Anita Sarkeesian Returns To The Internet

Anita Sarkeesian is back and available for hire. Over the last couple of years, a debate has been brewing online. It involves something that you might have heard before: Diversity and Inclusion. When we hear those words, the first thing that comes to mind is Sweet Baby Inc. However, before they could run, someone had to crawl. With that, allow me to introduce you to Anita Sarkeesian. She is the original DEI consultant and one of the generals behind the original Gamergate. While Gamergate originally started in 2014 with Zoe Quinn, the original can be traced back two years when Anita hosted a show called Tropes Vs Women In Video Games.

This series was controversial. While she made some decent points, most of her work was not accurate. She mostly took things out of context, failed to explain why certain tropes might exist, and blatantly misrepresented the original message or story at other times. This did not sit well with some and resulted in online anger. I will admit that, at times, this anger might have been too far. Serious threats against someone are never okay. However, Anita seems to thrive in these conditions. Every week, she would say something horrible to bait people into responding.

Anita took a lot of money from Kickstarter to fund her gaming tropes series on YouTube. In one video, she suggested that it was sexist that you could kill women in Hitman. She did have the platform to talk about real sexism in video games, but instead, she did a poor job. It was clear that she was not a passionate gamer.

The Anita Sarkeesian Affect

However, the impact that Anita Sarkeesian had on video games cannot be underestimated. For many, she will always be nothing more than a grifter. They started talking about better representation of women in video games and turned around to monetize her message the first moment she got it. Now, at face value, there is nothing wrong with turning something you are passionate about into a career. Many believe, though, that her approach did more to harm women. Because of how provocative she was, people did not care for anything she had to say.

This also boiled over to other women who might have had serious concerns. Any woman who spoke out about any issue was immediately dismissed as just another Anita. While that is not fair, it is a predictable outcome when your positions are extreme. Anita Sarkeesian was never interested in a conversation. She simply wanted to call games sexist and sell developers the solutions. However, Gamergate, in many ways, changed video games. After the entire situation, developers pushed for more diverse people to be included in their games.

Sadly, the people who were pushing for this never had the correct intentions. They simply wanted to create a woman lead with a boring story and call people sexist when they criticized the gameplay. While the push for more inclusion at its score is not wrong, the execution in this regard was off. No one thinks that every woman in a video game should only be a fan service for men. However, at its core, video games are fan service. Both the male and female characters in video games serve this purpose. That is something that the gamergate crew will never understand.

The Return Of Anita Sarkeesian

Obviously, we are talking about Anita again because she is back. After the failure of Feminist Frequency, most thought that this would be the end. However, she is now offering up her services as a DEI consultant. On her website, she states that she is available to advise on Modernizing historically problematic content. By problematic content, she means video games like Hitman because you can shoot women. Wait until she hears about GTA. She also lists that she worked with companies like Ubisoft. It is unclear what she did for them. Some speculate that she assisted with Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

We know that Ubisoft did work with consultants on the game, but it is unclear who. This is not the first time, though, that Sarkeesian has gotten involved with games. She is credited for heavily influencing Dishonored 2. As per Kotaku, “In 2012, Feminist Frequency tweeted that while Dishonored 1 featured “many truly brilliant elements. . . sadly representation of women are not among them. They called this Disappointing.” Sarkeesian’s 2015 video “Women as Background Decoration” showed several clips from Dishonored 1 in which the player peeks up sex workers’ skirts, throws them against walls or murders them.“

She also said, “Every woman in Dishonored 1 is either a servant, a prostitute, a witch, a queen or a little girl,” which he describes as “not an intentional choice.” These comments resulted in Arkane Studios including more leading women in the game. It is also rumored that she played a part in Last of Us 2. However, Neil Drukman insists that it is not true.

Conclusion

Anita Sarkeesian was always going to return. In a time when DEI companies are more popular than ever with Developers, there was no way she would miss out. I think she simply does not want to pass up an opportunity to mess with gamers. She knows how gamers feel about these consulting firms and she could not resist including herself. It is all about the reactions, and she is getting them. She will be back on Twitter shortly for the same old tired cycle. She will say stupid stuff, get backlash for saying stupid stuff, and call everyone who criticized her sexist. In the end, if game companies want to hire her, they deserve everything coming their way.