[Phantom Hoover]

Wha? Moderated fora exist all over the web, they're exactly what you describe.

[Lorric]

One of the things that annoys me most about this is that **** like this make it really difficult to criticize her work.  A lot of her stuff is really dishonest, but it doesn't matter because she's the victim of a lot of harassment.  The legitimate critics either go unheard, or they're demonized and lumped in with the morons.

What reasonable discussion?
You yourself can't even make a comment without attacking her character. You characterize her work as "dishonest", which in turn means you're calling her a liar.  The fair and objective criticism would be to call her work "inaccurate", but you didn't, you attacked her character indirectly instead by questioning her integrity and intent. You are part of the problem.

**** like this is what is wrong with the internet. People can't separate the argument from the person making the argument, and this is particularly true where women are involved and attacking the character becomes the go-to course of action.

Inaccurate? No, we'd say if it was inaccurate if it was inaccurate.

Look at her last train wreck of a video (not the one she's just released the one before) and what she had to say about Hitman Absolution. That's not inaccurate, that is a complete twisting of something to suit her agenda.

[Mr. Vega]

One of the things that annoys me most about this is that **** like this make it really difficult to criticize her work.  A lot of her stuff is really dishonest, but it doesn't matter because she's the victim of a lot of harassment.  The legitimate critics either go unheard, or they're demonized and lumped in with the morons.

What reasonable discussion?
You yourself can't even make a comment without attacking her character. You characterize her work as "dishonest", which in turn means you're calling her a liar.  The fair and objective criticism would be to call her work "inaccurate", but you didn't, you attacked her character indirectly instead by questioning her integrity and intent. You are part of the problem.

**** like this is what is wrong with the internet. People can't separate the argument from the person making the argument, and this is particularly true where women are involved and attacking the character becomes the go-to course of action.

I think Aesaar's and Lorric's biases are as apparent as mine at this point. "Twisting" is certainly a matter of loose opinion.

So who wants to justify the Hitman posters she put up for context then?

Wha? Moderated fora exist all over the web, they're exactly what you describe.

They're too specialized in character. We need some place like the Escapist forums with much tighter moderating. Maybe even an invite system.

[AdmiralRalwood]

For me to be able to verify anything about Hitman: Absolution, I'd have to actually play it, and this is the game whose teaser trailer had "gun-toting, PVC and latex-clad nuns being killed in a hail of bullets". Sorry, not happening.

[Lorric]

For me to be able to verify anything about Hitman: Absolution, I'd have to actually play it, and this is the game whose teaser trailer had "gun-toting, PVC and latex-clad nuns being killed in a hail of bullets". Sorry, not happening.

Well that's fine, just as long as you apply the same standard to everything Anita has to say, unless you have played the game in question.

[Mr. Vega]

Also Hoover, something like that for a twitter like system as well, but still publicly viewable.

[The E]

Well that's fine, just as long as you apply the same standard to everything Anita has to say, unless you have played the game in question.

I have played most of the games she cites as examples. I agree both with her overall point, and her choice of examples. I have no reason to believe that she is maliciously twisting examples.

[Mr. Vega]

Also WTF God of War III.

[AdmiralRalwood]

For me to be able to verify anything about Hitman: Absolution, I'd have to actually play it, and this is the game whose teaser trailer had "gun-toting, PVC and latex-clad nuns being killed in a hail of bullets". Sorry, not happening.

Well that's fine, just as long as you apply the same standard to everything Anita has to say, unless you have played the game in question.

And I have found nothing inaccurate in her descriptions of the games I have actually played.

But even not having played the game, but having now watched the section of the video in question, I'm going to go ahead and call this:

Basically, part of a mission in Hitman: Absolution goes through a stripclub.  Naturally, this being Hitman, you have the ability to kill pretty much anyone you want, which includes the strippers.  But, since they're innocents, you're penalized for doing so.  Sarkeesian uses this as an example of sexism, treating it as though that was the whole point of the game, that "the player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon, because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose.  Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters." All the while using footage of the player dragging the bodies around in a great big circle to show just how objectified and disposable these women are. 

Not only is this them being treated like every single other npc in the game, be they male or female, but she says earlier in the video (generally speaking) "...this kind of misogynistic behavior isn't always mandatory; often it's player-directed, but it is always implicitly encouraged." which is crap, given that, again, Hitman penalises you for killing innocents, and in that specific case, they're actually out of your way.  It's like she takes the mere existence of vulnerable female characters as encouragement to harm them.

What is that if not misrepresentation?  It's completely dishonest.  There are plenty of good examples to make her point, some of which she uses herself (the Mass Effect one in particular), so why is this kind of dishonesty even necessary?

...complete bull****. No, sorry, her point was not that Hitman: Absolution does not penalize you for killing innocent people. Her point is that killing innocent people is one of the game's systems, and exploring game's systems is the point of playing games. It seemed clear from the video that she wasn't saying that the game "forces" you to kill prostitutes; it's saying that the game did not have to include them in the first place. Once you include them as player-interactable entities, in a game where your range of interactions are almost all violent, you are expecting somebody to do that.

Christ, she uses footage from New Vegas (among others) to illustrate this.  I don't know if you've played it, but that game is probably as far from sexist as you can get in the modern gaming industry.

...Not even close.

[Flipside]

Thing is, if (unmodded, it's bound to have happened somewhere) Skyrim had included prostitutes, there would have been a similar kind of outcry. The weird part is that no-one seems to mind that I shout a particularly annoying female mage in Winterhold off the bridge and into the chasm every time I visit there :/

It's a question of context as well as content, and that's kind of where things get blurry.

[Mr. Vega]

Thing is, if (unmodded, it's bound to have happened somewhere) Skyrim had included prostitutes, there would have been a similar kind of outcry. The weird part is that no-one seems to mind that I shout a particularly annoying female mage in Winterhold off the bridge and into the chasm every time I visit there :/

It's a question of context as well as content, and that's kind of where things get blurry.

She is at least armed.

[Lorric]

The strippers aren't there as eye candy and they aren't there as just objects to be interacted with. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukm2GqAtnpw#t=13m00s

They have dialogue, and not throwaway dialogue. They're there to enhance the game's narrative.

Sure, you can find people beating up and killing the strippers in videos too, but there's nothing wrong with playing a game like that, and you're not a bad person for doing so, just like you're not a bad person for killing people in games in the first place.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Inaccurate? No, we'd say if it was inaccurate if it was inaccurate.

Look at her last train wreck of a video (not the one she's just released the one before) and what she had to say about Hitman Absolution. That's not inaccurate, that is a complete twisting of something to suit her agenda.

Hitman Absolution? You're defending Hitman Absolution?
The game with a trailer which featured a bunch of leather-clad, big breasted stripper nun assassins? Holy **** man did you pick the wrong mountain to climb.

Killing civilians loses points. Right.
So how important are these points?

Can you kill every stripper in the joint and still win the mission? Is killing those strippers more enjoyable than accumulating points? These are the real questions to be examined not whether a point system exists. The fact that a killing an innoncent woman or man is worth only a 1000 point reduction or whatever number attached to it basically reduces them to banal mission objectives from the get go which pretty much proves what anita is saying.  Women are objectives, notches on the point belt whether its positive or negative.  Interestingly when trying to research the impact of points on the win/fail state of any given mission I came to this page:

http://hitman.wikia.com/wiki/A_Personal_Contract/Walkthrough

Hitman approaching a naked woman in the shower. Wow. What a great glowing example of a game treating women with respect.

Do you want a REAL game where killing an innocent results in REAL punishment?
It's called Thief Dark Project. If you kill a person, on expert difficulty, you lose the mission. Automatically. Doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman. Killing people results in fail state.

Hitman absolution seems to have no such fail state.

The question then is, does the point system coincide with player intent? Putting a point system in doesn't mean that the player is going to follow it. A good game is one where designer intent and player intent is the same as a natural result of game play and objectives. The fact that you can choose to kill innocent women, and still finish the game, tells me that player incentive is shallow at best and a half-assed poorly executed attempt. If killing the people, results in spectacular take down moves and hiding the body thrills, and if these actions are more enjoyable than "lose a few points" then the game does indeed encourage killing innocents.

And if you search out Hitman Absolution criticism. I think you'll find that a lot of people's biggest problem with the game is this very point system which you are trying to defend. Because the point system goes against what the players want to do.

[Mr. Vega]

The strippers aren't there as eye candy and they aren't there as just objects to be interacted with. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukm2GqAtnpw#t=13m00s

They have dialogue, and not throwaway dialogue. They're there to enhance the game's narrative.

Sure, you can find people beating up and killing the strippers in videos too, but there's nothing wrong with playing a game like that, and you're not a bad person for doing so, just like you're not a bad person for killing people in games in the first place.

We're discussing the game itself.

I also support any favorable comparison of Thief I.

[Lorric]

You're a HITMAN. Why would you fail a mission for killing an innocent? That doesn't make sense, you're a HITMAN. If you find the game distasteful nobody makes you play it.

[AdmiralRalwood]

You're a HITMAN. Why would you fail a mission for killing an innocent? That doesn't make sense, you're a HITMAN.

Because they're not your target? What do you think "hitman" means?

If you find the game distasteful nobody makes you play it.

What does that have to do with... anything?

[Lorric]

You're a HITMAN. Why would you fail a mission for killing an innocent? That doesn't make sense, you're a HITMAN.

Because they're not your target? What do you think "hitman" means?

You hire a hitman to kill people. Why would the buyer care as long as they got the job done.

The game has a scoring system. Games since the dawn of time have had scoring systems. If you want a high score, you've got to do the job as cleanly as possible.

[Mr. Vega]

If you find harrassment distasteful noone makes you read it!

I see we don't want to talk about value judgements now.

[Akalabeth Angel]

You're a HITMAN. Why would you fail a mission for killing an innocent? That doesn't make sense, you're a HITMAN. If you find the game distasteful nobody makes you play it.

Because someone's paying you to kill a specific person and doesn't want a ****load of innocent blood on their hands to bring down the cops on them?
Or because you're a professional hitman? Not a murderer?


Interesting, another comparison from one game to another would be say Grand Theft Auto and Driver San Francisco.

Both games involve the player driving around a city like a maniac, often away from the cops. The main difference in the driving segments is that in Driver San Francisco, it is IMPOSSIBLE to run over pedestrians. They will always get out of the way. Running over people is not a part of game play, it's not something they put in.

So why are they there? Because it's a city. You need people walking around to make the city believable.

Hitman's in a strip club and strip clubs need strippers but the system or opportunity to kill strippers is completely unnecessary. And that's Anita's  legitimate complaint about Hitman.

[Lorric]

If you find harrassment distasteful noone makes you read it!

This is fun!

Stop that please. It's not the same. If you harass someone, you bring the harassment to them. No one brings the game to you and shoves it down your throat.

Interesting, another comparison from one game to another would be say Grand Theft Auto and Driver San Francisco.

Both games involve the player driving around a city like a maniac, often away from the cops. The main difference in the driving segments is that in Driver San Francisco, it is IMPOSSIBLE to run over pedestrians. They will always get out of the way. Running over people is not a part of game play, it's not something they put in.

So why are they there? Because it's a city. You need people walking around to make the city believable.

Hitman's in a strip club and strip clubs need strippers but the system or opportunity to kill strippers is completely unnecessary. And that's Anita's  legitimate complaint about Hitman.

But it doesn't matter if it does get put in either.

There is power in not doing something as well. You get to play the game however you want.