Category: Video Games

No, sir, that's not made for me

tekanji

Over at New Game Plus, Lake Desire shares her feelings on the disconnect between what she, a woman, wants in a game and what male players think she wants:

Final Fantasy X-2 wasn’t my first disappointment in the series (particularly my first time in Spira), but it was the first time that I felt this game is for someone other than me. I didn’t even have a chance to get excited about a role-playing game with an all female party; I remembered just how “strong” a character Yuna was from the last game. When the screenshots and production art made the forums, and I saw pictures like this (a declaration of the game’s intended audience), I thought they were a joke. A Final Fantasy game about collecting outfits? Although many thought the upcoming game looked cheap and insulting, others seemed to be missing the point. I recall reading articles and forum posts written by male gamers who were excited that more games like FFX-2 and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball were coming out with things women like, shopping and clothes, so girls can have fun gaming, too. Like they thought the game was for women.

[From Alienating Audiences by Lake Desire]

It’s a whole lot easier to think that having a female character, or dressing up feminine stereotypes in new, more sexist ways are appealing to women than actually taking the time to, you know, think of your female audience as people who would like to be represented equally. Women make up almost half of the gaming audience and yet, despite our growing outrage, we still have to put up with games that objectify and demean us, and people who just don’t get it.

Bonding Through Video Games

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PBS has a cool website up called The Video Game Revolution with a lot of fun and informative sections on video games. I especially like Henry Jenkins’ (any relation to Leeroy? Ha. Ha.) article Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked.

He debunks a lot myths, anything from video games leading to violence among youths to the claim that girls don’t play video games. I have to say that I was vaguely disappointed with a few of his explanations, such as the one that discusses the misconception that “scientific evidence” supports a causal link between video games and aggression. He did a good job of picking the flaws in these studies, but didn’t mention that tentative evidence from long-term studies on video game playing are not finding even a correlational link between video games and raised aggression.

His #7 myth, that of video games and isolation, has been addressed on this blog a few times when talking about online communities. I’d just like to highlight this part:

Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick.

Before I played video games with my friends, I would spend countless nights playing with my mom. I was a bit young to be using the controller, so I would tell her where to go and what to do and it turned into a great bonding experience for us. I often think that it’s one of the reasons we’re so close today. And, I have to say, as much as I like being the one behind the controller, I also love “watching” story-oriented games with my friends as well. Although these days we usually switch who has control every so often, unless it’s a survival horror, where I tend to hole up in one spot and let the enemies come to me. That really annoys people. Can’t imagine why, ke ke ke.

Via New Game Plus.

A Feminist take on Beyond Good and Evil

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I tip my hat to Sour Duck on her analysis of Beyond Good and Evil (the video game). I liked it so much that it made me jealous that I didn’t come up with it first.

Meet Jade

The hero and main character—the character that you closely identify with and the only character you’re able to control from beginning to end—is Jade, a young woman who lives in a lighthouse orphanage.

The narrative is constructed from Jade’s point of view, and generally we learn new information when she does (although the game leaves clues that the savvy player can pick up on). Jade’s parents are deceased, and she has only her Uncle Pey’j as family. However, while other characters are important, they are subordinate to the character of Jade.

This is quite a switch for action/adventure games, where central characters are usually male.

You’re not The Woman, but a woman

Jade isn’t surrounded by male characters, either. The Governor of Hillys is a woman (what’s more, a black woman), as is the Museum Director, who pays Jade for the photographs she takes of new life forms. At least one character of a underground rebel cell is female (a cat woman) as well.

Although the proportion of female to male characters is still weighted towards the male, female characters are placed in positions of status and power and, more importantly, risk.

With all the crappy female characters out there, Jade has always made me proud and SD articulates many of the reasons why I felt that way. If you’re at all interested in video games, it’s worth giving this article a read.

Because sexual harassment is hilarious

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I’m not sure what bothers me more about 行殺! Spirits (“Line-Kill Spirits”): the game itself or the response to it.

Screenshot from Line-Kill SpiritsLet’s start with the game itself. It seems like a typical cutesy all-girl fighting game. The art style employed is one that is generally associated with pre-adolescence – it tends to be used in children’s manga and lolita porn. I’d put the girls at middle school at the latest, personally. Still, that sort of thing isn’t unusual; I’ve known plenty of fighting games that employ those marketing tactics.

What is unusual, however, is an added game element: picture taking. Not just any kind of picture taking, however, panty shot pictures. As anyone who has watched anime knows, there is a seemingly cultural fixation in Japan on women’s underwear. In particular, men and boys lifting up unwilling women’s skirts to look at their underwear. I can’t speak for how common it is in real life (not being a Japanese woman, nor living in Japan), but I do know that harassment is a part of women’s daily life there. One example of this is the women-only trains that companies began to run because of the unnervingly high instance of sexual assault (groping, mostly, but I’ve heard stories about men using women’s asses for masturbation aids).

To add fuel to the fire, it is not creepy old men taking these pictures (which would be bad enough), but the other girls themselves doing it. Showing women participating in their own objectification (ala. Levy’s “raunch culture”, girly kissing culture, etc) only serves to normalize the behaviour. After all, if the girls are willing to do it then it must be okay, right? While I wouldn’t think that anyone would confuse LKS with reality, having the girls do it to each other rather than a man doing it to a girl undoubtedly helps the players to rationalize the game as “harmless fun”.

And, indeed, that is exactly what many of the commenters did on the Inverted Castle thread. I counted six overt “that’s funny” kinds of comments – four instances of “hilarious”, one pertinent “lol”, and one “amusing” – and five comments that the gameplay was “interesting”, “innovative”, or something along those lines. The ones condemning it, even in part, were an overall minority. Two people called it “weird”, two people called it “disgusting”, four people used “disturbing” (two in direct context to the girls’ ages, rather than the mechanic itself), but only three people addressed women in particular. Out of 61 comments only 4 addressed the obvious gender issues of the panty shot mechanic, one of which was posted by the same person. For a game that is blatant objectification and sexual harassment, that is just sad.

To get an idea of some of the worse comments out there, I’d like to post a few of my… ah… “favourites”.

dj kor said:

dj kor like panties and japanese girls.

NoShit Boy said:

If that’s not innovative, then I ask, what is?

Although, I happened to like the comeback posted to that one: “The Nintendo Revolution’s remote control, of course.” (commenter’s handle was Revolutionary Remote)

MasterBaytor said:

Where can I get me one of these? Seriously, this is why Japan is one of the 3 most creative countries on Earth, according to a recent study (the other two are Sweden and Finland).

Of course, the three parties speaking up didn’t exactly give the game a ringing condemnation for its treatment of women.

Thoughtless said [emphasis mine]:

I don’t know if it’s supposed to represent little girls as sexually appealing; then it’s pretty sick, but obviously the panty shot was meant as humiliation. This is an interestingly insightful; if odd insight into real cat fighting tactics. I don’t know if my distaste for the game is my American prudishness(I didn’t watch the clip) or a genuine effort to avoid prurient material of most disgusting nature. Some perverts like little girls in panties sexually, but most of just yell at them to put closthes[sic] on or they’ll catch their death going outside. If this game gets girls playing video games then I say it’s good if it’s designed for perverts it is illeagal[sic] in the USA(and should be).

He starts out really well with the humiliation angle; one of the best tools for control is shame. Humiliating a woman (or girl) by exerting ownership to her body (in this case, the unalienable right to take pictures of her private areas) is one of the oldest tricks in the book. I think this game displays this tactic quite obviously, but in a way that reinforces its ideology. Certainly, the amount of people who didn’t think to comment on its use of women speaks volumes about how invisible this issue is, even in our so-called “equal” Western societies.

I can understand Thoughtless running with the first part of his initial sentence (the paedophilia angle), as that is what was most commonly focused on by the detractors of the game, but his insight into the humiliation tactics had really had me rooting for him to be a guy who gets it. His second sentence, however, made me weep with frustration. Real. Cat fighting. Tactics. Why, thank you, Thoughtless, for being one of the billion privileged men who is not only uncritical of the term “cat fighting”, but has no problem reinforcing the idea that women do things (like getting into fights) solely for men’s amusement.

And on what planet would a game of women taking panty shots of other women get girls playing video games??? It’s not erotic. It’s not cute. It’s not interesting. And it’s nothing new. Newsflash for you gamer guys, since so many of you seem to be blind to this small fact: a great many games have some implication of girl-on-girl action and we women (especially the ones who love other women) are not amused.

Moving onto Ms. I’m-not-a-feminist-but, Noneofyourbusniess said:

This is so childish and this game so turns to perveted[sic] males(as always). No i am no feminist but you get rather tired of seeing games that always is about less cloth, more boob bouncing etc. I mean really. I at least dont wanna buy a game cause i can see boobies or something. There is adult games for that(not that i like them either).

Not the deepest reading into it, but it doesn’t need to be. The message: objectification of women isn’t cool.

She adds:

A second thought on that game. Why would a girl take a picture of a girls pantises?[sic]

The same reason two straight girls would kiss: fulfillment of male fantasy. And there’s no doubt that LKS’ purpose is just that.

The third and final commenter, ditchwitch, took issue to NOYB’s feminist bashing:

Feminist isn’t a dirty word btw, and you shouldn’t feel the need to qualify your statements. Just say what you think. Anyway I am of 2 minds on the game, on the one hand it’s pretty amusing, at the same time I object to media which consistently links sex and violence together, and it’s hard to argue that this game doesn’t.

It does make me a bit sad that she saw any kind of amusement in this game. This kind of treatment of women, even in a video game (especially in a video game), just doesn’t strike me as funny in the least. But at least she sees the link, which is more than I can say for 98% of the other commenters.

I guess, in the end, I have to say that the overwhelming response to this game is worse than the game itself. In a way, the game is just a response to the demand. While it undoubtedly perpetuates the stereotypes it utilizes, it only exists because of the invisibility of the harm caused by this kind of “entertainment”. Until we – the gamers, the bloggers and readers, and our societies at large – educate ourselves on these kinds of issues and unabashedly speak out against it, games like these will continue to be made and distributed. And, while this kind of thing might be on the extreme end, make no mistake that the kind of attitude it holds towards women can be found in a majority of mainstream games both in Japan and the West.

Via New Game Plus.

Extreme 3some Gaming!

tekanji
Alienware Ad from Game Politics
Alienware Ad from Game Politics

So, I was surfing around this hot new feminist gaming blog, New Game Plus, which lead me to a link to Game Politics but before I actually could read any of the content, I was confronted by the above ad.

Two obviously female lips, pressed up against each other, with the male-fantasy threesome buzzword “times two”. Excellent. The 3 in “3D gaming” doesn’t look so innocuous to me, either, given the context and the fact that gaming marketing is still largely aimed at adolescent males who are seen as being slaves to their overwhelming hormones.

This ad truly disugsts me, although it sadly doesn’t surprise me. My mother bought one of Alienware’s gaming PCs, for crying out loud! This shit demeans her, it demeans me, and it demeans women and men everywhere – gamers or not.

To All Girl-loving Gamer Boys:

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It’s time to end all the ignorance about women gamers and our motives. So listen up:

I am a female. I am a gamer. I am not a gamer because I am boy-hunting. I am not a gamer for you.

I am not a gamer for you.

I happen to be a gamer because I like gaming. I am actually interested in this kind of stuff, and I’m actually good at some of it. Someday I want to be a video game designer, and my job choice’s aim is not to find a husband.

Where the hell do people get off? Where the hell do people get off?!

Just because the video gaming industry is stereotyped as a male-industry doesn’t mean that there aren’t women who are interested as well. And not in the males. Just because it is “techy” or “nerdy” doesn’t mean that it will be shunned be the entire female gender.

I like gaming, I like strategy, I like roleplay. It is the way I am… [a]nd I resent your idea that I couldn’t actually be interested in gaming. Because I am.

[From The Rise of the Woman-Nerd by pearl_gemstone]

Remember that the next time you want to give your opinion on women gamers. Remember this, as well: We are not gamers (or geeks) because we want to date you. We are not gamers because “that’s hawt”. We are gamers because we like to game.

GQ's "Men" of the Year

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GQ's Men of the Year Covers
One of the guys?

In my first installment of my Girls & Game Ads series, I commented on a disturbing phenomenon in the portrayal of men versus women:

Another thing evident in this particular line-up is something I’ve noticed as another feature of video game advertising: images of women tend to have the large boobs as a focus (either by showing lots of skin or by having skin-tight costumes), while images of men tend to focus on the face, or show a heavily armoured (or clothed) man. While there are obviously exceptions to this (armoured/small breasted women, scantily-clothed men, etc), I posit that this dichotomy is one that is typical in advertisements for the gaming industry.

Enter GQ and its “Man of the Year” winners. With AOL News’ tagline Aniston Joins the Guys one would expect the cover to show a confident, strong Aniston with a focus on her head/face. But GQ, unfortunately, has chosen to take the same approach to the portrayal of men and women as I described above.

Aniston is the typical female (hero or villain) found in video game ads. Of the three covers, her face is the smallest. Her body shape is the most prominent display – showing clearly that it fits into the “normal” female shape (ie. skinny with round breasts). 50 Cent is the shot that is typical for knights, paladins, and dwarves: the primary focus is on his muscles and outfit, but his face is still large enough to convey distinct individuality. Vaughn shows the typical hero portrayal with the entire focus being on his face.

The reasoning behind these three candidates being chosen given in the AOL article furthers the “masculine” versus “feminine” dichotomy. All emphasis is mine.

Aniston first:

Aniston, 36, earned the 2005 title, Healy says, because she “exhibited a lot of poise, unbelievable amount of grace and good humor this year.”

Okay, now 50 Cent:

That the 30-year-old rapper has the year’s top-selling album, a best-selling autobiography and a new video game is just the start of his appeal. Now, he is crossing over into movies with the just-opened Get Rich or Die Tryin’. “He’s one of those public figures we’re endlessly fascinated by.”

And, finally, Vaughn:

With the summer’s movie hit, Wedding Crashers, Vaughn, 35, nailed the honor. “Once again, he was hilarious, charming and smart.” Editors do recognize that there are more well-known stars, “but there’s not one who better represents who our (readers) think is cool than Vince,” recently photographed enjoying a weekend in Chicago with Aniston.

Aniston is defined by the words “poise”, “grace”, and “good humor”. What kind of image does that call up in your mind, ’cause I know the first thing I thought was that they felt she was some sort of prim princess who takes everything with a smile. I don’t know anything about who Aniston may or may not be, but it seems like an insult for a woman who often plays strong minded, ambitious, and talented women in films to be described solely by words that belong in a decorum class rather than a discussion of the defining admirable talents/traits of a person.

The justification for 50 Cent’s inclusion seemed rather weak to me, but the selling points seemed to be what he had accomplished. He is defined by his “good” works (or what GQ deems is good, I suppose…) – the things he has done actively, and continues to do actively. To call him someone who posesses “poise” or “grace” (and perhaps even “good humor”, depending on context) would be an insult, or at least not be enough to qualfiy him for being a “man” of the year. Yet in Aniston it makes her the paragon of womanly virtue. Or something.

Finally, there’s Vaughn. He gets the highest praise of them all, with the adjectives “hilarious”, “charming”, and (most importantly) “smart”. No one calls Aniston (The Woman) smart, though her insistence to not be defined by the men in her life seem to imply that she is able to think for herself, or 50 Cent (The Black Man), which would be appropriate praise for someone who seems to have some entrepreneurial skills. No, Vaughn has “earned” the honour by playing a jerk who takes advantage of the wrong girl in Wedding Crashers. I could accept his performance being called “hilarious” and “charming” (because a character who’s a sexual predator seems to be the funniest thing ever to so many of the guys I know *sigh*), but smart? Come on. But maybe I’m being too harsh; Vaughn may have actually done something intelligent in his personal life to earn it.

Via feministing.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

tekanji

Maybe I’m just ornery because my surgery got postponed (my doc wanted to do some more tests because my initial bleeding time test came back abnormal), but I was just reading a post on a blog I recently found (Athena’s Legacy). The post, written by Saralah, was entitled Haters Suck and was a defense against some pretty nasty ad hominem attacks that were sent her way.

I was with her all the way, feeling her pain and outrage, until I read this:

I am not a raging feminist. I do not scream about equality in the industry at the top of my lungs without pause, as some people seem to believe. Occasionally, I will post something on the topic here on the blog, and if those posts seem to get more attention, it’s because they usually draw the most comments.

Suddenly, I don’t feel that her blog belongs on our list anymore. No, it’s not because Saralah doesn’t want to be identified as a feminist; our very own Sarah also doesn’t identify as a feminist. I may not agree with it, but I recognize that it’s up to an individual to choose hir own labels. The reason I feel this way because she has chosen to degrade feminism as part of her defensive tactics. She may as well used the word “feminazi” for all the imagery “raging feminist” solicits, and portraying women who unapologetically fight for equality as “scream[ing]… at the top of [our] lungs without pause” is just a long winded way of accusing us of being overly emotional, “hysterical” women.

I am both shocked and disappointed that a blog that I chose to link specifically because of its laudable treatment of women’s issues in gaming would buy into that “I’m not one of those oversensitive women’s studies types” BS in order to… what? Appear less offensive to her misogynist critics? To show that she’s somehow “better” than those of us who chose to embrace the politically incorrect label?

It just makes me so angry that feminists are automatically the target of not only the misogynistic nutbags, but also of people like her who embrace our basic goals but have bought into the vitriol of the patriarchy and therefore feel the need to attack our movement anytime they are attacked by anti-feminist critics. Am I the only one who doesn’t see the earth logic in that? Attacking feminists because of… anti-feminist assholes. We’re not responsible for the continuation of the hate group that we are fighting against, so stop attacking us when they attack you!

I’m going to leave the link up for the moment and give myself some time to contemplate its removal. I had wanted to leave a note on her blog to see what her response would be, but it’s blogger only and I don’t have (or want) an account. I hope that ya’ll will weigh in with your opinions. When it comes down to it, I expect to butt heads with people who believe that women are lesser than men, but I’m just so tired of my group being constantly attacked by people who are, when all labels are stripped away, fundamentally in support of our cause. Like I said in the subject line: with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Update: I would, first and foremost, like to apologize to Saralah for my unnecessarily hurtful tone. While I stand by the general thrust of my post, I shouldn’t have let my anger (both at the subject and my own personal issues) be directed at her. I cannot in good faith sit here and de-link her for having an adverse reaction to people saying horrible things on her blog, especially when I have fallen victim to the same tactics in the past. I in no way condone what was said, but I understand that she’s human, as am I, and we don’t always say exactly what we mean (see her comment for clarification on her position).That being said, I think both issues (non-feminist women’s rights advocates attacking feminism as a defense, and feminists using negative stereotypes of feminism as a defense) are worthy of discussion and are relevant/related to each other.

Bad, tekanji, bad!

tekanji

Okay, I haven’t delivered on my promised third part of my Girls and Game Ads series. I will, I swear. See, now you have a promise and a swear! But it isn’t entirely the fault of my laziness, really, I’ve been busy too! No, not just playing Sims 2 (I just got University, I blame EA!), but switching around my flights to Miami and scheduling my tubal ligation. Yeah, I said tubal ligation. Excuse me while I squee like a fangirl. That’s right, folks, on September 7 I will say goodbye to my fertility and hello to reproductive freedom. More on that after the procedure.

I’m also attending a gaming conference in Seattle on the 10th. I originally wasn’t able to go ’cause I was supposed to be in Miami, but then the hurricane hit and my dad’s house got trashed by a tree so I postponed until the 12. So I’ll be traveling so much my head hurts, but it’ll be totally worth it. I’ll try to write on that too, but I might not get to it with all the running around I’ll be doing directly after.

Oh and, as you may see, I’ve added a “personal” section to the blog. It’s part of my effort to both fan my narcissism and remove the “part-time hypocrite” stamp from my forehead (you know what I’m talking about, Sour Duck) and put some more personal into my political. I’ve also added a “series” category to keep a bit better track of any post series we do here. Oh, and done some link cleanup. Some were broken, some I never read, and some I decided were too outside the spirit of my blog to keep. I’m somewhat sorry to see Little Miss Attila go, but half the time I popped over to see what was up in her neck of the woods I would be greeted by language I found offensive. I value other perspectives, but I can’t support things like calling people other people’s “bitches”.

PS. I know this blog’s design is hideous and broken for IE users. Please poke me to update it, ’cause I really should but I’m a bad, bad, person because my laziness keeps getting in the way.