Perhaps one of the reasons why sites dont get taken seriously when they attempt to inject gender politics into articles about games, particularly reviews, is that their arguments are often provably false. This is a quote from the Verges article, which it claims is a "1000 hour review" of DOTA2.

"One of the artefacts of the game being designed by young males is in its presentation. Female characters tend to perform clichéd support roles while dressing in form-fitting costumes that seem to have shrunken in the wash. Most egregious for me is the case of Crystal Maiden, whose death animation involves a momentary glimpse of the character stripped down to her underwear. Maybe that’s an homage to Metroid, where a similar fate would befall Samus Aran, but it’s an unnecessary sexualization of a character that is made worse by its association with her death."

Now the facts. First lets address that female characters "tend to perform cliched support roles". Firstly this is factually wrong. Here is a list of the 17 female heroes in DOTA2 and their roles, as defined by DOTA2s own website.

Legion commander - Melee carry

Drow Ranger - Ranged Carry

Mirana - Carry, Nuker, Disabler

Vengeful Spirit - Support, Initiator

Templar Assassin - Ranged, carry

Luna - Ranged, carry, nuker

Siren - Melee, carry, disabler, pusher

Phantom Assassin - Melee, carry

Broodmother - Pusher, carry

Spectre - Melee, carry

Medusa - Ranged, carry

Crystal Maiden - Support, nuker

Windranger - Support, disabler, nuker

Lina - Nuker, disabler, support

Enchanter - Support, Jungler

Queen of Pain - Nuker, carry

Death Prophet - Pusher, Nuker



This "tendency" to play cliched support roles is a total of 5 out of 17 heroes. Indeed there are far more male supports than there are female (but there are also far more male heroes in the game than female so that's to be expected). Indeed female heroes represent some of the most powerful carries in the game and are frequent top tier picks. In my personal opinion, the way that this statement is written is meant to imply that a support is somehow a weaker or lesser role than that of a carry, which is complete nonsense. Supports are vital and hold some of the most powerful abilities in the game that are crucial for getting ganks and changing the face of a team-fight. Maybe in other games the support was relegated to the role of healer and ward courier but in DOTA2, a game with very few actual healing abilities, supports have an array of powerful disables and extremely high damage nukes. Maybe I'm just reading too much into that sentence but it seems to be based on ignorance and factual inaccuracies. Now this statement.

"Most egregious for me is the case of Crystal Maiden, whose death animation involves a momentary glimpse of the character stripped down to her underwear. Maybe that’s an homage to Metroid, where a similar fate would befall Samus Aran, but it’s an unnecessary sexualization of a character that is made worse by its association with her death."

This is proveably false. It is not a deliberate implementation and is in fact an old bug, causing parts of the characters modular outfit (characters in DOTA wear items individually, which allows for visual customisation, rather than having complete "skins" like other games) to not display correctly. This Youtube video demonstrates the issue - http://bit.ly/1qOI2dz - you will notice her hair also disappears and she is rendered for a fraction of a second as bald. This also used to (and perhaps still?) happens with Lina every now and again. If this is the authors definition of "her underwear" then you're going to have to forgive me if I don't think that's much of an issue, since we don't live in the 1800s anymore. That's her underwear? That's three times more clothes than I'm wearing right now.



This sort of thing is why I also have problems with Anita Sarkessians videos. When she factually misrepresents games like Hitman by claiming the game is inviting you to violate the bodies of dead women, where in reality the game mechanically punishes you for doing so and the poses are simply a result of the rather dodgy havok physics engine implementation, you're gong to have to forgive me if I disagree with phrases such as "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual characters. It's a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality".

Trying to have this discussion while basing your assertions on factual inaccuracies only succeeds in muddying the waters. You weaken your own argument with such logical leaps which are based on extremely shaky ground. Perhaps we should just stick to the facts and build our arguments from there, rather than coming up with our agenda and conclusions in advance and working backwards to try and prove our point, which will invariably lead to some cognitive and confirmation bias, cherry-picking and at worst, flagrant misrepresentation.

You can do better Verge.