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 love how Rui thinks he’s entitled to reasoned responses and logic-based debate. He just assumes the reason he didn’t get it is because we can’t provide it, not because we just didn’t fucking feel like it.
Be fair, emilygoddess. He says that he doesn’t pertain to the movement that he doesn’t dedicate himself in the name of. It’s scientifical.
Plz provide this scientific data, from a reliable source.
Dude, you just randomly described shit. You didn’t say how it was feminist. You just made a list without connecting anything. Like, havent you had any experience writing things? Persuasive shit or whatever. You start with info. Then you argue a point. You started with the character descriptions, but you expected us to agree with you that a) they were feminist, and b) if a) is true it is horrible.
Since you are such a logical man who only deals in facts, perhaps you could explain how its just for the PCness to show mostly women being in charge/ competent, but not just for the PCness for mostly men to be shown being in charge/competent.
I am now going to go write a feminist anthem entitled “Unaware of Scientifical Data.”
Also, if a game company listens to feminists who want a feminist game and puts out a feminist game that’s awesome. Why would I deny it?
The thing is, there was plenty of logic-based debate. both before and after he posted, but Rui engaged with none of it.
I’d listen to that.
Mine is going to be called the Feminist fans. Following the tradition established by our friend Rui, the public will have no idea whether we’re referring to fans in an “I love your band!” sense or fans in the “it’s too hot in her, can you turn on the fan?” sense. Or why the word Feminist is capitalized and fan isn’t.
“or even curse words”
The fuck guys, did you fucking say dangit or something? Haven’t you awesome fuckers been told before that no one will take you fucking seriously if you use shitty language?
Fan? In what way sir do you resemble a devise for keeping oneself cool?
(Ok, the ninth doctor is probably the season I know the least, and that paraphrased, but I fucking had to)
Or it could be that the feminists you argue with resort to mocking because they’ve already addressed your arguments and like to poke fun at the stupid shit you say. Also, that “scientifical” data just so happens to support a feminist worldview, so it’s no surprise that feminists exist.
Yeah, it’s not like your argument is silly on its face or that it’s also poorly thought-out. Nope, we’re just delusional.
Yeah, about that…
Also, you don’t seem to understand what political correctness is.
Too bad that it’s becoming increasingly harder for me to find anti-feminist fans. Probably because more people are realizing how full of shit they are.
Are you saying we are insufficiently scientifical? I’ll have you know that I’m very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous: In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
Thanks Katz, guess what I now have running through my head.
So you either didn’t read the header of the site or didn’t understand it. Which is it?
Yes, that totally scientifical data that the MRM keeps flogging. All those peer-reviewed articles, the studies, the statistics…
Oh, wait, no, in fact they rely on a few cherry-picked numbers that fall apart if you begin comparing it to the large-scale surveys and any kind of rigorous study. In fact, when you start digging into the science…
Fun story time! Once upon a time, Howard was an anti-feminist! Then Howard began digging into the science, as one does, going through studies and such.
Now Howard is not an anti-feminist. I wonder what could be in those studies!
But the MRM will never find out what’s in those studies, because they’ve taken the Red Pill, man.
And apparently it interferes with your ability to read for comprehension.
My favorite part? “For someone to have the level of engagement to that movement so that they are habitual commenters on a feminist blog, it is obvious they have to be in such a state of denial that no reasonable argument could be held.”
Yeah I totally hang out here cuz it’s a feminist blog…which means my gender and sexytimes are not mocked. My being nuts is not even a thing, unless someone goes off about how someone’s bigoted or violent and thus mentally ill and y’all go “you did not just say that, right?”
If Rui thinks that not questioning my non-binary gender means no reasonable argument can be had, he’s right — his views are the sort of bigotry one cannot penetrate.
Oh, and a fallacy — “The fact that one is confronted with an individual who strongly argues that slavery is wrong and another who argues equally strongly that slavery is perfectly legitimate in no way suggests that the truth must be somewhere in the middle.”
Borked that — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
A critical, independent person cannot be a feminist.
So P.Z. Myers isn’t independent. He isn’t critical. Got it. Same for Chris Clarke. Same for Lindsay Beyerstein. Same for everyone. We are all sheeple.
Got any facts to back that up?
No, of course not. That would show a lack of independence.
Consider this: if feminists had secretly paid the game studio to make a game a feminist game and thus support their political position, would you guys ever admit it?
If a game company did that (took money from feminists to develop a feminist game; and then did so) and it was any good… Damn straight I’d admit it. I’d be shouting that shit from the rooftops.
Moron.
You guys are nothing more than sports fans arguing in favor of your team. The general public is starting to notice it, and the mockery is changing sides… Not a good time to be a Feminist fan.
unh… dude do you read twitter? Looked at the blogoshpere (outside the manospherian segments)? Because it’s a time of pushback, but Wendy Davis isn’t unknown. The dumbfucks in Virginia who are funding anti-woman clinics are being exposed; and it’s not being dismissed out of hand.
Heard of Lily Ledbetter? Is Rush Limbaugh hurting from his attacks on Sandra Fluke?
It’s not an easy time, but it is a good time to be a feminist.
“A critical, independent person cannot be a feminist. For a person to be a feminist nowadays they must either be unaware of a lot of scientifical data,”
I’m just curious, what specific scientific data are you refering to?
“For someone to have the level of engagement to that movement so that they are habitual commenters on a feminist blog, it is obvious they have to be in such a state of denial that no reasonable argument could be held.”
What are we in denial of? Or is this the part where you swear the world is run by women already and we’re just denying it? If that’s what you’re thinking, you have to go back to the drawing board. Do you watch the news…ever? Were you paying attention in history class?
“In your world of denial, a person who took his time to describe all the characters of a game to show a point is a troll, not the ones who answered with childish avoidant jokes or even curse words. You guys are deeply dellusional.”
Fella, you complained about strong women characters. There’s no delusion here, except you don’t seem to understand that you’re sexist. You expected to describe a video game with just as many non-passive women characters as men and have us respond with something like, “Well, you got us there. Yeah, we’re wrong.” Why in god’s name were surprised at our reactions?
Consider this: if feminists had secretly paid the game studio to make a game a feminist game and thus support their political position, would you guys ever admit it? No, you wouldn’t, because you live to defend the group, and not the truth. I already said the developers were just attempting to be politically correct and I’m not making up a conspiracy. But the point is you would do EVERYTHING to deny it. It could be as evident as possible, but you guys would deny it for the sake of defending your group.
That one’s actually kind of weird.
Like, really weird. Because the only major feminist message I could think of really paying to incorporate into a game would be things like:
“Some enemy commanders are female in this RTS”
“You occasionally shoot at female soldiers in this FPS”
“In this RPG; relationships between men and women are possible, but there are also men and men, women and women, and the sentient Graniton, who, if you offer it enough silicate, will mark you as its “mineral-mate” but otherwise do nothing, since as a being of sentient rock it has no conception of mammalian sex”
“In this fighting game, everyone wears sensible, protective clothing”
“In this puzzle game, you actually control a woman, which has no bearing on the plot in general and changes nothing about the game”
(Portal, anyone?)
“In this game, your character is actually interested in other men. It has no bearing on the plot and changes nothing, and is only revealed in a throw-away sentence you have to pay a lot of attention to figure out”
(Half Life 2 Mod, whoose name I forgot and am trying to cite up again. You were a person undergoing psychiatric evaluation, because following an accident you had become unable to separate fantasy from reality, and the mod consisted of environmental puzzles and worlds changing as your psychotic episode progressed, with the occasional narrative comments from your attending psychiatrist. People got upset about the, and I quote, “Sneak gay” )
“In this game, you control a woman. She does things. So does her companions, some of which are also women. This is all entirely unrelated to the extra dimensional invasion going on. Why did you want us to emphasize the fact your protagonist was a woman, again?”
Maybe this is because I’m a bad feminist (I freely admit that, and I’ve never really gotten around to reading more than casually into 101 stuff.). But I wouldn’t have a problem saying “Oh, yeah, and some feminist theory made it into this game”, because I’ve never relaly experienced feminist theory being as casually cruel as most MRA counter-points.
But let’s say you’re a studio, and you’re developing a game, and for some reason, you want to include women.
Here’s an instructive example of that, if you remember Remember Me (ZING! YES I’M SO WITTY, AREN’T I?).
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/remember-mes-surprising-connection-to-facebook-and-why-its-protagonist-had
Remember Me is not a brilliant game. It is, however, fun and even pretty at times, and it can be quite charming.
Aaaand… what’s my point here? Well, they set out to make a game with a female protagonist, and that’s it. It felt right for the story. And then there was a game where you played a woman, and, having played the game, I can tell you that at no point does she stop and stare at the screen and then launch into a rendition of the Vagina Monologues. Because that’d be fucking stupid.
And despite the generally irrelevant point of the protagonists gender (There was no, say, cock-sucking minigame or pregnancy gameplay or a thrill-a-minute-ten-hour braiding bonanza), people still complained about it and according to that article and others, some publishers were arguing that was a bad move, market-wise, because it wouldn’t sell as well.
This entire discussion is fucking meaningless, because ultimately, EVEN IF, the Last of Us was a feminist manifesto of the highest order, that’d only fucking amount to “Even in the apocalypse, some women do things”, and you still have situations like, of the top of my head:
Power progession in MMO’s being “Men get covered up in awesome plate armor, women get…
http://tera-europe.com/uploads/pics/11_1920x1200.jpg
or your argument that “The Last of Us” is a “pathetically blatant example of feminist ideology” boiling down to “Some women do stuff and lead troops, and there’s Tess, who is represented as being heroic and she’s a woman and the final boss might be female, and she’s not represented as reprehensibly evil, just cold and calculating. And also, one 13 year old boy was a wimp and one guy was a cannibal and we meet a gang leader who is evil, and he’s a man, so men must be evil in this game!”
Have you considered, in your fortress of logic and will, that the reason you find yourself stymied by broad generalizations of women in power and you find those representations “Pathetic”, is because they flip the easy, casual switch you otherwise have in your head of “Men = Strong”, “Women = Weak”, and make your momentarily re-evaluate those easy assignments of properties and abilities?
At no point in the Last of Us does anyone say something like :” All women are evil, and this fungal apocalypse is clearly the fault of the penis”, yet, all it takes for some people to proclaim it a pathetic political correct fantasy is that some women have some power.
Imagine that.
I’m just confused as to why feminists who made a feminist game would then try to conceal that fact.
I’ve been sort of half-assedly making a troll bingo game. Take a list of standard troll behaviors (argument from cavemen times, “why are you being mean to me”, misunderstands ad hominem, etc.), put them randomly into spaces on a 5×5 grid, check the box when troll performs said behavior, whoever gets 5 in a row first wins.
A critical, independent person cannot be a feminist. For a person to be a feminist nowadays they must either be unaware of a lot of scientifical data, or dedicated to the movement rather than to the truth…
I’m not sure if “meaningless, vague generalities” or “[citation needed]” should be the free square in the middle.
Oh! Added “hilarious typo” to the list. Thanks, Rui!
whoever gets 5 in a row first wins
Wait, this is a feminist game. Rule revision: everyone wins and gets hugs (if wanted).
I like that version of bingo! 😀
Another “MRM in a nutshell” moment. Assfax are the only admissible data.
David made a Bingo card generator a while back, but since I’m not on my own computer I don’t have the link. Maybe try typing “bingo” into the sidebar?
Here’s the links to David’s Men’s Rights Bingo if you don’t want to go searching for them (refresh the page for a different card):
Single Bingo Card
Double Bingo Card