translated into English) I viewed the whole twisted world as exposing sexism. Just as the persecution of the elves exposed racism. I thought they made some pretty big statements about troubles in our society by negative example.

This is all so crazy. Like, beyond-cult crazy. This feels like something straight out of "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers".

"No, no, she alright! She better now! MUCH BETTER NOW!"

The pot people are taking over. Moot's one of them now.

I noticed that too. Good Christ, that's headdesk-inducingly stupid.

I have to still read them, a friend sent me one for my kindle around my birthday, but I chose 4 books of the wheel of time to read first <.<. It's always telling when no one actually looks for context behind what they see, they just condemn it immediately.

The books are pretty amazing. I've read many fantasy books, but I had never before read books which so brilliantly displayed so many vices of society in one setting. You have class-struggle, racism, sexism, cruelty for cruelties sake, warmongering, totalitarianism. Most fantasy books are about the settings, the forests, the frozen tundras, but in the Witcher series, the world is the people and their differing attitudes. And its not black and white. There's plenty of bad and most times there is no simple answer to fix it. Definitely not King Arthur roaming around the countryside.

And that's reading it in English. It's clear than in its native tongue with it's colloquialisms, it's even more vibrant.

Exactly! I really had to laugh when I saw that Twitter post from Anita. If anything, I consider the Witcher books and games to be rather feminist (in the real sense of "women deserve equal rights too," not in the fake sense like Anita). The Witcher universe does everything that people like Anita claim they want. The female characters are treated like real people with depth and their own motivations, real issues like sexism and racism are addressed directly (often with Geralt objecting to people being mistreated due to race or gender), and the overall tone clearly shows that oppression is a bad thing. But apparently real feminism is misogynistic now XD

It's ridiculous how quick a lot of sites are to brand something as racist or sexist without considering the context. Simply addressing racism or sexism doesn't automatically make a piece of literature racist or sexist. It depends how it is handled, and there's no way any positive change can happen if people aren't even allowed to bring up certain topics.

To play a little devil's advocate, the games are a bit different. I can see an argument that the existence of pursue-able sex cards as a mechanic may deservingly raise a few eyebrows and might be worthy of some criticism. Although I'm not sure what kind of game you'd have if the only choices you can make are the "right" or "politically correct" ones. It would be like a choose-your-own adventure with only one option each time.

I'm definitely not going to defend the sex cards XD They were really silly and I'm glad CDProjekt Red got rid of them. But they were a very small part of a very large game and easy to ignore. Their presence doesn't invalidate everything else that the game did right. Instead it seems to me like a convenient target to complain about in order to avoid acknowledging that any game actually does have strong well-written female characters. If she can find some reason to rule out every game that actually does what she claims to want, then she can keep saying that all games are evil.

Well, most games don't have choices anyway so it could work on a mechanical level. However I don't think the story would be interesting or memorable if its main goal was to be politically correct. I think a lot of games are genuinely not offensive anyway, but they set out to tell a good story first and then it is what it is. If someone is overly conscious about offending people though then I think that would end up with the story being weak and lacking focus because anything important would be second-guessed and changed until it doesn't fit together anymore.

But I don't think these sites actually care about making games better (regardless of differing opinions of what "better" is). I think they just use games as a convenient punching bag to complain about and raise money (either directly or from page hits).

I think it's simply proof of how easy it is to do so, I mean, you wouldn't expect these people to actually take the TIME to properly research their topics, understand what exactly is wrong with them, and then make an informed opinion now would you? That's time they could be using to hate things, and talk about why something is oppressive and why these people are victims! I mean, who will show these people how victimized they really are and what they should be believing if the warriors spend time actually doing research?

Ok, I might break the sarcasm detector of everyone in the world if I keep going with that line. I think however, it also goes to show how much actual effort it takes to hate something. You devote so much time, so much energy, that it starts to consume you, it starts to taint who you are because you don't have any freedom to just enjoy something. You hate it, you have to hate it, and it's worse when you see it and for a moment think 'Well, it doesn't seem worth hating.'

Hee hee, yeah XD I get why some people act that way, especially if it's their own personal site/channel/whatever and they're doing it in their spare time. But gaming sites really should be above that (emphasis on "should"). I don't consider Anita to be a gaming site and she can do whatever she wants, but it's sad how many gaming sites blindly agree with her line of reasoning, or regular news sites refer to her as an expert on gaming, or even some companies getting her input on games (Mirror's Edge 2). Why does she have so much credibility among people who should know better? Why aren't they doing their own research?

I'm not even convinced she really hates it. She figured out how to make more money than most people by putting on this persona, so I guess good for her XD It's probably more that she doesn't want to commit to scrutinizing any game in detail because then she'll be expected to do it more often and it's easier to just coast along with her current style of video. If her supporters don't demand more from her, then why should she make work for herself? XD I don't think she's the problem. I think the problem is her supporters (including news sites) taking what she says as truth and not demanding a deeper analysis from her about the topics she discusses. She's an opportunist, but she didn't create the environment in which her strategy works, she just took advantage of it and the real problem is that it works (not that she figured out to do it).

EA's choice is PR, completely and utterly. I guarantee she's not getting paid big bucks, and I guarantee that the developers are taking what they like out of her advice and leaving the rest. As a bonus she can't say anything against the game because of her position, and it's almost free marketing to people that know her but might not enjoy games. Win/Win/Win.

The Regular News Sites...This is harder to wrap my head around. I get the games journalist side, she plays really well to the narrative that they've been building for quite a long time. In fact, pushing her like they did was a win/win. If she didn't get the harassment she got, then they have the push that their agenda is taking root, and they might get some converts. The Death Threats and Harassment? The side of their narrative that gamers are misogynist children and that she's in need of protection, and gaming is in need of protection from us.

The Regular News, now that I think of it, probably has those people who are half in, half out of the gaming sphere, at least the tech side of things. Microsoft announcing a new console is pretty big news because it's Microsoft. They've got some connection, maybe someone has told them about Anita and hyped her up (Ok, I'm making guesses on that). They see she's been doing this video series, and she now looks like an expert. I dunno, it's the easiest scenario for me to wrap my head around.

Ok, hate might be a strong word, but I've gotten the feeling that she's honestly in over her head. The scenario that seems to pop into my head for this was, she set up the kickstarter thinking fans of the site would back it, she'd get enough money for it to be a quick, easy job and maybe get her some better equipment (Truth, I honestly haven't heard of her or feminist frequency until all of this, so some stretches might be there).

The Games Journalists happened, and this ballooned out of control. I'm not so sure that she's an opportunist, and it's more that she's playing to her audience because fuck everyone else. I am pretty sure that she's not doing this out of any love of the medium, especially given the time she's had though. People have called her out on mistakes (Personally Zelda is generally the one with the plan, the one who understands everything that's going on, with Link acting on her behalf as subterfuge, since villains RARELY see him coming or as a threat when they notice him at first.) that most gamers probably wouldn't have really made if they did their research. But I don't know, I think she's twisted this thing around in her head a bit as an actual gender war.

You make that sound like a bad thing. Most of the regulatory agencies we have are because private businesses can't be trusted to do the right thing without somebody looking over their shoulder and forcing them to.

I mean hell, most of them will run themselves out of business if there's a buck in it for them today rather than next quarter.
I think one of them going out of business would put the fear of god into them. They're just lucky that we live in a time when nobody is going to put their heads on pikes over a bridge to warn others of their misdeeds.

Civilized times, but it's nice to see that people can still scare the crap out of advertisers.

To illustrate the American/European cultural differences regarding The Witcher and other things, I would like to point out an old small documentary (13min) about a female american feminist which goes in Ukraine to meet a group of women who call themselves the Warriors Women of Asgarda. I encourage you to watch the video entirely because the "backstabbing comment" of the reporter is really cringing, you just want to slap her on the face for wanting to impose her POV across the whole world regardless of different cultures...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4wmW8fKrwk
BTW, some cute women there ;)

I thought this had something to do with GamerSGate and their DRM turn...

What's that GameRGate thing and why it's all over the net? can anyone explain me in an easy manner (because I only see really long/dense texts)

Here's an extremely short version from the gamer perspective.
The other side mostly claims that this is about misogyny, toxicity, or "death of gamers".