Quaid: "I do think she intentionally misrepresented context in many of her cited game examples. For example, she fails to mention the reality of sandbox games where every NPC is vulnerable, not just sexualized females. To those not well versed in the realities of digital worlds, this point would not be clear, and she failed to clarify it. That's why I feel she misrepresented games like Hitman. What was her motivation to do this? There are SO MANY examples to use of 'women as sexualized background decoration' without her preposterous dragging corpses around in Hitman stunt. Did you play Witcher 3 for fucks sake? Some of the most detailed and engaging set pieces were the fucking whore houses."
See, if your point is "She should have mentioned that all NPCs are vulnerable to establish the context of how sandbox games work", I can say that's an entirely valid point. But when you say you think she's intentionally misrepresenting context, I think you're projecting your own biased interpretation of her work, basically because that's not the only way (or even the most likely way) to interpret it. Maybe she didn't feel the fact that you can kill all NPCs was relevant when referring to a specific trope focused on sexualized females. Maybe she could technically have gone into more detail about many other contextual points but was restricted by a desire to keep the video a reasonable length. Maybe she incorrectly assumed the fact that all NPCs can be killed was either common knowledge or made clear implicitly through other game footage she used. I'm not trying to make excuses for her, I'm just saying that "She intentionally misrepresented the game" is but one of several possibilities, and if you can't prove that was her intention (and let's face it, we can't), then the best we can do is say where we believe her to be wrong and to back it up as well as we can.
And let's be honest here, if she hadn't changed a word of that schpiel but instead used some YouTube footage of a guy gleefully killing hookers in GTA while staring at their asses and making immature sexist comments (footage which is not difficult to find), she would have been accused of "cherry-picking" and of taking one player's actions as representative of many and ignoring all the people who don't play the game that way, etc, etc. So "Why Hitman?" is only a valid question if she wouldn't have been equally torn apart for any other game featuring the trope, which she likely would have.
Quaid: "Perhaps I'm giving her too much credit, but I think she knew exactly what the gamer reaction would be to her work. I think she knows damn well that a lot of gamers are children, neuro atypical, socially maladjusted, and marginalized."
Now you sound like Leigh Alexander. Just kidding!
Ummmm... No, though. That wasn't "the gamer reaction". I'm a gamer. I know plenty of gamers who still haven't even heard of Sarkeesian and/or don't give a shit about anything she's ever said. If you're trying to say she knew what "the asshole reaction" would be, and that gamers contain a disproportionate number of assholes, well, I guess that's a little offensive but, for all we know, that might also be true.
