The thing with Tomodachi life is that the entire game is based around taking your WiiMiis, the characters that Nintendo had you create as avatars for yourself and your friends and act out real world situations - like injecting yourselves into a 'The Sims' clone, in that context I can see why not being able to have your WiiMii hook up with your real life partner's WiiMii put some people's nose out of joint - I think it was a bit of a special case for that reason

I can sympathies with Nintendo though - a family orientated company, who's customer base has a fair percentage of parents who are conservative about what kind of content they put in games they put in front of their children, which is why they chose Nintendo over Sony or MS in the first place. So I can see why Nintendo chose to be 'on the right' in their decisions and yes they WERE in a damned if they do, damned if they don't position but that's just part of the 'fundies vs. libs' discussion that's going on in society as a whole right now - completely opposite definitions of what is moral and what is amoral, its an issue!
Wait, wait, timelines, cause and effect
What you're talking about is the media handling the situation incredibly badly and biting the hand that feeds it, *I* don't like that there was a situation or handle well or badly in the first place...

Um... wouldn't it be better if you simply kept updating the OP with the relevant news?

Seeing that a woman could have been replaced by a dog shows that in such games she doesn't really have a value of her own. And if this whole discussion made you think about that, I think it's a nice step forward. Even if it apparently makes you angry.
Nobody, not even Anita S., has been demanding that these tropes shouldn't been used anymore, they are time-honed plot-devices after all, it has just been said that we should be more aware of what's going on there. Thinking about these things offers new ways of how to do things. That doesn't mean that these plot-devices will disappear (and nobody has even asked for that) but they are used with the knowledge in mind of what they are.

Players wanting additional features, be it characters, modes etc. is not so rare. And devs like to please the players so that more will buy their games.

*sigh* Muslim is not a race.

*shrugs* And why not offer different physical attributes during character creation? Also having the option to assign a religion doesn't seem a bad thing to me (and I'm an atheist). Although I'm sure that there are already games out there that have that option that I have never heard of.

And it's the players' right to complain. People complain about features, that's completely normal. Be it the lack of an option to play the game offline, the use of save points, the strengths/weaknesses or a certain class, etc. And why shouldn't they complain?

As long as certain kind of games sell well, they will be produced, no matter the shitstorm. No need to be afraid that somebody will take away your toys.
Porn for example survived worse things. Because it sells.
Vote with your wallet.

They can. And people react to the characters and how they are presented. Some drool, some complain, others don't care.

They are allowed to do so, nobody stopped them. If they want to sell their game to people who think that game is only worth playing with LGBT people in it, they might want to add that though.

Yep, and they decide whether they want to change something about it or not.

Just like Nintendo they decided whether they wanted to change something about the game due to criticism or not.

I think we can be pretty sure that Anita as well as Zoe would have preferred to not be victims. Having your personal life discussed in the internet, receiving threats of all kinds is not really fun.

You'll always find a bigger problem in the world or somebody who's worse of. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be allowed to complain about minor things (had a bad day once?).

*sigh* But games do objectify women. Not always, but in some instances they do.
The question is what we do about it. And not doing anything about it can also be a viable option. Like I said before, vote with your wallet.
If you think that in a certain game women are portrayed or treated in a way that is completely not acceptable for you, don't buy the game.
And if a game appeals to you, buy it.
It's as simple as that.

There is no need for all this screaming around "They want to censor devs, they want to take our toys away, they are all meanies pretending to be victims. WAAAH!" And there is certainly no need for all these threats against people going around.
Stay calm, stay cool, use your power as a gamer - and that power resides in your wallet.
Have fun and play something.


Edit: Spelling.

This hasn't started with the Quinnspiracy, it has been going on for years. The Quinnspiracy was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Games objectify everything. Everything is just an object or a background. You are acting as if that's a bad thing. Games are not life lessons, they are just silly entertainment. No one is going to play a game and then be like "hmm, so that's how life works". That's the whole fallacy everything hangs on.

AMEN BROTHER!

Well, that's what they WANT gaming to be - some kind of highfaluting art-form that is all about political and cultural criticism. In the eyes of these people, gaming (along with everything else, really) is nothing but a political tool to be taken over and used to propagate their worldview.

So yeah, the idea that games are just.. well games, an interactive medium simply about fun, stands directly in-front of their goal. So it's no surprise to see them trying to demonize and humiliate "white guys" as immature, sexist, "neckbeards" or whatever any chance they get.

They don't care about games at all, political ideology of feminism is number 1.

Despite enjoying the game for its gameplay I am starting to regret buying the Last of Us or at the very least its DLC.

The game is being shown off as the poster child for Social Justice games.

My only defense against it now is that I think GTA 5 is GOTY of 2013 and not this.

That right there 'taken over' its anxiety over that one thing that the entire opposition (to me) argument comes down to IMO
and it's groundless - Hollywood is never going to stop making films like The Expendables and the games industry is never going to stop making CoD - not that CoD is just about fun and is apolitical anyway - it's pure might-is-right west-is-best right wing propaganda
Then games like Spec Op: The Line subvert that and Deus Ex counters it completely "God is the Dream of Good Government" - Morpheus, Deus Ex

Oh, c'mon, you can't be serious. That's a big strawman right there. I used dog as an example. It could be anything else. How many games give players the task of saving a man? Is anyone complaining that you have to rescue Mario in Luigi's Mansion? Is anyone saying that it "objectifies" men? Oh please.

In almost every game you have to "save" something or someone, even a whole race (like saving humanity). Saving women is just ONE of the plot devices. Why is rescuing other men fine, but women isn't? That's just some double standards right there.

The discussion doesn't make me angry. What makes me angry is the amount of BS journalists come up with to push this agenda.

But they are NOT what Anita claims they are. That's the point. Games often try to make player emotionally attached to the objective by making you fight for something you care about. It could be saving humanity, saving your dog, your father, your brother, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, it doesn't matter. When you have to rescue male characters, it's fine, when you have to rescue female characters it's misogyny.

Read my post. I'm not saying players can't complain about it. What i complained about was how much the gaming press (NOT players) turned a frivolous game design decision into fucking World War 3 by pushing their political agenda even further. My point is that even a simple design decision is seen as "misogyny", which is just ridiculous.

"OHHH, how do you dare to make a game without women as playable characters? You misogynist prick".

Give me a break. Game developers and publishers are being accused of everything because of their design choices.

It isn't, that was a poor choice of words from my part and for that i apologize. That was a mistake, english is not my first language and i couldn't find a better word when i was typing.

Still, doesn't make my point invalid.

And please, don't *sigh* me. I'm being respectful with you and i would like the same treatment. It was a mistake, it was not intentional.

And why should developers and publishers be FORCED to have all those attributes? I'm not saying developers shouldn't make games with more choices, what i'm saying is that they shouldn't be FORCED to. Do you understand the difference now?

Again, read my post. My post was never addressed at players' complaints. Players complain about a bunch of things, some of them i agree with, others i don't. What i'm critizing in my post is the gaming press and how much they turn everything into a political debate. And sometimes, they have personal reasons to do so, like that Kotaku writer who had personal relationships with Zoe Quinn.

First, i'm treating you with respect and i expect the same treatment. I'm not treating you like a kid, so, please, stop. If you can't engage in a civilized discussion without resorting to personal attacks and being disrespectful, then please, don't.

Stop pulling a strawman on me. I never said anything about these kind of games not being made anymore. I'm strictly criticizing the gaming press and its attitude. I'm on a gaming forum and i have a right to criticize what i think is wrong. It's my personal opinion.

They can, just like i can criticize them for doing so, which is exactly what i'm doing and apparently you have a problem with it.

Oh no, we can't be "pretty sure" of that. Anita only became famous because she kept playing the victim card so the "white knights" would come to the rescue. Her entire KS campaign was based on "how much she was being harassed by the evil gamers".

By the way, receiving threats is common when you are an "internet celebrity" that is hated by a vocal segment of the community. It has nothing to do with the fact they they are women. For example, Phil Fish has been getting harassed for a long time even before he went in Quinn's defense. Not too long ago some key (male) Treyarch developers received death threats because of a patch that nerfed one gun in the game.

Before you pull yet another strawman, let me make things clear: i'm NOT defending harassment nor sending threats to these people. What i'm saying is that receiving death threats from annonymous internet users is not uncommon and is definitely not related to the fact that they are women. It's not "misogyny" or anything. It's just some assholes being assholes on the internet as always. Nothing new there.

The thing is, it's not even a "minor problem". It's a problem that simply doesn't exist. Games are entertainment, sane individuals know the difference between a game and real life. Saying that games make gamers misogynists is like saying that violent games make people violent. It's ignorance at its best.

Thinking about it, i think Jack Thopmson is actually not that bad. At least Thompson never had support from the gaming press, but Anita and Zoe do.

HiPhish already answred that better than me.

Great, now please tell that to the gaming press so we can finally talk about games again and not about that BS.

First, i'm not "screaming", i'm posting my opinion on a gaming forum just like you are doing. Second, i will ask again politely to be treated with respect. You keep coming up with personal attacks while i'm treating you with respect. If you can't have a civil discussion in a forum, then please, don't.

Ok, now, could you please point out where i said that it was ok send death threats around?

This, so much this. Thank you for explaining it much better than me.

Games objectify even human lives, for fuck's sake. How many innocents have we killed in games? Would that be ok in real life? Of course not. Do these games make us violent? Unless you're Jack Thompson, i'm pretty sure you will agree with me that they don't.

Gaming as an industry is waaaay younger and smaller than Hollywood/film-industry in general, and the rhetoric which the SJW's use is not re-conciliatory, it's not moderate, and it's not about having "their own space", these are people who use their positions of influence in the media to veraciously attack, demonize and belittle game developers if they make something they deem "problematic", ie sexist (see the reaction to the Japanese game "Killer is Dead"). The way the media have treated "gamers" as an entire group, a community, since this Zoe Quinn thing, is downright shameful. And anyone who defends all these disgusting articles which attack all gamers as a group and vilify them by putting them all into one group - evil misogynists and racists - well they can go jump in a motherfucking volcano!

It has exposed for the whole world that the objective of these left-wing/feminist writers at game sites is political and nothing but political. They see gaming as a "boys club" and they want to destroy it, why else would they make all these "Gamer is Dead" and "Death of an Identity: Gamer" articles hysterically after Zoe Quin was criticized. Basically the left-wing gaming press cares about politics before games, and the gamers care just about games. This has NOTHING to to do with it, it's about the gaming community who thinks games are a neutral topic, an interactive medium for fun, and the SJW's who any game that isn't 100% pro-feminist is evil. Can the stories and settings and characters in games have political/social angles - of course, they always have and no one is changing that. But we don't want gaming being cynically used as a tool to push agendas.

Take Gone Home - basically zero gameplay at all - but was given 10/10 reviews across the board basically before it was seen as "progressive".

Really it's a simple matter - kick these fuckheads out of our hobby for good. It's gamers versus activists.

That's what's so funny, they have bought into the same lie that Thompson and his conservative ilk peddle - that video games some kind of subliminal mind-control ability to make us good law-abiding gamers into rabid rapists and Nazi's just because we play a game where the females are depicted sexually. All evidence points to that their is NO correlation between violence and anti-social activities and video games.

We've all killed countless thousands of fictional humans in video games, but now we're being told that enough is enough because these games are portraying females in an objectifying way? We shouldn't care about depiction of murder but sexualization/objectification of women is over the line?

No, they want to destroy the boys-club who call themselves 'Gamers' and free gaming from their control for all to enjoy - That's what they're saying anyway, they want to destroy 'Gamer' as an identity to save gaming!
I'm... I'm not saying that I think that's a GOOD strategy, I think its PR FUBAR but I feel that its a more representative assessment of their stance (or does it come down to 'are you paranoid or an I complacent?')

Again how is CoD and everything that Tom Clancy ever put together not cynically pushing a right-wing might-is-right west-is-best agenda?

And again I think Gone Home was about the arty and not about the homosexuality, if that's what you're alluring to - same as Dear Esther was praised with even less gameplay but also 0% bumming, unless I missed that part on my playthough...

There is no "boys club", anyone is free to play games. What it comes down to is not even the message (which many would agree with), it's that video games writing and journalist has become heavily politicized over the last few years, and gamers are starting to push back. Not because they even disagree with the criticism, but because they just don't to deal with political shit and being preached to in a hobby they engage in for fun.

Oh really? Then what were they doing when Nintendo was making big cash with the Wii by making games for everyone to enjoy? This isn't about making games for everyone to enjoy, it's about sucking money out of the industry like parasites. They use mafia tactics where as long as you keep paying them they won't harm you. it's no coincidence that Anita is holding all those speeches and working as a consultant and still reminding people that they can donate to her PayPal.

I'll tell you why no one was behind Nintendo: Nintendo games had no agenda, no narrative, no political involvement. They were just silly fun NES/Arcade style video games. And people loved them. But you can't extort money from a company that's this powerful. Now it's open season for Nintendo.