I look at it from the perspective that games are art and art is whatever the artist wants it to be.
I think Quinn was subjected to slander and she should have put an end to it by taking the ex to court. By not doing so, the rumor mills churned producing the slew of garbage that followed including extraordinarily excessive focus on what she said. That ultimately lead to the threats. Others, like Anita Sarkeesian, stirred the pot roping them into the controversy. I can't really see it ever ending.
Here's the video that drug Sarkeesian into Gamergate:
What I find funny is that all of these things she talks about exist in the real world. Which came first? Yes, yes, the crux of the argument she is trying to make is that this stuff doesn't need to be in games and I agree. At the same time, much like the real world, I ignore this stuff and go about my virtual business. The only game I can definitively say crossed a line with me was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City where to get 100% completion rating, you would literally have to get a 10 minute long lap dance. That deserves criticism, much criticism, because it isn't an ambient/environmental feature of the game. Edit: She gave an another blatant example of crossing the line in Red Dead Redemption: to get the "Dastardly" achievement, one has to take a woman hostage, put her on a rail, and wait until a train comes killing her.
I find myself agreeing more than disagreeing watching that video. I've played most of the games she cites and recall the situations in the videos. When you see them all smashed together like that, I can't help but feel that it is excessive. At the same time, I know you're seeing less than 1% of each title she references.
I think I see a compromise. If game developers are going to highly sexualize women, they need to take the Mass Effect route and require the player to develop a relationship. Strip clubs and ladies of the night should be stripped from game design unless it is critical to the game. An example of one such case, I would argue, is in the Saboteur where your "house" for lack of a better term, was a brothel inside Nazi controlled territory. Even though that was a good concept from a writing perspective, it was over sexualized in design. In terms of a lot of the depictions she used, game developers should add some kind of defense mechanism. For example, trying to take a woman hostage, the woman could respond by macing, slapping, pulling a concealed pistol or knife, or even pushing a panic button on a cell phone instantly giving the player high wanted status. These things are pretty easy to implement.
And then she loses me again when she talks about the ability to harm women in open-world games. Game designers could make women not intractable in that way like most already do with children but open-world games, intrinsically, are designed from the perspective of freedom and player choice. To deny those options is to shackle the player and that's not a good thing either. Games can address this issue by making it react to the player. Other NPCs can frown on the player's actions or blatantly punish it.
After that, she argues that developers incentivize killing women when, in all of the games depicted, the same incentive exists for killing men too.
It appears to me like the most blatant offenses originate from Rockstar. The solution to that problem is simple: hire women on to the development staff and ask them if something crosses the line.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, she completely mischaracterizes women in Hitman: Absolution calling them "play things" among other things (22 minutes in). No, their role is the same as most other NPCs in the game and that is to prevent you from either entering an area or to force you to hide/fit in while there. No more, no less. She actually uses the word "arousal." If you get aroused knocking out an NPC and hiding the body, you're messed in the head.
