The first video of Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” series is out–“Damsels in Distress – Part 1”.

There’s quite a bit of history behind this video and a lot of reaction to wade through; but for those interested in the video, it’s imbedded in this article.

Sarkeesian has become something of a Internet and gaming controversial figure with her feminist critique of the video game world. Her YouTube channel “Feminist Frequency” became the center of the storm due to her critical examination of common literary tropes used in video games that are less-than-flattering to women adding only a brand to the fuel when she started a Kickstarter campaign to turn her channel into an educational series for schools.

Her series is called “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” named after the term for commonly used (or better known as cliche) plot elements in video games that writers use as cheap and easy fodder to give motivation or dimension (or lack thereof) to stacks of pixels and polygons for the enjoyment of gamers. As she’d already had a set of videos discussing these tropes and a happening to be a gamer herself, Sarkseesian went the route of crowdfunding a much more professional version of her series.

Asking only $6,000 seemed modest for the Kickstarter but as fate would have it, Sarkeesian struck a nerve and became the target of the groundswell of roaring trolls. They invaded her YouTube channel, her blog, her Twitter account, and marched upon her Kickstarter campaign to decry her crowdfunding attempt. It seemed the mere mention of her desire to critique video games gave life to a brutal, organized harassment campaign. Then, much to the trolls’ chagrin, however, the world and the Internet discovered that the Streisand Effect works both ways.

In the end, participants ended up funding her project at almost $160,000; and Sarkeesian herself went to speak at a TEDx conference (video) about the surge of naysayers and harassment who only managed to give her even more celebrity.

The first video in an expected long educational series

As soon as this video hit the scene the controversy reignited. Articles have been written and YouTube videos have been made criticising the portrayal of the trope and Sarkeesian herself. Few, if any, have actually risen to the challenge and so far only one such essay even managed to make a compelling point (citing Nintendo and Japanese culture for many games exhibited in Sarkeesian’s video.)

By-and-large, her critique feels a little simplistic–in part because it’s highly focused only on one trope and also follows a narrow band of video games from the 1980s and 90s. It’s expected that the second in the series will look at games from the last decade and hopefully provide a more nuanced look at the use of the “Damsel in Distress” trope in games in general. This video feels a lot more like a historical vista trying to provide a foundation for the trope to show where it came from.

The history of video games has been fraught with the expectation of an all-male audience and has been primarily marketed to men. As a result, much of the marketing and the games themselves tend to define women into remarkably sexist roles (and, of course, games from the 80s and 90s are still products of their time.) Even as video games and media in general advance into the 2010s, having a series such as “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” will provide an excellent backdrop to have a talk about how women are treated in games, in gamer communities, and even perhaps in the video game industry in general.

Internet and gamer reaction still strong and a bit pungent

Already numerous news outlets have examined and written on the video–Forbes, Wired UK, Kotaku–and even prominent developers have come out in her support–such as Gears of War’s Cliff Bleszinski. The initial inception of Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter happened to be so nearly-nuclear that the reaction to the release of her first video seems tame by comparison.

Amid the noise, some critics argue fairly for the issues that I’ve seen myself; but others take their arguments to the strange extreme–”…why did it take her so long to come out with this first video?” “…is this really what $160k gives us?” “…she’s an Ivory Tower snob talking down to all of us from her pile of video games.” “…she turned off comments and ratings on her YouTube video; therefore we cannot talk about it!” Of course, then there’s the noise: even more threats of violence and generic undirected vitriol.

It’s worth going back and reading those links at the top of this section from the various news outlets, Erik Kan of Forbes has a brilliant discussion about the nature of video games and where they belong in the landscape of our culture.

Anita Sarkeesian and “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” has given us a strange lens into gamer culture–it hasn’t been very pretty–but it also provides a necessary moment of clarity to talk about how video games affect and are affected by the people who consume them. Her Kickstarter campaign kicked over an anthill somewhere containing the worst of gamer culture and crystallized in the disgust at the swarm she was given an awesome opportunity.

Now we have a chance to talk about gamer culture as insiders and as others perceive it. As Bleszinki has pointed out in Sarkeesian’s defense.

“Recently at the DICE summit in Las Vegas David Cage called on the industry to ‘grow up.’ In some ways, David, I agree… we can do better in many, many areas. We can make more mature and engaging plot lines and explore unique game mechanics beyond sawing someone in half.”

Gaming industry and gamers: you’re looking at your chance to grow as a medium, a community, and a culture. This is your excuse–your invitation–to be something more amazing.