Why do so many people hate Zoe Quinn?

[Regen]

From what I have seen of Watch Dogs that whole sequence (along with many other parts of the game) is pretty fucking skeevy, even if it wasn't for the sake of titillation. It takes a serious real-world issue, shoves it into GTA-lite, and lets you play hero for a bit, so you can feel good for shooting all those bad men.

That's fair enough, it's perhaps done a bit poorly. But I don't think it's coming from sexism or bad intent. At worst, it's coming from good intentions and it's poorly executed rather than something like GTA V, which is genuinely sexist and veers dangerously close to misogyny. 

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

From what I have seen of Watch Dogs that whole sequence (along with many other parts of the game) is pretty fucking skeevy, even if it wasn't for the sake of titillation. It takes a serious real-world issue, shoves it into GTA-lite, and lets you play hero for a bit, so you can feel good for shooting all those bad men.

must we solve everything with violence? lol

[Regen]

must we solve everything with violence? lol

It's a game, it would be a bit boring if Aiden Pierce did it through chatting reasonably, he wouldn't be able to anyway because he's got no personality  

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

It's a game, it would be a bit boring if Aiden Pierce did it through chatting reasonably, he wouldn't be able to anyway because he's got no personality  

It was kidding Reg!!!! XD

[Diogenes]

That's fair enough, it's perhaps done a bit poorly. But I don't think it's coming from sexism or bad intent. At worst, it's coming from good intentions and it's poorly executed rather than something like GTA V, which is genuinely sexist and veers dangerously close to misogyny. 

Good intentions don't invalidate the harm a thing does, nor do they protect it from criticism. It's just as important to call out these sorts of problems as it is to call out "obvious" ones.

[Regen]

Good intentions don't invalidate the harm a thing does, nor do they protect it from criticism. It's just as important to call out these sorts of problems as it is to call out "obvious" ones.

I agree with you, but Anita never points out what you do. She doesn't say how it unintentional serves as a power fantasy because the execution is weak, she says the women serve as nothing more than background decoration, which is obviously not true. They aren't intended for that reason and they don't come off that way.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Regen

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Alot of the times they are depends on the game. But some are just there for you to get it on with and thats it. 

Speaking im sad that there are achivements for this

[J&/MA/MC]

I admit that the sexism in gaming today is vile and stupid, but to assume it's always been that way is nothing more than a lie. Considering the nerd is still peripheral to the mainstream consciousness and still has to enforce themselves very flamboyantly to the point of not being actually representative of what they are (in short; acquiring pretentiousness)  to get the least bit amount of justified attention, I think "getting over themselves" can be seen as a threat with that in mind.

I think gaming culture was a political sanctuary until the financial crisis in 2007-2008, when media got no choice but to cover "cheap" geek culture out of desperation. Along with that came the demand for nerds to acquire pretentiousness to survive the growing community and with that, sadly, came the term and meme "fake gamer girl" as a way to accustom to a more influential but less inclusive crowd powered by irony, independence and flamboyance; hipsters. Gamergate is nothing more than the result of that misogynistic meme gone too far.

But the media is no angel here. From what we've seen with the upcoming election and the disproportionate coverage of Donald Trump, I think it's safe to say that the media have been exaggerating the misogyny within the gaming community from the start. But, since the gaming community now consists of these hipsters that sees these "news" as opportunities for confirming said behaviors in the name of irony, the snowball effect have made it into this whole ordeal.

[Tara]

I generally don't agree that the sexism in gaming is a recent trend.  I've always felt a sense of segregation when it comes to the gaming community.  The "fake nerd girl" meme definitely snowballed this problem into awareness, don't get me wrong, but I've always felt that gamers generally operated under the notion that women were a secondary demographic of sorts or that girls in gaming was a recent trend at the time, (EDIT - Thinking about it now, I don't remember a time when people haven't fallen back on the "Girls in gaming is a recent trend" excuse.  As far back as the N64 days, I've heard people say that.  That's almost twenty years of it "still being recent" out of the 30 years video games have even been a thing.  But whatever, that's just an anecdote from me) and their actions typically reflected that.  Granted, I feel the problem has escalated in recent years, but only due to the increased prominence of the internet in general.

But that's only within the community.  In the industry, I still feel that the media targets primarily men and women who have similar tastes to men.  To this day, I can't think of a single game targeted specifically towards girls (or even "girls, with boys being a secondary demographic") that isn't some cheaply-made budget game.  Using traditionally feminine traits purely as an example (meaning if you're a girl and these aren't your fancy, then this doesn't apply to you, so chill the hell out for a second), there's never a game about, say, a makeup artist that demonstrates artistic complexity in the same way that Mario Paint did with art and music.  There's been very few to no fashion designer games that simulate the adaptation and strategical elements of, say, SimCity.  Games based on doll lines, even doll lines that are actually adventurous in nature, tend to be hophazardly-made and also tend to lack in difficulty.  Whenever a Barbie game is released, you know there's going to be at least one or two men reviewing or Let's Playing purely for the amusement factor.  And I'm not saying that's wrong, or that the men who do that should be ashamed of themselves, (because those games are terrible) but that it shows a clear divide within the industry that has been there for a long time.  It's not a recent ordeal, or the result of a financial crisis, although I'm sure that hasn't helped either.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Tara

[J&/MA/MC]

Considering contemporary nerd culture spawned from the modernist wave that was highly egalitarian in nature, I think the only way sexism was brought into it was the desire by the Don Drapers to make it more accessible to the less nerdy crowds.

Nerd-centered movies like "The Revenge of The Nerds", "Weird Science" and "Scott Pilgrim" should not be considered a fair portrayal of nerds at all. They're at best cynical and make-believe. 

So consider this. Girls in gaming have always been there. "The Wizard" shows you exactly that. It's just that the media didn't caught on until they had to (after the financial crisis). These movies I mentioned had such a huge impact on the perception of nerds (unfortunately) that the media abandoned them, unaware that there was indeed a huge amount of gamer girls already at play. 

The marketing departments however took a movie like "The Revenge of the Nerds" to heart, since they found the most laissez-faire way possible to reach nerds without any effort. And since the media had abandoned their audience (the nerds), no protests were ever heard against it. (They were busy back-masking hard rock at the time anyway).

So yeah, both Anita and Zoe are welcomed additions to the crowd, although they're biting off more than what they can chew at the moment. Not one, not two, not even three people can't handle over 30 years of corporate laziness alone. We need an army of gamers with moderate awareness to steer this boat and guide it right.        

Edited November 14, 2015 by AC/H&M

[ZDozer]

Except that Anita Sarkeesian doesn't know jack shit about gaming, contrary to Zoe, who is a programmer herself.

I even got an example. I remember Sarkeesian once said that strong women never appeared on games or something at this line. I thought, "What the fuck? So what is Samus Aran, Chun-Li, Lara Croft, hermaphrodites?". God damn it, Samus was the FIRST strong woman to appear and protagonize at a videogame, and she wasn't even skimpy (in fact, most of the time she's suited on a heavily-plated armor, contrary to sex symbols Chun-Li and Lara Croft, this one having gotten herself a maximum overhaul from her 2013 reboot). It was that moment that got me on the certainty that Sarkeesian doesn't know a single fuck about gaming.

Whatever voice can there be in favor of women, I accept many, but Anita's isn't one of them. I'll parrot myself again: she's in it for herself, and no one else.

Edited November 14, 2015 by ZDozer

[Conando]

She made a shitty game that was publicized in all the news media, so people threw a fit. Honestly I think it's all stupid, it's a Frankenstein's Monster scenario similar to the Sarkesian one brought up by Sterling. 1st World problems on both sides.

[Falco]

People hate zoe Quinn because her ex boyfriend  said she cheated on him.

 

as for Anita her criticisms of works are so basic I'm not sure how people could get angry at her, but then again this whole controversy proved a lot of gamers cannot take the least bit of criticism regarding the game industry.

 

gamergate is movement that is doomed to go down in history as a failure. If anything tpeople will look down on the industry more because of these shitheads.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Falco