So it’s true: Feminists have started ruining video games with all their feminism. At least according to some dude called pullupjumper on MGTOWforums who recently wrote a post warning his fellow red pill dudebros about a little game called The Last of Us, which is not only filled with zombies but, get this, girls.
For anyone who plays video games as one of their hobbies, The Last of Us is a pretty fun game…. but…. The feminist messages were close to ruining a game I waited a year for… The game’s setting is in a zombie apocalyptic world and the basic story (no spoilers) is that this guy has to take a 14 year old girl across the country during the zombie apocalypse. Almost as soon as the story started, I knew pretty much every female character in the game (except for the main protagonists daughter) would be portrayed as a”bad ass” character. The message was clear, women are as strong as men… Even when they are only 14.
Also, there were some adult ladies in positions of authority!
During the game , the two main characters meet different survivor groups. Every group leader was a woman. The only group leader who was a man, was a bad guy. The main protagonist even said yes ma’am, no ma’am to these women.
CAN YOU IMAGINE.
Now before you all go, but isn’t this sort of complaining a little hypocritical, given that all these video game dudes got mad when that chick Anita Sarkeesian who isn’t even a real gamer because of boobies made those videos she totally stole all that money for because IT’S ONLY A GAME, LADY JEEZ DON’T RUIN EVERYTHING WITH YOUR STUPID GENDER ANALYSIS.
Well, no, it’s not totally hypocritical because, get this, the girls in The Last of Us are portrayed as being unnaturally strong and capable.
What was pretty funny though is that the 14 year old girl is able to fire a rifle THAT IS BIGGER THAN HER and fire it accurately.
This is a clear affront to the extreme naturalism and realism of a game about a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.
And clearly never before in video game history has any male character been portrayed as unnaturally strong or capable.
Oh but it gets worse:
On the other hand, (not funny) another boy who was about the 14 year old girls age, was portrayed as weak, could not fight, could not shoot a gun and was just made to seem very weak. The Fems cant even leave their “girl power” out of the games.
A male character who is helpless and in need of rescue?
OH NO!
SAVE ME PRINCESS PEACH!
Happily, pullupjumper has an idea for a way to confront this creeping feminism:
Maybe, if any of you are interested, a couple of us can get together and start making our own games after these games become unbearable. What do you guys think?
Grimlock is right there with him:
I’m currently going to school for media arts and animation and am considering starting a small indy animation/film studio with a couple of guys from class. I also happen to be getting pretty good at 3d modeling … and even though i want to start with animation and film video games are my end game.
I don’t think I’d ever put an obvious message into a game, since I find pushing your belief onto others through mediums like videogames more than a little cunty, but will my games be misogynist? You better fucking believe it. Misogyny The likes of which will make duke nukem blush. I won’t need to tell you guys when I break into the industry, you’ll know it from the sheer uproar it’ll cause.
Misogyny … in video games? Now there’s a novel idea!
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Oh, by the way, for new and/or extremely literal readers, I would like to point out that this post contains
I watch a lot of end of the world media (it’s a weird obsession with me!) and I am by now well familiar with the ‘mitching and boaning’ that accompanies any movie, tv show, book, game, etc. that doesn’t put women into a subordinate role.
I used to really like Larry Niven until I found out what a reactionary jerk he was. I was really dismayed at that point in Lucifer’s Hammer (an otherwise quite good book) where he decides that the end of civilization will (necessarily) bring about the end of feminism, and good riddance!!
Why are they mad about this? Don’t they always whine about how they want to have women take on “their” responsibilities, just to show them how “hard” it is to be a man?
These people are so unhappy. And it’s actually their fault.
David Futrelle
So a discussion about strong women in video games, and how bad it is, actually ended up leading them to the conclusion that video games weren’t Misogynistic enough? Now these people are going to expect us to believe they’re not misogynists and that the real problem is misandry?
Also if the “men’s rights movement” really was about fighting sexism against men, wouldn’t this hurt their cause? One of the negative stereotypes some women harbor towards men is that we’re all sexist pigs.
Also their view of female vs male strength is really fucking stupid. Yes, the average male is stronger. However it’s not by much. Like if you compare me and my boyfriend, or any other big “manly” guy, I can kick his ass at cardio or flexibility or speed*. But he can still lift weights that are heavier than me, also he’s much larger and I’m only 5″ 1′.
*when we tried running together, I was much faster, and he had to take a break before I even noticed any fatigue on me. I can run for an hour and still not be totally wiped out after. Yet he can only run like 5 minutes before needing a break.
If we were in a race I’d certainly beat him. Misandry?
How insecure do you have to be to feel threatened by a FICTIONAL character in a video game about zombies? If they weren’t so nasty, I’d feel sorry for the MGTOWer’s.
Also(sorry for spamming), as a feminist who wants patriarchy to stop hurting men, I’m happy a video game showed that its ok for a dude to be weak and scared. I’m not saying fear is good for survival or anything, but its natural and healthy, and men really should stop feeling like they have to be super duper macho or else they’re worthless pussies.
I couldn’t watch “the Walking Dead” for the reason that it was so fucking sexist… I watched season one, but that was it. I mean, I had more problems than that with that series, like everyone is a complete moron all the time, and the zombie apocalypse apparently happened because the army forgot how to aim their weapons (seen in a flashback where the fairly helpless and slow zombies approach some army guys who just shoot up in the air instead of shooting the zombies in the head), which I could have accepted in a light-hearted slasher movie but not in this pretentious series, but what really killed the series for me was the sexism. EVERY time someone does something brave and moral it’s a man who does it. What really takes the cake is when the main characters find an old nursing home still defended against the zombies by some of the staff – and all the brave nurses still caring for and defending the oldies are men. Seriously, aren’t most nurses overall women? So how come only male nurses are found at that nursing home? Oh, I know, because they were brave and morally upstanding, and only men can have these qualities in the Walking-Dead-universe! *pukes*
Wait, isn’t the protagonist of this game a man? And from what I can tell he is portrayed positively. I think we have a case of privilege blindness here.
I often wonder about the kind of “heads I win, tails you lose” logic that so many MRA-types fall into and I think it has little or nothing to do with anything outside their heads. The ones I meet out in the world seem confused as to their place in things and instead of just mucking around and figuring it out (or not, like the rest of us), they seem to want to “go back” to a (completely mythical) point at which all roles and rules were clearly defined and all you had to do was follow them. These folk seem to hate anyone who doesn’t follow “the rules” both for the simple act of being different (and therefore giving lie to the idea that some perfect platonic rule system actually does exist) and for being happy being different (instead of miserable like they are). Every single one of these types I’ve met has a near-worship for any set of ideas (no matter how wacky or internally inconsistent) that claims to boil down complex and overdetermined phenomena into a simple and monocausal set of perfected rules.
And then they are filled with rage when others not only don’t follow those rules, but challenge the very notion of them, or of any attempt to simplify the irreducible complexity of human life…
Clearly a thread for FactFinder/IdeologueReview/WhateverSillyNymHe’sCallingHimselfNow to put in an appearance to defend his magnum opus, Preggo Punchout. That’ll show all these nanny-pamby feminist game ruiners…
Or maybe not.
“You will know my work by the cries of, ‘Run! It’s too edgy!'” Ten future dollars says Grimlock’s part-timing it in his dad’s tight-ass real estate office fifteen years from now. It’s upside-down with that crowd. One reason I wont go out of my way to play TLOU is my understanding that the only player character is a rando dude in a beard. I am a dude, who definitely could grow a beard if it came down to it. I don’t need to role-play that character. I don’t need more cultural representations of that character. That character is ubiquitous– he’s eating shit on the packaging of freaking Brawny paper towels– with the flannel and the axe even. That character is what you get when your design team is either lazy as hell or playing it safe or both.
Contains what? CONTAINS WHAT, GODDAMMIT?
QFT
lawmedy, can you not see the little flashy “sarcasm” sign there?
*eyeroll* Yeah, because you know, it’s not like there have been games focused on strong badass women before. And it’s not like HUUUUUGE guns/swords/Freudian stand-ins are a staple of video games, nooooo.
I’m apparently tetchy today, so I’m going to just put out awesome games with capable female protagonists.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Justine (2012): You play a woman trapped in a horrific dungeon filled with monsters (which you can’t defeat and can’t look directly at) and fellow captives. INTENSE psychological horror game, prepare to be scared shitless.
American McGee’s Alice, (2000) and Alice: Madness Returns (2011): a mentally ill girl who at various times dissociates, hallucinates, and STILL fights to save her mind, herself, and (in the second game) people around her. (Also, both games pass the Bechdel Test.) Violent hack-and-slash platformers with interesting psychological elements.
King’s Quest VII (1994): A royal mother-daughter get shoved through a dimensional rift and try to find each other again, also save the world they find themselves in. Point-and-click adventure game. Female Big Bad too!
King’s Quest IV (1998): Princess Rosella (also in KQ 7) goes on an adventure to find the cure for her ailing father. Also point-and-click adventure.
And of course, there’s Portal and Portal 2. Plus, a couple buddies of mine are making a computer game with a witch and a princess.
Seriously, these guys are full of shit. Women have been kicking ass in video games for twenty-five years. They just want to shove their heads in the sand and pretend it’s still a complete sausage fest.
Dammit. KQ 4 is from 1988, not 1998.
Aw, these dudes are pissed that not everyone buys into their “after the apocalypse, the wimminz will need me” fantasy. Poor babies.
There are lots of seriously strong, capable women at my gym that could totally beat any of these clowns at an arm wrestling contest. It’s probably best that they stick to their video games.
@Dvärghundspossen, re: The Walking Dead.
Not just that, but did you notice that a majority of both the living and the dead characters are white? That’s especially problematic given that the show was set around Atlanta, GA, a majority African-American city.
Ooh, ooh, regarding Walking Dead and racism! T-Dog: In Memoriam.
My only exposure to Walking Dead was reading the first volume when it originally came out (so way back in… 2005?) and watching the first episode over someone’s shoulder on the bus. Without sound and plus my commentary, it became a tale of an asshole sheriff who stole a poor zombie’s bike. (Sure, she couldn’t use it anymore, without legs, but it was all she had left in the world, dammit, don’t take that from her!) And then, as she crawls across the park desperate to find her lost bike, that asshole bike thief came back and shot her in the head.
Everyone agreed that this was far more entertaining than whatever the episode was actually about.
Bob, I didn’t think about the whiteness factor when I watched the show, because I’m Swedish, and had no idea about what the general population looked like in that part of the USA. For all I knew at the time, that area could have been predominantly white. But after I’d already given up on the show, I read an article online that pointed out that the majority of the population in and around Atlanta is actually black. That sucks too.
What?
If pushing a belief is bad to do, why would you intentionally try to include misogyny? You’d be trying to push a belief. And what’s more, you’re directly admitting you’re setting out with intent to disparage. This isn’t even casually accidental sexism or some random put down or just a case of blind writing, this is a guy, writing a script, changing scenes so as to make women weak and bad and inferior.
What… a… strange power play. How profoundly confusing.
Funny part is, this is especially clear in “primitive” or frontier societies…including the ones depicted in end-of-the-world literature. After years of physical labor, the distinctions between male and female strength are going to be pretty small. You can see that in some traditionally agrarian societies – do those women really look weak, fellas?
And I have to at least imagine that this would be true in a post-apocalyptic culture as well. If people are back to living in small bands and struggling for survival, you’re not going to see strongly distinct gender roles. Everyone has to pitch in – the band can’t afford to have anyone do nothing, let alone half the group. Oh, and the same would have to be true for age – a fourteen year-old girl is a child in our civilized world, but in a fringe culture she’d be several years into adulthood.
But yes, gents, keep on believing that you alone hunt the mighty mastodon. I think some of these guys actually hope for the apocalypse because they think the women will die first (whereas they’ll be saved by their mad gaming skillz).
Examples of people acting like idiots in that show:
1. Dude whines about his truck “Oh, I need a new fuel hose, the old fuel hose is broken, where, where, where am I gonna find a new fuel hose in this post-apocalyptic world?” WELL MAYBE DOWN ON THE HIGHWAY we’ve seen so many panorama shots of! Maybe you could salvage a new hose from one of the, like, thousand cars and trucks just standing there down on the highway!
Nobody thinks of this solution.
2. Everyone’s like “we can totally live in tents in the woods, since we haven’t seen any zombies here so far, so this place must be safe”. Yeah right, that’s rational thinking. There are no obstacles whatsoever against the zombies coming there, but you haven’t seen any zombies in that area so far, so you conclude that it’s safe. Cue zombies attack the camp and start killing people, and I’m like “you had it coming morons”.
3. Our supposed hero rides a horse towards a deserted city because he thought there would be survivors there. He doesn’t turn back when he finds out it’s all deserted. He doesn’t turn back when he sees a zombie approaching him. He doesn’t turn back when more and more zombies come, and his horse starts to panic. And eventually there are too many zombies around him and now he can’t turn back! The poor horse is killed, but he survives although he totally doesn’t deserve it!
Hey now, I’ve played Fallout 1 and 2. I’m all set for the nuclear apocalypse.
I’ve played Resident Evil 4, I’m totally set for the ZOMBIE apocalypse!