
Is the damsel in distress trope hurting the gaming industry or is it just a lot of hot air by feminists?

Square Enix launches Final Fantasy X 25th anniversary site, revealing new Nomura art, books, music releases, and merchandise.
Look I know VIII has its issues and all that but how on earth can the do big anniversary events with new artwork and merchandise for VII, IX and X yet VIII got sweet f*** all.
They could have given it something during its 25th anniversary yet all it got was a single Happy Anniversary post on their social media.

A brutal reset, a smarter story, and a return to what made it great—Mortal Kombat (2011) revived the series.
15 years went by so fast. I remember playing through the story mode at launch.

Why did Sony push Shuhei Yoshida out of his role leading PlayStation's first-party games? He'd overseen some huge successes. Well, apparently, he didn't listen.
Yeah I can see that for sure. Shuhei Yoshida should have been in charge not Jim Ryan.
More confirmation that Jim Ryan is the culprit for what has happened to Sony. Hulst needs to go too. What sucks is that a lot of the good top heads at Sony are no longer there. I wish that guys that were forced out prematurely by Dumbo Jimbo like Shuhei and Layden came back.
Makes you wonder if MS even thought about hiring him after Phil and Sarah were leaving. He certainly couldn't make their situation any worse.
All the gamer/consumer lead heads are gone across PS and Xbox. shuhei gone phil's gone (questionable) but gone. The future of gaming is somewhat uncertain across the board.
Oh my god not this crap again
In books (for 1000s of years), music (for 100s of years), and movies (for dozens of years) we have the recurring theme of someone saving someone else. Believe it or not, men aren't the only ones with the damsel in distress fantasy. There are a significant number of women who also enjoy the damsel in distress trope (go grab a dozen random chick flicks off the rental shelf and you'll find this theme in 75% or more of them). Statistically, several of the top bedroom fantasies for a woman are being saved (like a fireman), being dominated, being treated roughly, and being coerced/forced. Them's just the stats.
There are people who want to improve people's lives and bring positive change to the world. There are other people who have self-esteem issues and who want to shape other people's viewpoints to fit their own.
People who attack fictional videogame women fall into the latter camp.
Is it hurting the industry? Yes, to a degree, by alienating a huge segment of the demographic. Gamers aren't just prepubsecent white males any more. It's absurd that most game protagonists are still men, let alone white men, and even worse that so much of what laughably passes for character development for these white men is amateurishly created through the use of archaic chauvinistic narrative tropes.
It's not quite as "huge" a deal as some people make it out to be--I think the lack of female player-characters is a far more important issue--but it is a much, much bigger deal that the morons who insist it's all "feminist whining" believe with all the might of their pea-sized brains.
It's only an issue for femnazis and self loathing beta males.
It's a story telling mechanic. Maybe not a good one, but an easy one that gets the player invested in the character. Also, regardless of the gender of the character being rescued the storytelling mechanic works the same way. That's why it gets used so much. It's a little dishonest to call it a male power fantasy, when nothing changes about this storytelling mechanic if you switch the gender roles of the people being saved. For example, when Jade from Beyond Good and Evil was saving the Peter's character.
In general more women are being saved by male characters, but that's anecdotal because there are more straight, white male characters in games overall.
A perfect example of this mechanic working the same way, regardless of the gender of the person being saved is in the Mass Effect Series. If you play as female Shepard (who most people think of as the best Shepard) you are doing the same things as male Shepard. This includes recusing your crew be it a female or male member of the crew.