Feminist Frequency Tackles The Question: Are Women Too Hard To Animate?

The cultural criticism web channel Feminist Frequency takes a look at the excuses game studios have given when they don’t include female playable characters to ask the question: are women too hard to animate? Spoiler: They’re Not

[NewMonday]

buy more games then maybe publishers will care

[Fullmetalevolust]

Male and female are equal in the sense that we are able to do the same things, but we may perform them rather differently. It is not to say that a woman's performance at work or in sports is inferior or superior, it is just different.
Science has taught us that we are wired differently, and we haven't even looked at the scope of transgender people and other genders (that tribes and other cultures in the world value.)
So this idea of bridging the gap between male and female is our own invention as humans to make thing seem equal and socially acceptable. All people should have the same rights to representation in all media, may it be tv and video games. Anita is always touching a sore spot when she "attacks" video games because for generations it has been a male dominated industry and it is slowly evolving. To not give praise to the studios who represent males and females and trans in a good positive way and in the same breath makes this video lack credibility.
If you want to lead by example, you praise the studios that have done well and explain why these characters they have created have been well received. It is a cringe worthy angle and I do not care for it but I will listen as most debates require you to hear out what the other end has to say.
She never touches upon the artistic freedom to create characters the way the artist wants to portray them, but she'd probably pass it as subconscious sexism.

[Goldby]

No people are attacking her becuase she preys on the weak minded and easily manipulated.
she got 20k to produce i think 8 episodes of games vs tropes. shes completes less than half of them to date or any actual standard, then proceeds to make a new kickstarts for "ORDINARY WOMEN OF HISTORY" and asked for over 200k. finish the first project before you go making new one. and while your at it, do some actual research instead of relying on research form years ago that was debunked.

[ZombieGamerMan]

What the other guy said and also she prevents anyone else from criticizing her work and makes it near impossible to have an actual discussion with her on the subject matter especially when she is proven wrong time & time again and then go in public lectures to state how her research is 100% accurate and try to silence critics by calling them sexist.

[Kiknyonutz]

You say that we need to lead by example and praise studios who have done well ... Do you honestly think we continue to spend our money on things that we don't enjoy or truly find offensive?

[Dee_91]

@Fullmetalevolust
There's acknowledging and or praising a cultural shift, then there's shaming people for not trying to artificially fast forward the cultural shift. She's doing the latter of course.
Ignoring the lack of research done by her; the core of what she is doing is ignorant, and self centered. I agree with you, criticizing how developers portray woman can be done in a better way. However, the way she is doing it, is causing more harm than good.

[Fullmetalevolust]

I know quite a few of you are replying to me, and I appreciate your feedback. I am by no means defending her actions, her videos or her attempt at a false thesis. She has done lazy work to research representations of women in video games. Her intentions are transparent as she doesn't mean to provide any solution but rather criticize the studios who aren't doing right by her opinions.
What she fails to see is that men and women and all other genders have been represented in a multitude of ways via all sorts of mediums, including video games and that won't change because a writer/artist has that right.

[kaizokuspy]

She hasn't made a game worth owning of any price, even free

[WeAreLegion]

I can't believe she's still going. She took advantage of women and feminists, in general, for financial gain.

This is not a feminist. This is a crook.

[sAVAge_bEaST]

a Snake Oil sales.women.

[yeahright2]

I'm all for equality, but not coming from her. Everything I've seen from her sends the vibe of her just doing stuff like this for the attention and money. lack of research, blatant lying, misrepresenting facts, etc etc. So no, let's make her a pariah and fill the void with someone better.

[Null1980]

THIS, exactly. I am not against women's rights, more inclusiveness, etc. I AM highly against the smugness and dishonesty of Anita.

[mopground]

you mean women in these games use their sex appeal to achieve their aims like theyve done throughout history? HOW DARE THEY! Would still like to hear a logical, non ideological explanation as to why a game maker should alter their vision of what they want for the sake of people like sarkeesian. You've come up with a concept for your own game Anita. why dont you start a kickstarter for that and see if it sells? It couldnt possibly be because feminists dont really buy them could it?

[Stereotypical_gamer]

Don't go bringing up history, didn't you know the earth has been a patriarchy since the big bang?

[Stereotypical_gamer]

@Cobra951

Ok, what happens to women if men go extinct? If your trying to say women aren't the most protected class in the west I'd like to see your examples of the woman oppression. Give a feminist an inch and she will take a mile. Just wondering what more we could do for women in the west? We certainly can't kiss there asses anymore than we already do.

[AnubisG]

She would start a kickstarter for a game, get hundreds of thousands of dollars and never deliver anything and would just keep the money and she would get away with it.

[jeenyus]

Vomit inducing article here.

[Kurt Russell]

What a load of rubbish. Different games for different demographics. Publish one that suits yours.

[Ozmoses]

here we go again...

it's like OMG - No Man's Sky is sexist because it has man in the title... and the planets have way too many curves....
(just a ridiculous example of something they'd probably say)

blah blah blah

[uth11]

But since it has "No Man" in the title isn't it really misandrist? :P

[Ozmoses]

haha you're right. they'll probably make it their game platform for "man hating"

but if there are "No Man" then there are also "No Wo Man" hahaha...
so they'll definitely try and spin it for their agenda

I imagine it would be something like this

"Hateful Men that bash the exsistence of women. But in the case of No Man's Sky the misconstrued representation of women goes so far to the point that they don't even include them in the game. Even though there are also no men in the game it is extremely sexist because there are no women either."

hahaha

[Cy]

Yeah that one time Ubisoft said that really deserved its own debunking video, huh? It's almost like she's either incredibly lazy or she's running out of shit to nitpick.

[discmach]

Her assumption that the developers were lazy/couldn't be bothered to put in the extra time to do the female animations is disingenuous at best. The main reason the developer didn't want to do the extra animations was to do with budgets.
So you'd need:
Bring back the concept artists to do female assassin concept art.
3d model, texture, new rig the female characters.
Get the artists to make promo art/redo existing promo art to have female characters in.
Hire female mocap actors (if you think males move like females then you need to read up on your biology).
Clean up all mocap animations for use in-game.
Hire voice artists for all female sounds/grunts/lines.
Then testers/programmers have to make sure female assassin size/animations all work exactly the same as the male assassins.
Hell of a lot of money and time spent on this for perhaps the potential for 2-3 percent more sales from "female gamers".

[Omnisonne]

No point using common sense here, people like Anita and her followers seem to have a built-in logic filter in their heads.
Really just look over the comment sections on these topics. Whenever someone comes up with a good argument they either ignore&disappear or continue to blame them for being skeptical, or hell, for being a (white) man.

[Nero2142]

Misogyny !! Quick disable comments and rating

[Dixiedevil]

Whenever I see the comments to crap like this that's posted on N4G, I know I'm at the right gaming site.

[Manubiggs]

This is a discussion from 2 years ago. She is out of ideas.

[the_mack_attack3]

The disable comments on all their videos. It's them saying, "here, have our opinion, and feel free not to share yours". I honestly think Anita is just rolling the wave. You make that money, selling your "beliefs".

[AnubisG]

What is this professional victim, feminazi, misandrist, SJW garbage doing here?

Get this off of N4G as soon as possible. People don't need to see this poison.

[quent]

The topic should read, "is it too "hard" to please a feminist"

[Theparanerds]

a lot of anger in the comment sections.

[Deep-throat]

This woman is just a con artist.

[Kokyu]

Stop giving her attention

[Christopher]

This x1000

[Null1980]

Exactly. She's like an internet troll who feeds and thrives on peoples' backlash. Negative attention is still attention. She still gets more clicks. Don't feed trolls. Period.

[yeahright2]

Wish I could make this the top rated comment on every article written about her from now on.

[vahnDragon]

hey guy we buy the games she lie and bitch about. they can't fix their damn games but take out something one person or one group that don't buy the games they bitch about. reason why low sales are happening look at street fighter 5 fix your damn games from coming out broken at lunch only to give the people that spend a dime on your game, this is why she getting the attention she gets. talking and speaking for people that told her to shut up and the first place.

when the same women asks her to stop. then block her comment section so you can't speak to her lying to people saying she for women rights when she all for herself. you don't me who not to pay attention too when saying garbage to young girls who are lost and don't know their place and the world misleading them to wrong decisions. at a you age... for that yeah don't tell me who to pay attention because I want to be a parent someday and its people like her I am worried about. if you love your child you be worried too who saying what garbage too them feeding their head nonsense and want your child to know boy or girl. they should be treated fair not told they being used because video games are a male thing no females allowed they be told to shut up when they want to play games...

when you and I know this is horse shit their games two people can play together as a team or against each other, their are ways to set time to child playtime. so fuck Anita nonsense of bullshit, when we have to worry about DLC being locked on the Disc you paid for then deal with patch after patch that breaks games and wait for another patch that breaks some more stuff. then here comes a cheaper new game of the year edition or whatever when you paid $59.99 don't forget that tax $63.00 then tell me I have to know worry about censorship.

because some dumb bitch can't stand looking at butts look everyone I can't look at batman butt because his cape is blocking me for looking at batman butt. look everyone why do female guardian sit like a flower and male guardian sit like this. look everyone why am a dump ass who move the camera so close to the butt to point that I am not paying attention game itself but on the butt. you kind of giving away stuff about your sexual life ANTIA any a way that you sound like a total a bitch. when we know you don't males because any male will kill themselves after dating her a year.

so she bitch about female butts, well the last time I looked at ANTIA she has a butt too have you look at that thing walking on stage and look at boobs so is a duck calling a duck a duck or is a cow calling a cow a cow do ever look at herself and goes hum my butt is too big oh my god the men look at them die white male die.

[fiveby9]

How is this tagged as 'News'? Should be tagged as Opinion.

[Liqu1d]

Didn't you know? Everything Anita says is a fact and can't be argued. /s

[Christopher]

Because it wasn't properly reported during the pending process. Changed. In the future, hit me up with a PM and I'll see it faster.

[fiveby9]

Ok fair enough. I will PM in the future.

[ion666]

I just don't like liars. She hurt women's right in my eyes. She is an instigator ,the female trump

[drunkenspy007]

oh boy, here we go again, someone needs attention.

[discmach]

Her hoop earings are bigger. My theory is they represent the size of her ego.
What do ya'll think?

[Majin-vegeta]

I think you may be onto something here my dear Watson.

[Big_Game_Hunters]

Wow never thought i would ever somewhat agree with anita.
It doe seems like most western devs can't do women, Tak netherealm or bioware, All their girls look like men. Thats pretty comon among western devs.

[warriorcase]

Just stop...

[MCTJim]

I'm not going to watch the video, but I will comment on the title...No they are not harder to animate, just ask the people responsible for Dead or Alive..nuff said

[jackwei22]

All they need to do is stop giving her attention and the worse thing that ever happen is how her and zoey quinn got into the UN one time to discuss feminism.

[Vanfernal]

I want her to tackle the question : Are eyebrows to hard to trim?

[annoyedgamer]

Desperation at its finest...when did AC Unity get released again?

[Moe-Gunz]

Why even give this fraud the privilege of being on this gaming site? Let her extreme feminist audience soak this up, but not us who know the subject matter she claims to be an expert on just to gain financially.

[Goldby]

shes an expert alright... on telling developers who have been working in the industry for how many years that they are lazy

[fluxmulder]

These SJWs are a cancer on gaming. Go peddle your agendas somewhere else and let us enjoy our scantily clad women in peace.

[opinionated]

Does she animate? I've never seen anything but her mouth move and I wish that was harder for her to do.

[Deeke]

Women's gait is much different than men's. Their bodies are different. Their body LANGUAGE is different. I wouldn't say they're hard to animate, just different.

But different means devs have to take time to make unique NPCs. AAA dev teams go through hell to make their games, and they're pushed quite far. Some things (like how a woman walks vs a man) are usually put on the back burner for more important things, like, you know, keeping the in-game world from imploding.

[fatsodubmo]

I like the border town magik marker look shes got goin wit those eyebrows tho

[maxleresistant]

We're still discussing about that? The guy never said that women are too hard to animate anyway. He said that "making a female playable character meant making a whole new set of animations just for the character and that would be a lot of hard work". AC games requires A LOT of animations, and they thought it wasn't worth it, and I think they're right.
So fuck off with your "Are women too hard to animate?"...

[uth11]

There are more female protagonists than ever in games-- Tomb Raider, Horizon, Hell Blade, Life is Strange, Beyond Two Souls, Bayonetta, Transistor. Why not celebrate and reward that instead of browbeating everyone else to change their creative vision to fit with your demands? Then when they try, you still see hidden sexist tropes in them anyway.

That tactic only divides everyone and fuels anti-feminism.

[DrumBeat]

The only challenge in animating women that isn't a challenge for animating men are boob physics.

[TheTwelve]

How did opinion get into the news section

[NotEvenMyFinalForm]

muh soggy knees ;(

[vahnDragon]

so now we bitching about fighting female bosses who are coming at you too kill you so what you want to do lay down and just die.... oh wait you do don't you.

[vahnDragon]

they can't even lie good damn feminist you need to go to lying school you can trick some dumb people who don't play video games well enough to know you full of shit. but the first half I do agree can't make female because of shoulders bullshit from a bullshit company. she should know by now this by UBISOFT I s bullshit every gamer knows this by now.

[SSjDomon]

She looks like she needs to get some, preferably by force. And a broken nose.