In May 2012, Anita Sarkeesian started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a series of videos in which she would dissect the role of females in video games. The adolescent backlash from the gaming community was embarrassing to say the least. We here at Unigamesity are not for discrimination of any sort, and the reaction to Ms. Sarkeesian’s announcement was bad. On the other hand, the feminist community rallied to her cause and within a few days, she had surpassed her goal of $6,000 by more than $100,000. Understandably, this led Ms. Sarkeesian to increase the scope of her series; perhaps to include characters and ideas that may have been left, on the drawing room floor (so to speak). Having increased the scope of the project, the timetable for the release of the first video was pushed back… Significantly.

Recently, the first video was released and sufficiently impressive.  Ms. Sarkeesian’s analysis of video game culture hits a vein that; as a former 13 year old boy, I can identify with.  As a human being though, I must find exception with her assessment of video game culture.  While it is true that video games fall back onto the familiar “damsel in distress,” trope; the question must be presented, “Why not?”  While it is surely terrible that Marian is punched in the opening cinematic of Double Dragon, why else would Billy and Jimmy walk down the street fighting everyone?

Let it be known that we here at Unigamesity always support vigorous discourse about our culture, but blame for culture at large likely lies elsewhere.