So here's my summary, taken from my notes.
Anita started the presentation with a quote by Muriel Rukeyser: "The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms." She then gave some background about herself and her career in academia. She then gave her version of the events from her Kickstarter, and showed a three-minute clip of the first episode of "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games." In regards to the online harassment she faced, she described attacks on her by "cyber-mobs," and then characterized #gamergate supporters as members of a harassment group intent on maintaining the status quo. She then pointed to a specific instance of alleged harassment of a writer at Bioware for saying that GTAV is "horrible towards women," then she added "well, it is."
After this, she talked about her background in video games, and stated that a lot of marketing for video games when she was growing up targeted men and boys to the exclusion of women. She said the message was clear: "If you're a girl, this hobby is not for you." She said it was so pervasive that Earthbound even had "Star-men." This puts her 2010 quote "I'm not a big fan of video games" because she thought that video games were largely these male-dominated spaces. With these introductions out of the way, she began the presentation proper: 8 Things Devs can do to Make Games Less Shitty for Women 1. Avoid the "Smurfette Principle" -Anita gave Wonder Pink, Queen of Rage from The Wonderful 101 as an example of this trope. -This trope is defined as "a cast of characters of which only one of them is female." -She gave Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, Borderlands 1 & 2 as examples. -Solution: Have a cast of multiple playable female characters.
Dark Souls did a pretty good job of averting this problem by dressing up male and female characters in similar outfits. Showed this picture: http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7214/imagerqz.jpg -Solution: see Dark Souls concept art above. Don't give female characters more revealing armor than male characters. She suggested that female characters who are soldiers would be wearing a sports bra for the sole purpose of preventing jiggle physics, as it hurts when a woman's breasts bounce like that.
One size does not fit all
"Fighting fuck toy." -Example given: This image from Overwatch http://cdn2.gamefront.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Overwatch_Poster_Final.jpg
This has to do with the lack of variation in female body types in video games. The body types predominant in female characters is that of a 20-something year old fashion model, and is often hypersexualized to accentuate breasts, buttocks, and legs. -"What about the menz?" is a false equivalency. Male characters feature a wide range of body types, from tall and lanky to short and stocky. Essentially, there is no default "male" form. Female characters, with the exception of villains meant to look absolutely disgusting, have this standard body type. Even men who wear almost nothing are not sexualized like female characters, for example, Kratos from God of War. Kratos' physique is not meant to be sexually attractive, but rather convey the power and strength of a person living that kind of active lifestyle. -Women are seen as sex objects, while male characters are more along the lines of a power fantasy. -The solution to this problem is to include more female body types.
Strategic Butt Covering -In this section, Anita presented the way a camera angle is directed on female characters as opposed to male characters. The camera on a female character is always able to rotate around and reach angles that bring attention to her breasts and buttocks. In fact, some cases even have a "butt-window" that accentuates a character's backside. This is in contrast with male characters, where the developers seem to take great lengths to cover the male character's buttocks with some form of convenient censoring, a camera that is restricted in its rotation to where it can view a male character's buttocks is impossible, or by forcing an over-the-shoulder perspective. She suggested that this was for latent homophobia as well, but said that this was outside the scope of this presentation. -Anita said that equal opportunity sexism is not the answer for this issue, for the same reasons presented in the previous point. A proper solution is a camera system like in "Life is Strange," where the camera's most extreme angle only shows the character's back above the waist, thus rendering a "panty shot" impossible.
Not your Exotic Fantasy -In this section, Anita talked about the representation of women of color in video games, which to be fair, she has a point.
Women of color in video games are generally hypersexualized and represented in a fashion that demeans their culture. She used the term "cultural appropriation" and defined it as exploitation of elements of a minority culture for a profit. For example, a woman in an indigenous islander culture will be depicted as a bronze-skinned supermodel with all sorts of piercings and tribal tattoos. -Alternatively, some video games have women of color whose cultural background that is largely sterilized or nonexistent, for example, Alyx Vance from Half Life 2. Her proposed solution was to incorporate minority characters whose single defining characteristic is their culture or ethnicity.
Escape the Fashion Runway -The way female characters sit and walk makes it appear that they are on a fashion runway, according to Anita. Awkward swaying of the hips while walking and different sitting animations. The examples she gave included Catwoman's walk animation from Arkam City, and the sitting animations of male and female characters in Destiny. Male characters tend to just hunker down and sit, while female characters tend to recline like "a fucking mermaid" (her quote, not mine).
Fighting and Fucking are Different -Example: the voice work of the League of Legends female champion in battle. The combat sounds more like the character is in the throes of ecstasy rather than in pain and fighting for her life. Anita's key complaint here is that it equates violence with sexual arousal. Solution is simple: voice work of female characters exerting and getting injured should sound less like they're about to have an orgasm and more like they're in pain.
Where are all the female combatants? -In this section, Anita said that putting women on the firing line is not an issue, but the framing of female characters matters. When designing enemies, it is perfectly fine to have female enemies, so long as they are not overly sexualized. She said that this was the only thing that she liked about Bioshock Infinite, as in this game, the female police are not overly sexualized and are dressed similarly to their male counterparts. Games that get it right: Anita presented four examples of games that have positive female characters:
Portal 1 and 2
Mirror's Edge
Beyond Good and Evil
Gone Home
