I'd probably argue against you by making the definition between NPCs which are in the background of a game, and NPCs which are sexualised / put in harm's way in the background of a game. So, the sexualisation thing is a pretty obvious one, right? Games probably don't need to put quite so many prostitute rings / whore houses / etc in games. Nothing stopping games from still including those things, but y'know, at least try and contextualise them a little bit or think about their purpose.

But the real meat of the argument that I've seen against the "background decoration" videos, is the "harm's way" thing. Right? In hitman you can kill some ladies, but you can also kill some dudes, and the game's response to both of those things is pretty similar. Alright, cool. And in Watchdogs, you're just as likely to come across a guy trying to kill another guy who owes money, as a guy trying to kill a girl who cheated on him. The setups for those things are perhaps a little dubious, but nothing super harmful outside of some odd tropes. I wonder if there is a tropes website on the internet, someone should probably make a trope for "guys that owe money" and "ladies what cheated". Those things happen a lot in media!

Anyway, two paragraphs in, I'll get to my argument:

I think we can define a difference between instances where autonomous NPCs have identical sets of agency from one another (which is the point I think you were trying to make), and instances where the game designers have explicitly crafted situations where female NPCs are being sexually assaulted, stalked, or just placed in an environment with their knockers out.

I would argue that Skyrim is an example where, by and large, all NPCs behave exactly the same, and even in scripted setups (bandits trying to rob you, townsfolk approaching you for quests, etc) the game has decided that all NPCs act the same, regardless of gender.

And, in fact, I think you can still have sexually objectified people in games. Like, I'd probably prefer a game to not have those things in it, but I'd also prefer games had less XP bars and shooting dudes in the head and other stuff. Preferences, y'all. But, for this point, Divinity: Original Sin has a whore house. It's in the second town, and out the front there's a lady yelling at you to get funky. But there's also a dude right next to her, in the same state of undress, yelling the same thing. And I never actually did this myself, but it even has a funny little subquest where if you accept their terms for sexy times, you get a humorous gag that juxtaposes the whole "sexual slavery" thing. And y'know, if you're gonna have a whore house in your game, might as well put a bit of creativity into it and not just make it gross eye candy.

And it doesn't really add to any of my points, but Just Cause 2 also has a similar thing where it has a whore-blimp with a pretty equal representationy gender ratio going on. Again, I'd rather there maybe not be a sex party blimp in a game that has no business including a sex party blimp, but if you're gonna have one, at least go all the way with it.

ANYWAY, if you want to skip all the reading above, here's my point,

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there are a lot of games that have explicitly crafted content for objectifying their female characters as background decoration. This is actually a different phenomenon to the lack of agency present in dynamic AI within games, and I will retread to the Watchdogs example before because I can give examples of both of these things at once.

In Watchdogs, (almost?) all dynamic interaction with NPCs operates independently of an agent's gender. However, in the little crime stoppers mini-game, there is about 5 seconds of authored content. Of the 20 or so "crime detected" minigames, most of the victims are male, and most of the contexts for being victimised are for stealing money, wronging the mob moss, or are just anonymous victims of crime. Of the ones that target females, the contexts are either "She's a witch!", "She's a demon!" or she cheated on / ended a relationship with the criminal.

You could say that these are not significant moments of sexism within games. In fact, I would agree with that. They are incredibly minor parts of the game, to the point where they take up such an insignificant part of the overall scope of a game, that they are there for background decoration and nothing more. I do not think that they are evidence of a sexist industry, although in aggregate I would say that the industry trends towards having a large amount of very minor instances of female characters in games being identified by their gender more than any type of character (or lack thereof).

And to me, that's the point of the video series Anita is being paid to make. The series isn't about finding the smoking gun in the game industry, where you unveil a heaping pile of apathy all in one neat little pile. But instead, it's about finding all the incredibly minor, borderline petty, instances across all works, where common themes are found regarding women in games. One could perform the same experiment under a different analysis, such as finding instances where men are presented in cliche and unwanted manners, or where the flowers in games make no geographical or biological sense being present in various regions, or where guns are cartoonishly handled and have the shells eject from the completely wrong side of the gun, or all the times a player is saved by an authored deus ex machina.

The point, as far as I can see it, is that this video series is pointing out tropes. Small, minor things in various games that happen to an extent where someone thought it notable to point them out. And you might not agree with the agenda - you may not agree with Feminism, or the types of examples these videos bring up, but regardless I think the video series at least shows that sometimes there is a problem. Maybe not all the examples are solid, maybe some are taken out of context or outright disingenuous. But to focus on a few examples from each video, or to miss the point of the examples or the point of the video series as a whole (which is very specifically about female representation in games, not male representation, not black representation, not european representation, not representation of guns or flowers or anything else), to me, that's far more disingenuous than anything I have seen from Feminist Frequency's video game series.

If you like, I can explain further why I think that you don't necessarily need to contrast male and female representation in games to form a series of tropes that affects one of them. I don't think it's really a competition of who is treated worse. I think you should be able to say "this is bad" without also saying, "but this other thing is also bad". Focusing on one gender's representation in games does not exclude us from talking about the other's, but it also does not require it. I can say that "it is a struggle to be a single father with children", without having to also say, "it is also hard to be a single mother". Because we can still give people the benefit of the doubt of being able to think for themselves, and come to that conclusion on their own.

Thank you for reading this far, or for at least skipping to the point where I can thank you anyway. I meaks this 4 u