Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (2013– ) User Reviews

I'm sorry I can't recommend this series

[artfuldodga · 1/10 · 2 June 2015]

This series is perhaps one of the most bigoted things I've ever seen. Labels all gamers as women hating individuals even states as fact that we are all affected by Video games even if we think we aren't.

This is propaganda worse than the stuff Jack Thompson tried to peddle to the media.

I can't rate the series a 0 and so a 1 will have to do. I would recommend searching on YouTube and you will find almost every argument made in this series rebutted.

I also feel bad for anybody who Kickstarted this video series as years later it has not been completed. Essentially scamming those who invested their hard earned money into something they believed in. I can't imagine many of those who supported this project would be happy at the blatant sexism that came to be of the project.

Sad

Anything can be sexist if you want it to be!

[singdavion · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

Ms. Sarkeesian promised the people who donated to her Kickstarter a series that "will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games." The gaming community gladly donated $158,922 with the expectation that the video series would be completed by the date noted, and would be a fair and factual analysis of how women are portrayed in video games.

I'll start off with the first promise: The deadline The first video was promised to be delivered during August of 2012. We received it on March 7, 2013. Seven months late. The rest of the videos? Some people donated 250 dollars with the expectation that they would receive a video copy of all the videos in the series by December 2012. Two years later and the series is only half done. For a series so biased and factually wrong, the delay is inexcusable and yet, the creators refuse to refund the money.

But let us ignore this and take a look at the actual contents of the series. Ms. Sarkeesian spawns out of the abyss: a set of ridiculous tropes with which she would be able label the vast majority of female characters whom she did not like in the games she barley played. The few characters that were praised in the series would have failed by her own standards if only the show was not completely arbitrary and had some structure in how everything was criticized. So what exactly did all the criticism consist of?

That lady is a bystander on the street whom you can kill. Violence against women. That girl is beautiful and is not modestly dressed. Objectification of women. That women is killing people in a bad ass way, acting like a man. Man with boobs. This girl needs help. Saying women are weak or incapable. This game has no important female characters. Sexism.

This is the entire series. The few (very very few) legitimate arguments that were made discounted the fact that the games in question had a demographic of men in mind. Much like how romance novels with muscular men on the cover have a demographic of women in mind.

Literally anything could have been sexist if Ms. Sarkeesian wanted it to be. Everything in the video series was said on a whim, with the precise and bigoted goal of shaming video games and the people who enjoyed them for being who they are.

Watch if you want to confirm your own biases against gamers

[matiss-zz · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

Do you find the idea of a man saving a woman in peril so disgusting and ludicrous that it should never exist in any video game under any circumstances? And if it does, then the only plausible explanation is that men hate women? Can you somehow reconcile the idea of a man saving a woman while simultaneously hating her and can you hold both of these ideas as being true without a hint of irony?

Do you believe that women should ALWAYS be presented as strong characters and any hint of femininity is the fault of misogynistic developers? Do you believe that almost no such game has ever been created?

Do you find the female form repulsive to the point where any display of sexuality renders you incapable of performing your most basic functions? Do you believe that men enjoy looking at beautiful women because they secretly hate them and wish to see them degraded?

Does the word propaganda evoke positive emotions? Do you have no problem with confirmation bias?

Then this is the series for you, my friend! All this and a lot more (well, 8 videos to be exact) can be yours, but only if you have no wish of conversing with the creator or leaving any sort of feedback. We all know that YouTube comments are a cesspool of c**p, so the creator of the series has generously turned off comments and the like/dislike bar, so as not to expose you to any bad thoughts!

You're welcome!

Propaganda pretending to be a "critical analysis".

[Selino64 · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

The 'Tropes vs. Women in Videogames' is a crowdfunded webseries which bills itself as a critical look at how women are often portrayed in the video game medium, but unfortunately suffers from some significant flaws.

The Kickstarter campaign was held during the summer of 2012, and the originally 5-episode series was expected to be complete by the end of that year. The campaign received over 26x(!) what they had asked for, and in response the webseries was to be expanded to a total of 12 episodes. Obviously, the project wouldn't be finished by the end of 2012, but here we are in mid 2015 and it's still far from complete.

Much of the game footage used in the series has been shown to be ripped from other Youtubers "Let's Play" videos. While this isn't an uncommon practice, it's rather troubling that they declined to provide the names of the channels they sourced the footage from. Additionally, given the enormous success of the Kickstarter I cannot help but feel that they must've had adequate funding to procure their own footage instead of using others'.

I'm not going to bother debating the legitimacy of the individual tropes, or the examples used for them. Those arguments have already been said enough times. Suffice it to say that much of her conclusions and critiques are questionable (at best), and seem to follow Feminist Frequency's motto of 'Listen and Believe'.

Another problem lies with their inability to provide a sense of scale as to how common these tropes are. Yes, they may be able to list a dozen or more games that use a particular trope, but how significant is that figure in the context of the industry as a whole? Are *most* games using these tropes, or is it a minority? If this is an issue, how big is it?

And then there's entire the issue of whether or not hypothetically sexist fiction can have an actual detrimental effect on peoples' perspectives in the real world.

Worst of all though, is the series message that videogames - which are indeed art - must align to a particular social ideology, or else be deemed "problematic". And Feminist Frequency wants this to be part of a classroom curriculum? This is propaganda by moral authoritarians. Nothing more, and nothing less.

I would not mind seeing a real discussion on the topic of women in videogames, but hopefully next time with a more neutral and thought-provoking approach.

A Series Of Video Game Reviews That Are Utterly Illogical

[jegd-847-631407 · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

This isn't a documentary. I'm trying to understand why this is on IMDb. This is a collection of video game reviews from Youtube. Anita Sarkeesian is the host, sitting in front of a "green-screen" reviewing video games and specifying how she doesn't like them. I assumed it was parody, as it's on Youtube.

I did make an attempt to understand the point of view, but Sarkeesian presents a lot of negative observations:

The series presents "tropes" (which are basically metaphors for some form of expression) versus women. In most points Anita blames society, specifically men, for not enjoying the video games. Although I did notice she ignored the target audience of said games belong to a male demographic.

Anita Sarkeesian labels female characters in specific video games that she herself does not like. Sarkeesian's expertise immediately fell into question, when she admits she "does not like and does not play" the video games she's reviewing.

Sarkeesian arrives with her decisions subjectively; A female character is attractive, that's objectification. This female character needs to be rescued, this degrades her value. This female was killed, this promotes violence against women ... Arbitrary conclusions, heavily criticized, without basis in facts and it's just an incredibly negative experience.

If your familiar with John Bruce Thompson (Jack Thompson) from the 80's then you might understand where this series of video game reviews leads you; Jack was an activist campaigning against violence in video games - notoriously calling it "Behavior Modification". It's that same capriciousness that's applied here, although a bit more irrational in observation than Thompson's - Such as referring to a female hero as just a man with breasts and deeming it a "hatred against women".

It vaguely reminds me of Dana Carvey's Church Lady from the old Saturday Night Live, except it's deadpan serious and way cheaper in production. I understand she was given a quarter of a million dollars from Kickstarter to fund this. It's one still camera aimed at the presenter for the whole time. I'm sure it's worth some value to watch it freely on Youtube ... but never in a school classroom. It's not for children. You'd have to be insane to think this would benefit children.

One of the worst "academic" series ever produced

[mattjjbrown · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

First let me state that even if every claim made in this series, which it isn't but I will get back to that, this series would be considered an appalling mess by any kind of truly academic grading system. Sources are few and far between when they are actually present there is no attempt to show both sides of the research using only sources from unreliable publications pushing an agenda. So that's the "academic" claim of this series addressed onto the actual substance of the augments, the arguments presented have no backing or logical justification any argument for misogyny inherent in the games shown can also be applied to male characters or protagonists of many other games. The closest Anita ever comes to trying to justify her position is with the repeated use of "We all know..." followed by some argument debunked fully by many people better than me. Which brings me to my final point, every single argument presented in this series has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked by hundreds of videos on YouTube many of which use methods truly alien to Anita, Logic and academic evidence.

Do they even play the games?

[jasonblog · 1/10 · 2 June 2015]

Overall poorly researched scaremongering with cherry-picked examples and little to no real insight into the material covered. It's so bad you'll assume its parody, but unfortunately its all too real.

Imagine if a movie reviewer covered Citizen Kane, watched a few minutes, concluded that "Rosebud" was a woman Kane was oppressing and then had the gall to publish such nonsense. If the series covered ancient cave paintings it would conclude that the depictions of women were pornographic and demeaned them, while the pictures of hunting scenes reinforced patriarchal toxic masculinity, and that's why the Neanderthals died out.

That is the level of quality you can expect from Tropes V. Women.

If you feel you have all together to much faith in humanity, this series will remedy your problem. If you want to feel outrage at games neither you nor the writers of this tripe "documentary" comprehend then this is the series for you. If you wish to form educated opinions based on real world evidence and credible sources this is not something you should bother to sully your eyes with, as it offers no new arguments, only rehashing the same "Moral Censor" nonsense that has pervaded entertainment for as long as there has been entertainment.

IMDb, you need to invent negative ratings just for this.

[willwoodmill · 1/10 · 12 March 2016]

Typically when I write reviews, I'll go back next re-watch whatever the review is for. Not with this.

I don't even know why I'm doing this you all already know how terrible biased and factually incorrect it is, and if you don't look up response videos on YouTube or just articles on Google. You'll find tons of things debunking every single one of her points.

Not only is tropes vs. women completely incorrect, it is both intellectually dishonest and was only created so that the head of feminist frequency, Anita Sarkeesian, could make money. First of all she said in the original kickstarter that she had been playing video games her whole life, but a while later someone uploaded a video of her from a few years before the kickstarter was released saying she does not play videogames. Why would someone who doesn't like or understand video games create a series reviewing them? Well it's simple they're currently topical and controversial, so it would be an easy way to make money.

But the lies and greed don't stop there oh no, there was obviously a huge backlash against her kickstarter when it was first released. So after the kickstarter had already been completely funded, she published a few tweets that were sent to her, and all these tweets did was insult her. And she said these few tweets proved that all gamers were misogynistic resulting in her getting over 100,000 dollars in funding.

Anita Sarkeesian has also disabled comments and ratings on her videos, because they are so terrible and asinine that they couldn't even stand up to the smallest amount of criticism or scrutiny. She also seems to think that if people disagree with her, it's harassment. She also thinks that people only disagree with her because she's a women not because what she says is idiotic. Both of which are just stupid statements.

Tropes vs women is very representative of feminism in modern day first-world countries. It's just a bunch of entitled privileged white women complaint that they're lives are so hard even though they're about as easy as they get.

Incomplete and driven by confirmation bias rather than understanding

[silver_atari · 2/10 · 2 June 2015]

Where to start?

This series was supposed to be completed in 2012, but most of the videos have never been done, despite raising over $440,000 in 2014 alone. Backers were promised a completed series on DVD, which never happened. All comments and ratings are blocked/disabled on the videos. Anyone who questions the conclusions is labeled a harasser or a misogynist for not listening and believing.

The host Anita Sarkeesian and writer Jonathan McIntosh willfully cherry pick and go against game mechanics in an effort to prove that everything is sexist. In a game where the player is actively discouraged from harming female characters, Anita will purposely stray from the mission, kill, and drag around said characters, then claim the game encouraged her to and is designed for sexual gratification. If 10,000 male characters are killed and only one female, she will abuse that one female character repeatedly and try to say the game is misogynistic. She will complain that there are female prostitutes in a game, when there are also male prostitutes. She will complain that women are "background decoration" as thousands of faceless male characters are gunned down and slaughtered.

If you want to see seeing cherry picked clips and half-truths designed to make you think every game is made to harm women, then you might enjoy this. If you have any critical thinking skills or understanding of game mechanics, this will likely evoke a lot of groans.

Only noteworthy for its failings - would not recommend.

[Borrow_or_rob · 1/10 · 4 June 2015]

"Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" is a youtube documentary series conceived and hosted by Anita Sarkeesian. The original crowdfunding drive for production in 2013 raised over $150,000, while donations on the homepage and other channels have raised the total sum to over $440,000 (official numbers from 2014).

Despite this being a massive production budget for a 12 episode series on youtube, the series was launched with a severe delay and with gaps as big as half a year between episodes consequently also gained a reputation for its seeming lack of schedule.

Furthermore despite the massive budget there is no noticeable degree of increased production values comparing Anita Sarkeesian's earlier self-published youtube videos and the funded "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" series.

The presentation itself is bland and tends to fall into the pattern of repetition over original content; short intermissions of gameplay footage is narrated along by the host just for the statements to be repeated after the footage is done. Rather than thought provoking this might make you feel like being treated like a small child. What makes the matter worse is that arguments are often based on footage completely taken out of context or even worse based only on hearsay, the rare occurrence of an interesting observation is often misconstrued into an unrelated and/or exaggerated argument.

It should also be noted that some of the gameplay footage was taken from various "let's play/longplay" sources from youtube without permission or credits and then is misrepresented as the host basing her arguments on playing said game footage, further hampering the credibility of this series - just the thing you'd expect out of a mockumentary but not an earnest effort at documentary!

The bottom line: Would not recommend to anyone. Bland presentation, arguments tend to look rushed out and ill researched despite massive budget and big time gap between episodes.

Starts the conversation

[shinishini · 10/10 · 3 June 2015]

An eye-opening series. Anita focuses on issues within entertainment we've all noticed, that are frequently brushed under the rug. The series presents an overview of a variety of tropes. The style is both funny and thought-provoking.

Major media has always had a tendency to lag behind the current time frame, as what is considered to be 'safe material' is re-calibrated. The limited ideas for what women should be, are often still hilariously outdated.

She's a controversial figure, as many who speak against the status quo are. This serves credence to the series as a spark for discussion.

Check it out, see for yourself. Whether you love it or hate it, it's guaranteed to prompt interesting conversation with others in the room watching with you.

The most ironically bigoted thing I've ever seen.

[orvillestory · 1/10 · 20 December 2015]

I watched out of curiosity only and knew the irrational brew of hypocrisy I was in for, but still had a hard time making myself keep watching. It's horrible. Anita Sarkeesian rather than being thought provoking just wants to provoke people with the sole purpose of personal gain through fame and money riding the coattails of whining first world feminist. If you somehow enjoy this film it can only mean your just as big of a bigot as she is. So many people who she describes as trolls rather than simply the majority of the population at large disagree with her so when she describes having an open debate she really means listen to me and bow down to my own personal views or else your contention to my points are not only invalid but you are a troll spilling hate speech towards simply because you don't agree with me. You can see for yourself if you look at her YouTube channel. She has disabled all ratings and comments on almost every video since she can't handle criticism, but she sure can dish it out.

Ever Hear the Phrase, "Never trust a skinny chef?"

[fegamer · 1/10 · 10 April 2016]

Look, as a gamer who happens to be a woman, it is interesting when different critics provide a different perspective on games. But this series? NO! Every video I watched was very poorly done and had very little to no research shown. And yet she got over 158K for this series? Well, let's see where the money went. Promised that the first video would be released in August of 2012, took over 7 months for it to show up. Some people were even waiting to receive copies of her videos by the end of 2012, never got distributed and nobody is getting their money back. As of now, the series took over 4 years to even get half of its videos out and people are still supporting her after she obviously took their money.

Furthermore, looking at her videos I managed to find out that it was all stolen let's play footage that she has cherry picked to fit her biases. She goes all out of her way trying to imply that women aren't in the video game industry and that any design that displays a character with cleavage is because the developers are automatically misogynists. If she even picked up a controller once in her life she would realize that there's more to female characters than just their bodies, it's how they are written.

Also, it seems that she even wants to avoid any form of criticism on her videos since all of the comments and ratings are disabled. I'm sorry, but if you're a critic you need to realize that part of being a critic and creator is being able to accept that you are going to receive criticism. Even as a feminist myself, I was just disgusted at her bias. Yes, I am a feminist, but I am the kind that believes women should just be seen as equals to men, not better. I just feel so disrespected by people like her, and she is giving gamers who happen to be women, a very bad name.

In addition, I believe video games are an art form and that you shouldn't push for censorship of the arts because of something you don't like about it. Also, have you even noticed that a majority of the games Anita looks at are rated M, for MATURE! These are games that are targeted at thinking, reasoning adults, not children. But of course the games she plays are usually app games, which are targeted at children, not veteran gamers who grew up with old school consoles such as the NES. Overall, if you hate to play video games, hate the people who develop them, and the people who play them, then this series is for you.

Lies and Videotape

[upvoter · 1/10 · 2 June 2015]

This series was supposed to be a well researched foray into sexism in video games. As we all know, women are often written poorly in popular culture. I was excited about the prospect of better characters in general, but after watching the series and looking into the shady and incredibly offensive work of Anita Sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh. There are numerous problems with the series, but the main issue is that there is no critical thinking involved in the conclusions drawn by Anita and Jon. If you actually play the games they talk about you'll find that much of what is posited is downright lies and fabrication. Beyond that, they didn't even play the games themselves! They stole content from other youtube videos (and not credited the source). This entire series is just a way to drum up more money for their patreon accounts. Anita has also spent more than $100,000.00 in donations on creating this series. Exactly how much does stolen content cost?

Do not support professional victims.

Nonsense Frequently

[DBLurker · 1/10 · 3 June 2015]

If you want opinions on games from a non-gamer, then this is the series for you.

Not only are videos clips and art shown in videos (which were funded by feminists for a LOT of money) stolen, but the content shown is misrepresented to suit the narrative of the social justice warriors out there.

On YouTube, do a search on "Anita Sarkesian" and you will be able to learn the scam that's Feminist Frequency. There are videos of female gamers destroying 'Tropes vs Women' series.

Just an FYI, I am a game developer myself. So I can guarantee one thing. It'll be a cold day in hell when I take this series seriously or change ANYTHING in my games because of SJW/feminists out there.

This is why I have avoided distribution on services like Steam and GOG. These distributors try to censor game developers by telling them their games aren't "acceptable". Want to sell your PC game on a service which is dominating PC sales? Better remove the unacceptable content or create a game that will be acceptable to your Valve/GOG overlords.

To the gamers out there. Buy directly from game developers website and join their forums/blog/community instead of feeding censorship havens like Steam which remove games like Seduce Me or Hatred because they are too adult for the grown-ups buying them. What? You don't think there are other games removed like Hatred was? Gabe doesn't interfere and make them sell game EVERY time it's removed. He did it for Hatred because of the bad press that game bought them.

/rant /review

cherry picked clips and blatant lies. unfortunate.

[d0x360 · 1/10 · 2 June 2015]

Its a video series about sexism but instead of having an intelligent conversation about the issue in gaming Anita Sarkeesian instead cherry picks video clips and outright lies about the games she shows to make her point.

Its certainly an issue that has merit speaking about but not like this. The conversation needs to be based on facts and truth. It cannot be based on images taken totally out of context and outright false information.

Aside from the poor content of the video series itself Sarkeesian has also stolen a massive amount of copy written material from youtube. Many clips are not hers, they are videos of let's play sessions ripped off of YouTube and edited into her videos. If she is stealing gameplay clips from other people are we to believe she actually played the game? I'd say no. We know she has the capabilities to capture footage. This series was on kickstarter and she made over $100,000 to fund it which is more than enough to buy a $100 capture device and $500 laptop.

There are much better examples of this same topic online and off. Seek those out and stay away from this series. Its toxic.

This is the most uninformative series to date.

[slashthenoob · 1/10 · 2 June 2015]

It comes to no surprise that a person who can be several times over budget yet still be late for every video will lack decent research and presentation. The lack of research shows as well since it's clear to anyone who has played the games she's criticized that she has not played a game at all. In some cases, she lies about the game content, such as the Hit-man Absolution game.

She is not a video game critic. She has stated before that she is not a fan of video games, nor is she fair and unbiased in her video series. She takes a look at individual video games with a feminist lens and criticizes the whole industry because of it.

None of her suggestions would help video games as a whole. She has impossible standards to meet when it comes to female characters. In her eyes, they must not be portrayed as 'objects' or 'weak,' which usually means, at least to her, any female character that experiences hardship is automatically sexist. If people went with her standards, the only female characters around would be bland, soulless, and overpowered.

Her series is based off of shaky science and ideology. Again, most of her criticisms are from a feminist point of view, using sociology as the foundation. She takes tropes she thinks are sexist that exist in some video games and declares the whole medium sexist because 'these tropes show a cultural attitude against women.' That definition of sexism cannot apply to individuals, and the common definition of sexism cannot be conflated with the sociological definition.

I cannot recommend this to anyone looking for scholarly material about video games or anyone looking for video game reviews.

Exceptionally Poor Research

[calbeck-1 · 1/10 · 12 April 2016]

On the level of Creation Science, quite frankly.

As with Creationists, Sarkeesian begins from a given premise (that pop culture informs and reinforces sexist worldviews) and proceeds to interpret all data as confirming the premise - even when it does the opposite.

For example, an entire video is spent on "Strategic Butt Coverings" to claim that female posteriors get shown off in video games while those of men are concealed. Actual gameplay of the Batman and Tomb Raider titles, which Sarkeesian presents as her proofs, show her claims as nothing but the kind one expects from a late-night infomercial peddler.

I'm still not sure if she is a True Believer or merely a huckster, but in no case is she an intellectual bringing something of value to the table.

Just terrible

[lengadzinski · 1/10 · 10 December 2015]

This series is just terrible.

The creators consistently demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge on the subject (or worse, they are just being disingenuous in an attempt to push their agenda-- I'll let you decide).

Everything from misrepresenting things, to straight up lying about the media they are giving criticism to. It's just garbage.

...and all the time while demonstrating lack of knowledge/research on the subject, claiming that they did "extensive research".

I'm not going to go on and on, because honestly this series doesn't deserve it. I'll just say this to end:

This series is a complete joke-- filled with logical fallacies, poor understanding, lack of research, and a bunch of disingenuous claims to try to push a bigoted agenda.

Don't waste your time.

Get past the threatened masculinity surrounding reviews, and watch this series!

[jessirvinrose · 9/10 · 4 March 2019]

Reading the reviews after watching the series, it is clear that the low ratings are a result of anger at core beliefs and ideas being dismantled, as well as people's feelings of defensiveness against the majority of video games. This is easily done, as many people who may watch this series would be fans of it and therefore over time will have become accustomed to the way women are presented. Anita presents arguments that are foolproof, and therefore would cause fury from those who don't agree with her, as there is no possible argument that she hasn't explained and overwritten. She expertly portrays a clear problem. This is non-negotiable to begin with. Many reviewers are saying that her ideas are debunked by a quick youtube search, but this is untrue, as she presents issues that are factual and don't warrant debate. These are issues such as women being over sexualised, or racist stereotypes being upheld. This is illustrated with clips from video games, that again, are non-arguably backing up her point about the frequency of these tropes being used. She then talks through it, explains how it is harmful, relates it to concepts that we as society have problems with - our fear of women's sexuality, objectification, racism, misogyny etc. She goes on to show some examples of games that work well, and also explains why her concerns cannot relate to other characters. For example those saying "men are sexualised too!" in attempt to make her seem as if she is unfairly presenting women as oppressed and ignoring the way men are treated the same, she talks through how it perpetuates different stereotypes and explains the direct impact of showing women in a particular way. This series is brilliant, collected, well thought out and worth watching - if you can ignore the men that are angered by their favourite games being represented as misogynistic, and are set on calling her a 'feminist gone too far again', to try and undermine her ideas. (Who would've thought it).

Ideologic propaganda of gender feminism

[Matthew-J-256-148827 · 1/10 · 2 June 2015]

Authors of this piece are gender ideologues and famous culture critics. When I say famous I mean famous by not knowing what are they talking about. This video series is supposed to be about tropes featuring women in video games. Well authors managed to inject their ideology and call tropes problematic pernicious dangerous and sexist, because they claim that "games are teaching us standards of normalcy" and "the more we think we aren't affected the more likely we are to be affected" despite all of the research done in this area. Then they like to misuse object/subject dichotomy and use feminist buzzwords in order to paint instances of tropes in games as patriarchal oppression. And because they wanted for it to have some legitimacy, from time to time they drop in some truisms and common sense things with no context or benefit for the viewer.

As a source of knowledge 0/10 As a source of amusement 0/10 Technical quality 5/10 It's almost painful to watch this.

Amateurish at best and cherry picking "proof".

[sergioschout · 1/10 · 12 April 2016]

Now i try to approach everything with an open mind but this is just ridiculous. Not because the creator is a woman, or that i am a man or whatever but pure on how the "series" has been constructed, the use of "research" and the fact that well, with my 4 master degrees from actual universities that are among the top 30 best in the world I think i earned the right to criticize this piece of youtube videos.

Pro: The only positive i could find it the objective: finding how women have been portrayed in video games.

Con: -Cherry picking "evidence" and saying that this is the only true proof is con artist like reasoning. If you want to prove something exists your have to look at ALL the evidence; not just the highly biased "evidence " you declare as good and true (because it validates your objective which is "everything is sexist" ). That is why real research is best left to those with one or more masters degrees from reputable universities because they have the tools to accomplish this 100000000000% better. -Fails to see the correlation between culture of the times ( going from the 1996 games directly to 2013 games), the business climate, who played the games etc. Businesses do not make games for a niche group of players. -So "well researched" that she completely misses the back story, the lore, the history, the narrative,etc of the stories in games, persons and even superheroes ( See the DC batman games and how catwoman moves.. have you seen a cat move.. its gracefully.. have you seen catwoman move in comics/TV series/cartoons... its GRACEFUL with a tad bit of using her female characteristics to get what she wants) -Academic research has shown that, just like with real world violence and video games, sexism is NOT influenced by videogames. This makes the video series even more null and void.

Conclusion: one of the worst youtube shows out there. Don't confuse youtube show with TV series because a TV series has to follow a certain pattern of episodes that will come out at a scheduled date and is backed by a major media concern. None apply to sarkeesian farce of youtube clips. It also reeks of propaganda to which an amateurish goebels would be proud. This youtube nonsense has no value whatsoever because you can pull the support beams from under the "women vs tropes" and "everything is racist, sexist .. and you have to point it all out" which results in the collapse of both theories. Avoid at all costs if you love women because all this will do is reaffirm 19th century values, misconceptions and plant a seed of hatred towards woman.

Fact Versus Fiction

[Cathex · 1/10 · 21 April 2016]

This documentary series is useful in one respect. It shows how a highly arbitrary personal opinion can be transformed into a pseudo-academic study of a social issue, and presented as if it were a fact. Never before have I seen such obviously personal bias presented under the guise of an objective observation.

The problem with the series, apart from it having absolutely no directorial or artistic merit whatsoever, is that it bends so far toward the spectrum of ideological brainwashing that it is actually quite disturbing. A quick search of the series on the web also gives more reason for concern as it would appear, despite its pitifully poor critical reception, that most reviews are positive in the extreme. This further lends the series an air of Orwellian cultism which I personally find very creepy.

And let's not pretend that the subject matter was controversial or brave in any way. So far as the political stance on gaming goes Sarkeesian is in safe water, repeating (perhaps even fuelling) the fashionable opinion that video-games are not only misogynistic but that they also incite violence in those who play them. Of course the actual scientific research seems to support the opposite conclusion, as most psychological studies of human behaviour take into account personal psychological issues which for the most part are developmental in origin and thus not much effected by things such as gaming.

This form of popular (and it seems to me rather dysfunctional) feminist research assumes that all human behaviour is caused by social influences. Obviously this tends more toward a political philosophy akin to Marxism, and to that extent this documentary is more like a 30's propaganda video than an actual research based study.

Weird, wacky and altogether unworthy of the documentary genre.

Please Note

[jjchavatte · 1/10 · 21 April 2016]

In addition to this series presenting hoards of misinformation, Anita Sarkeesian has also scammed thousands of women out of their own hard earned money by not even completing the series. What's she doing instead? She's trying to fund a whole other series. She requires something like $200k, and she has at least twice that laying around in her company's bank account. If you watch this series at all, people, please take everything she says with a grain of salt. She claims she does a great amount of research, but she doesn't. For example, in one of her videos she complains of Batman's cape being a super high tech butt covering device(like it somehow serves no other function.) She's either completely biased and ignores the fact that Batgirl has a super high tech cape for the purpose of covering her butt, or she just didn't do the research she claims to have suggested. She comments on cat woman's butt showing, and ignores Nighthawk's cape-less butt as well. Just a few examples of how badly made this series was made.

"Well Researched" is actually "A composition of blog posts"

[me-04554 · 1/10 · 21 April 2016]

I'd heard that Anita had made some really good cases against video game violence and their depictions of women from a friend, and that I should watch the series to learn exactly "how video games teach men to devalue women."

I'd heard wrong.

Anita claims multiple times through her series that her claims are supported by "evidence." When confronted for sources of her research at a conference on video games, Anita turned over links to blog posts; opinions of people upset with arbitrary features of games. Further, she took those opinions of specific game titles and generalized them over entire genres.

It didn't help that every game--every single game--she talked about is rated "M" for mature. These are video games designed for adults, not children.

I couldn't stand it. She immediately lost all credibility by claiming the opinions of roughly two-dozen blog posts from around a dozen individuals as strong evidence for ingrained patriarchy and a source of violence by-proxy. Nowhere in the entirety of the series does she address any study, even poorly executed studies, that show that video games have absolutely no effect on the amount of violence perpetrated by men, or an increase in violence among children.

I highly suggest those curious critically evaluate the material presented; I suspect you'll reach the same conclusion.

6/10 for intent. 0/10 for research. 0/10 for examples of claims. 1/10 for execution.

1/10 overall.