Giant Fire Breathing Robot

Pyronauts Bonus Episode – Anita Sarkeesian

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:15 — 45.1MB)

The first video in Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, Damsel in Distress part 1, has been online now for just under a fortnight. Here on GFBR, we’ve had both Andrew, from the video games team, and Sam, from the editing team, weigh in on the subject.

Because the subject of women, and how they’re portrayed, in video games is an extremely complicated subject, we wanted to sit down and delve a bit deeper into the whole thing.

To that end, I joined Andrew and Ashley, and we had a good chat about our opinions of, and responses to, Anita Sarkeesian’s video. I think you’ll find we manage to stay reasonably on-topic, with the occasional wander into related territory. We have an interesting take on the video and the larger issues it represents.

As always, be advised that there are a couple of instances of salty language in there.

Some links to some of the things we discuss:

• Sarkeesian’s own website is Feminist Frequency; it should really be your first stop if you want to explore the subject further, as she provides links to some great, and not-so-great, resources for you to learn about Feminist views on video games and media in general.
• White as a sheet - the article Andrew mentions, can be found on Gamasutra, and like he says, is absolutely worth the time it’ll take you to read.
• Both Ashley and I mentioned Leigh Alexander at one point – I, however, manage to confuse her with a completely different person. Alexander neither works for IGN or comes from Britain, she is instead the News Director for Gamasutra and hails from New York. Gods only know who I was thinking of. Regardless, Alexander is a fantastic writer so you should absolutely read some, or all, of her work.
• The Bayonetta “post-it poster” we discuss is covered on Feminist Frequency here. The video Sarkeesian made of it is also there, including an acknowledgement of the changes made to the video post-release. Kotaku has an article showing what the posters looked like without the post-its. Don’t worry, it’s work-safe.
• Remember Me is the game Ashley mentions which has a female lead, and was turned down by several publishers because of it. The Penny Arcade Report has a very nice feature about it.

We recognise that you may have comments and/or criticisms about some of the things we say, so please feel free to comment below, or you can email me, craig@gfbrobot.com or fine me on Twitter, @d20shapedheart.