Aisha

I'd like to elaborate a little. I would say that any establishment where people are meant to be able to drive there in order to drink alcohol there, meets the exact same sort of standard of 'encouragement' as Anita's statement, and I do not disagree with it. You're encouraged to do it in that it's both possible to end up driving drunk within the completely normal parameters of the experience, and that one needs to be at least a little mindful/careful and keep one's 'score' in mind in order to drive to the bar for a drink and not end up driving drunk afterward. In order for an alcohol-serving establishment to be able to say it does not in any way encourage drunk driving, it would have to, for example, refuse to serve enough alcohol to cause impairment, demand the guest stay long enough after drinking for impairment to wear off, require a clearly labelled designated driver for all parties, or fail to have a car park and insist guests arrive only by foot or taxi etc. And likewise for Hitman to be able to say it does not in any way encourage players to kill the dancers, it would have to, for example, fail to make them killable (perhaps there's an alarm you can't help tripping that allows them to escape before you have an opportunity to kill them, or perhaps they can't be reached, or are not in the game at all). (ETA: The argument for whether the game ought to encourage it or not is a different one. I'm strictly talking about whether it does encourage it.) As for your hypothetical criticism of Tomb Raider: You do realize there's nothing actually wrong with any of that, that it's not actually a wrong or ridiculous opinion to have or interpretation to make? All of those points could be debated and wider contexts could be brought in to evaluate them and see if they lead anywhere or not. I'm certainly not so throw-hands-up-disgusted at the very ideas that I wouldn't be interested in unpacking them a bit and having a conversation around the issues. OF COURSE we could be here all day trading anecdotal tales and subjective interpretations! Is it your implication that that's a totally worthless and ridiculous thing to do? If so, that's fine, but I'd think the best thing to do for anyone who feels that way would be to maybe roll their eyes and ignore it? I don't understand why complaining about things you don't like because of how they relate to a group you are a member of, and striking a chord with your audience, is zealotry and victimhood. If it is, why isn't the entirety of Gamergate a colossal example of zealotry and victimhood?

I'm using an anecdote to explain what should be an uncontroversial phenomenon, that games creators build things into games which make them enjoyable that may be tangential if not deleterious to the game's central goal. That's not anecdotal evidence. That clicking sheep makes them explode is a fact. I just happened to describe my own experience with it. I apologize, but based on your response, I'm not sure you understood my point. Here's the sentence you were responding to. The context was Anita's claim that Hitman encouraged the player to kill these strippers. That's the claim branded as a lie that I'm addressing. here's the claim in her own words. The charge again is that this statement is a lie because the game penalizes players for killing civilians therefore it can't be implicitly encouraging them. The one I deem uncharitable is a meaning of "encourage" which is incompatible with a loss of points. Let's imagine she could have equally plausibly meant either. (I don't think that's the case, but it would be a long argument for a bit of minutia) It's not at all reasonable to brand her a liar because one interpretation of a sentence would be false when another, valid interpretation is available. That's not the sort of approach that leads to civil discourse. In fact if you'd watched the entire 2-part video, you'd see she explicitly addresses the penalties in similar games to make the same point. in fact, she goes on quite a bit about the kind of encouragement she means in other parts of the video. The question is whether her statement is a lie. It can only be interpreted as a lie if one imagines a meaning for "encouraging" which is inconsistent with the way she otherwise talks about the idea. This is not about whether it can be argued that her points are incorrect or about what happened when a girl hit you or about trends in society at large. I am making a very small, very simple argument about a very specific claim.

Thank you I think that's an uncharitable reading. When I was a young, I loved playing Warcraft II. When you clicked on a moving character in your army, or an animal, they would make a sound or utter a little phrase. If you clicked again, it may utter a different phrase, I believe they were randomized. If you clicked on a sheep enough times, it would explode. This wouldn't gain you any tactical advantage or any useful points, it was just a little fun sadistic bonus. Even though it didn't help in any core game objectives or outcomes, it was encouraged in the sense that they gave you a reward, a fun novel experience for doing it. The reward is novelty. Sarkesian was not talking about the game scoring when she talked about the way the game rewards players, she was talking about the mechanics of the game as a designed experience. They built a trunk and set the physics and designed the level so that an option that exists is stuffing dead prostitutes into a trunk. They did this knowing that an adolescent audience would contain a lot of people who would find this entertaining the way I found making sheep explode entertaining. Creating the mechanics and novelty of that experience is reward and encouragement, even if it doesn't positively impact game score. I think a lot of animosity around this issue comes from equivocation, either intentional or not, where people fail to read things as they are intended.

The guy who made that video has been on a crusade against feminism and Anita Sarkeesean for some time now. A quick search on him showed he's either a flat-out liar, or such a poor researcher that anything he says can't be trusted. Excuse Me While I Dismantle Thunderf00t's Anti-Sarkeesian Video With One Screenshot There are plenty of gameplay videos out there featuring people killing the dancers in Hitman (with plenty of approving comments), and there have been for literally years before Sarkeesian's video discussing and depicting it. The screenshot of one YouTube video at that link (which you can watch , for example, charmingly titled "Fun with Strippers", considering that the description reads "In which we Enjoy Talking a Lot and Killing Strippers a Lot. We strangle and kill many strippers, then make piles out of them and watch them ragdoll and roll around the floor.") shows it was uploaded on December 4, 2012. Just right now, as I was typing this post, I did my own YouTube search using the exact same search terms - "Hitman game strippers" - and found more videos just like that one, one right below the above video on the first page of results, the second the video at the top of the "related videos" section on the right hand side of that one. Both of them were uploaded in the middle of 2013. Sarkeesian's video, "Women as Background Decoration: Part 1", wasn't uploaded until June 2014. So, either thunderf00t couldn't be arsed to do two seconds of research before he spouted his bull about how Sarkeesian was totally making that whole thing up and no one would even think about doing such a thing in Hitman (much less make videos about it) before she did it, or he was directly and blatantly lying about it.