Team Siren? Pls.

So, Dunkey posted this video today. Lol-worthy, check it out. If you don't know about him, Dunkey's a YouTube personality who posts stuff from games and dubs over it with some funny shit. Check him out.

Anyway, the point of this post is about games and females.

Recently, I was reminded of the horror that is Anita Sarkeesian. She calls herself a feminist, and she 'brings to light how video games portray women'. To summarise, she believes games are trying to undermine females' roles and portray them as weak and ineffective by subjugating them under 'patriarchy superiority'.

This is insanely dumb. Before you go off writing me off, hear me out.

To a certain extent, I agree that women are underplayed in games, but calling it a ploy to fulfil the patriarchy's master plan is stupid. If you have not seen Thunderf00t's video analysis of Anita's 'well-researched exposé', check it out.

No matter what you do in games, it is a plan to undermine women's authority. For example:

Strong women? Damnit, patriarchs trying to make women be like men.
Weak women? Damnit, patriarchs saying women are weak.
Beautiful women? Damnit, patriarchs saying looks are everything.
Ugly women? Damnit, looks are everything.

What is your issue here? We can't portray women in any manner possible, it seems. Regardless of the stance we take, it is a lose-lose situation.

Now, looking at video games, and as Thunderf00t has mentioned, they portray men in a specific manner too. Why are JRPGs men so bishie? Why are most male main characters good-looking and strong and what-not? Why must it be such that men are judged based on that? This is horrible, isn't it?

Then we have racial issues too. Why make black characters speak like they're from the ghetto? If you try to portray them as being smart, someone somewhere will remark that you are trying to imply that they are imitating Caucasians. Orient characters have their thick accents with them, even if they have spent a long time abroad in the West working, like you see with Wei Shen in Sleeping Dogs. Oh no, the horrorrrrrrr!!

I don't want to go too deep into that rabbit hole. I believe that people who take some time to think about how video games work will understand that, games are games. Figure out for yourself if games are about "oppressing women".

Back to Dunkey's video about this Team Siren. Look girls, good for you that you are the first all-female team. Good for you that you like this game called League of Legends. However, you girls need to wake up to the fact that your channel essentially belittles pro players and mocks their efforts.

Yes, you are rather good at the game, but not good enough for the competitive scene. So, why promote your team for a game and have your main slogan be "first all-female team"? Why are you not promoting yourselves based on your skill levels? Does being female have anything to do with your skills? Are we supposed to be more lenient because of that fact...?

No, I am not saying that the fact of you people being the first all-female team is false. No, I am not saying you can't have that description for your team. However, you pass yourself off as a professional team, and provide footages of your games with average skills and then go "hey we are like, the first all-female team, the pro teams are like all male, we are here to be the game-changer". Change the game with sub-par skills? What am I, or anyone else for that matter, supposed to take from that?

Here is my impression of your team - you over-promoted yourself by passing yourself off as a professional team and talk smack about "changing things" when you cannot play competitively. Look at Road to LCS, previously known as Road to IPL, and look at their efforts at getting better at the game. They do not oversell themselves and work hard. And what did you do? The exact opposite.

To put things in perspective, imagine a new team that has average skills trying to push themselves. They then make a video promoting themselves, with this slogan in it - "all-male, Oriental team". What then? What does that have to do with their skills? Nothing. Play the game. If you're good at it, show it. Go hard or go home.

Man. Rant, over.