Gals and Gaming: GTFO

I have about the same opinions on this documentary as I did on the Anita Sarkeesian video we watched earlier in the semester. I thought that while the points it made were true and good. It did not go far enough. To me, I did not need the first ten minutes justifying that video games are in fact sexist. Now this is not to say that this documentary is not valuable or that I am some all knowing feminist hero, neither of those things is true. But rather, I fall into what Sarkeesian says her videos weren’t for, people in academia with access to books and articles about feminist and gender theory. I also am a huge fan of video games who reads and watches articles and videos about video games and feminism. So gamergate and the casual of sexism of video game culture is not new to me either. I know this is a very silly critique, and to contradict this critique entirely, this document would be excellent to show to those whose knowledge of video games is great and feminism is lacking. There needs to be much better education for men who play video games. 

I also do not like how this documentary talked about queer and trans individuals. While I can not speak for the whole movement, as a bi guy, some of the things they said about queer players felt like the same old shit we’ve been marketed for years. Like queer players don’t want to just be queer characters. This was a little reductionist, especially in an industry that often uses queer stories and characters as marketing opportunities. Maybe this is a rant I have more with the industry and not the documentary. But it felt like they shoehorned LGBTQIA issues into these documentary. Along with this, I think that trans women were not addressed at all in this documentary and I think that needs to be more prevalent in any feminist critique or text about video games. 

What made this documentary great is the many harrowing stories of women developers and gamers who have been harassed and had their careers destroyed by toxic male fanbases. Overall I really liked this documentary and I hate to overly critique it, it’s just easier to write critiques than praises.