The overall goal of Tropes vs Women is to reveal the mistreatment and misinterpretations of women in media culture, specifically video games, as well as to emphasize the catering of male audiences through multiple means. With the project being created around the same time as the controversial Gamergate, it gained a substantial amount of popularity. However this popularity brought negative setbacks to Sarkeesian’s work and life, including death and rape threats. The project lasted nearly 5 years, ending in mid-2017 and with an unanswered question of whether or not Trope vs Women achieved its goal in the end.
As seen in the Methodology, Sarkeesian would often use videos taken from various video games and frame them in away that would support whatever her argument was for the designated video. However, what was also seen was that there were times where her arguments could not be backed up with facts and there were instances of valuable information, such as a deeper meaning of a character, that would be possibly deliberately misconstrued in order to validate her stance. This was not seen in every video however, but it was seen in multiple videos as well as instances outside of Tropes vs Women.
Also seen in the Methodology was the curriculum of Tropes vs Women created by Sarkeesian and others behind Feminist Frequency. As seen in the curriculum, the lessons behind each video is taken very seriously to the point where the goals and materials used for the videos are displayed for review. With the use of the curriculum of Feminist Frequency, this adds to the possibility that Tropes vs Women succeeded in their goal by explaining what is needed to fully understanding the videos.
However, even after the many videos developed by Feminist Frequency and the years spent on researching video games and other forms of media, it cannot be said that the goal of Tropes vs Women was achieved. This is because if one was to compare how women are treated in video games 5 years ago to how they are treated in video games today, they would not find as much change as Sarkeesian would have hoped. As Sarkeesian has pointed out in past videos, there are still women being used as background objects, damsels in distress, and characters of non importance. However, it also cannot be said that there has been no change at all in the video game world regarding how women are treated. There are more and more examples of video games using female protagonists, strong female characters, and less damsels in distress than there were 5 years ago. It’s doubtful that this change is due to Sarkeesian’s projects but rather due to the natural change of perspective of women over time.
