Category Archives: Gaming Community

Gaming Lag

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I’ve held off posting on E3 for the last couple of days because I’ve been struggling with my opinion, with what I feel I “should” say as a feminist, and fatigue with the whole debate on gender in games and the gaming community. Between Anita Sarkeesian, the trolls bombarding her twitter with insulting and idiotic comments, stories and snark about “Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon,” and my own personal dislike of pushing political agendae on other people, I’m getting really, really sick of this whole thing.

And that actually is starting to worry me, so I’m forcing myself to articulate an opinion so that I don’t become complacent and apathetic out of sheer ideological exhaustion.

Here’s the recap for those of you unfamiliar with what’s going on. In the midst of hundreds of discussions about female gamers, women in the tech industry, sexism in the media, and the need for more women’s voices, Microsoft launched its Xbox One at E3 with absolutely no new games with female protagonists. Sony, despite claiming it wanted to market to women, launched the PS4 with no new games with female protagonists. There are new games – Mirror’s Edge 2 – starring women, but they’re not exclusive launch titles (it will be available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC). Nintendo, however, announced that Princess Peach would be a playable character in the new Super Mario World 3D on the Wii U. Interestingly, this appears to have been a rather last minute change.

Okay, so we have two next-gen console releases, neither with a major exclusive title featuring a female protagonist, and one already-released console that shoe-horned Peach into the game at the last minute. And all this comes in the midst of one of the largest cultural pushes from women in the industry demanding equality and increased representation as players, characters, and professionals. So what does this tell us?

I don’t think that this means that the evil Men in charge of the industry are completely oblivious to the yelling and screaming going on outside their windows. I don’t think it means that they’re unaware of the female demographic that makes up 47% of their consumer base. I think what it tells us is that the gaming industry is suffering from lag.

Most major AAA titles take about five years to make. Five years. Some can get churned out in two or three if they’re sequels reusing the same engine. But next-gen consoles aren’t going to reuse the same engine, in all likelihood, so these games are probably already three (or more) years in the making, looking forward to release in another one to two years. They haven’t been “listening” to the demand because they’ve already been in production.

I do not believe this is an excuse for not including any women as protagonists, nor do I think that it means that women should “shut up” (to quote one of the anti-Sarkeesian tweets) about women being featured in games. I especially don’t think it excuses the absence of female presenters or developers on the E3 stage, or the recognition that women do make up 47% of gamers. But I do think that it explains what we’re seeing in terms of titles.

And that brings me to another point. Many of the anti-Sarkeesianites suggest that this is because women only want to play “cleaning and cooking” games. While I’m sure that such comments are intended as exemplars of masculine wit, I would like to point out that 47% of games are not cooking and cleaning games, which leads me to the induction that women are playing shooters, RPGs, and other “manly” games, some of which – like Tomb Raider or Remember Me – feature female leads, or at least include gender choice, as in BioWare and Bethesda games.

But many anti-Sarkeesianites make a point that, while based in a sexist code, is valid, and much more reasonably articulated by the Digital Changeling. The point is that many of the lead characters we see in games are physically strong – soldiers, assassins, etc. – and rely on brute strength to mele and/or shoot their way through obstacles. While there are games that do feature women in these positions – Halo Reach, Gears of War 3 – for the most part, these are roles filled in “real life” by men. Biologically speaking, men are physically stronger than women for the most part. Women can be and are capable and physically strong, and since games are fantasies anyway, there’s no reason why women shouldn’t be included in these positions.

However, I think that the anti-Sarkeesianites are missing (possibly deliberately) the point that videogame protagonists don’t have to be realistically physically strong. Especially if they’re in a puzzle-solving context, have a gun, wield magic, or… well… exist in a fictional world where they can do whatever they want. But, as the Digital Changeling suggests, strength isn’t the point. Women in real life may be at a physiological disadvantage in terms of brute strength (in extreme contexts… most women are indeed strong enough for daily activities), but that doesn’t make them any less capable or resilient, or intelligent. Female characters don’t have to be hulking brutes like Marcus Fenix or Master Chief.

In fact, males don’t either, so I’m not really sure what the point of saying that women aren’t “strong” has to do with being a protagonist. Mario and Luigi are not “strong,” although I’d bet anything Samus Aran is. Alan Wake doesn’t appear to be a physically superior specimen, and I’d put my money on Lara Croft being able to take him out in the combat department. But there’s no need for female characters to be any more or less strong than most of the male characters we see – and no reason they can’t be.

But really, what we (as feminists and gamers) are asking for isn’t women who defy the laws of biology and physics (although their breasts often do both). What we’re asking for is that protagonists who are complex, interesting, and capable sometimes be female. We’re asking that the industry not auto-default to male protagonists just because “that’s how it’s always been” with the lame excuse that “women won’t sell,” because both Tomb Raider and Metroid say otherwise, as does the popularity of the femShep option in Mass Effect. We’re asking that the women in games be just as complex as the men – not that they receive special privilege, but that they simply be treated as humans, just like the men.

I do think that this is inevitable, that as more and more women enter the industry as gamers, as professionals, as critics and journalists, that we will see more female protagonists, better female NPCs, and more complex narratives that don’t revolve around (almost exclusively) female victims. But I also think that it will cease to be inevitable if we don’t keep pushing, even though we’re tired of hearing about it, even though I’m sure Sarkeesian is getting as tired of saying it as I am (and she says it a lot more often), and even though it feels like a dead horse that we’re still beating.

The point is that E3 shows us that the battle isn’t over, that we’re still fighting not for supremacy, but for basic equality… and, really, not just for women. For gamers of color, for transpersons, for all marginalized populations. So what we want to see, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, is for you to look at the world around you and replicate it in your games. Include women with brains. Include all cultures and races and sexual orientations and people with disabilities. Make games more real by making them reflect reality.

Your Complaint Has Been Heard

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So recently Microsoft announced that XBL complaints about behavior – specifically, bullying, bigotry, excessive cursing, and other unsports-person-like conduct – will be addressed, and that reporters will be notified when their complaints have been dealt with. I imagine it will go something like this: “Dear X, We at Microsoft care about your online community play experience. Thank you for reporting INCIDENT. We are currently investigating the source of the problem. Thank you for playing on XBox Live!”

And then radio silence.

I expect that is how this will work not because I disbelieve that there are people at Microsoft who believe in the importance of a safe and tolerant online community. I’m sure there are many. I expect that there will simply be too many complaints, and that many of them will be “retributive” – you beat me, so I’m going to report you. I think that the team that does start working on these issues is going to burn out very quickly. I think they will be horrified by some of the things that get reported, and frustrated at the banality of other things. I think that what we’re more likely to see is people reporting the really bad and the really stupid – the things that someone takes offense at because they are themselves intolerant (someone who doesn’t want to play with a kid, a girl, or an African American; someone who doesn’t want to see an atheist gamertag, or a religious gamertag; someone who doesn’t want to play with someone who speaks a different language than they do…).

This was one of the topics that came up in conjunction with the harassment aimed at Anita Sarkeesian for her Kickstarter (and continues to be aimed at her every time she turns around). And you can bet that if someone on XBL finds out her gamertag, they’ll report her for breathing, too. And that’s where I’m dubious about the good intentions here. A reporting system offers just as many opportunities for abuse as a lack of a reporting system.

But if we get right down to it, there’s also the question of draconian policing that makes me nervous, as well. While I agree that people should be able to feel safe in their gaming community, I also think that some people are overly sensitive about what that means. While I’m sure many of them may be justified in feeling the way they do, there comes a point where their feelings inhibit what most of the community feels is reasonable behavior. (And I’m aware that a community in general can be bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and that doesn’t justify authorizing such behavior. However, there are cases in which a genuine and respectful discussion of a topic that is sensitive for one member could cause that person upset… and without condemning them for it, it would not be fair to curtail a reasonable discussion based on their feelings. I also think that most people recognize such situations and behave appropriately, but the cases that become public are those in which people aren’t behaving rationally.)

Basically, I’m almost more concerned about the abuse of such a system than I am pleased that Microsoft has decided to implement the system. After all, Sarkeesian’s last video was flagged as inappropriate and pulled down off YouTube (and then quickly restored) precisely because of such a system. And I can also imagine a case in which parents who allow their 9-year-old to play Call of Duty then feel as though they have the right to demand that other players not use profanity because of their child – even though the game is rated Mature (17+).

Perhaps Microsoft will be able to implement a more nuanced system than I’m giving them credit for, but what I really want to see is self-polilcing. I want to see more instances in which one player says to another “Cut it out,” and that’s what happens. I want to see more instances in which no one feels like they have to or should say anything because the community has made the decision to act like reasonable people. Call me jaded, but I’m not holding my breath about those, either.

TLF: Digital Damsels in Distress

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After the debacle the other day in which the second installment in Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women in Videogames was taken down off YouTube due to flagrant abuse of the flagging system, I was quite pleased to note that YouTube got it back up quickly (which of course confirms the erroneous nature of the flagging… *sigh*).

Now that YouTube has restored Damsels in Distress Part 2, I do actually have something to say about it over at The Learned Fangirl. There are other voices out there, as well, including Destructoid, which labels the video “about as inoffensive as that last one,” which, while not a ringing endorsement, isn’t condemnatory, either. Jason Thibeault refers to it as “nonexistent” over on FreeThoughtBlogs, and then spends most of his post talking about its removal from YouTube (edit: To be fair to Jason, this term was used as a reference to continuous comments he received from trolls back when the Kickstarter got going that Sarkeesian was going to “take the money and run,” and isn’t a slur against the series in any way). In a slightly more positive (rather than apathetically neutral) spin, Andrew on GeekNative says that “it’s an intelligent commentary on the role of women in video games…from a feminist point of view,” and then pretty much leaves it at that.

And it should be telling that these are about the only things I found that weren’t simply reposts of the video saying “Here it is!” So while this post was really only going to link to my thoughts and those of others, when I tried to find others who had something interesting to say, I discovered that I had more to say about that.

So why aren’t we paying more attention to what Sarkeesian has to say than we are to the fact that her video was “down” for several hours? Why is it being termed “inoffensive” and “nonexistent”? And why are these the most negative terms appearing in media when there are clearly hordes of slathering trolls flagging the video to get it pulled?

Honestly, I find the lack of conversation almost more disappointing than I would if the trolls were setting fire to the internet, because if there are trolls bearing torches, then that means that the villagers have revolted, and in this context, that can’t be a bad thing. I want people to have things to say – positive, negative, whatever. What I don’t want to see is apathy, because apathy leads us to complacency, and that’s exactly where we were and why Sarkeesian started this whole thing.

So I’m going to do my little bloggy part to start a flame war, set fire to a few pairs of misogynist pants, and hope to set off a few sparks that will breed something bigger.

Why I’m Not Reviewing The Most Recent TvW…

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Well, I was going to post a review on Anita Sarkeesian’s most recent Tropes vs. Women in Videogames in a followup to the last one, but I guess it’s going to have to wait. Possibly up to ten days.

Why? Because YouTube took it down. Sarkeesian posted on Facebook:

Looks like my harassers may have abused YouTube’s flag function to get my new Tropes vs Women video removed. Not the first time it’s happened. We are looking into the issue now and will update you all as soon as we know the full story and can get the video restored.

Official YouTube protocol requires some paperwork and up to 10 days’ wait to get a video restored that was flagged repeatedly (even if fraudulently), so it may end up taking that long before this one comes back, although hopefully the YouTube powers-that-be are aware that this was likely and are willing to move a little more quickly.

So why was it flagged? Possibly legitimately, as Sarkeesian’s original post stated that some of the content might be upsetting due to violence against women. It might be that the gaming companies whose products were featured wanted it removed for rights infringement (I don’t know which companies that might be). Or it might be what everyone seems to be assuming – that anti-Sarkeesianites have struck again with malicious intent.

Honestly, I hope it’s legitimate, not because I don’t want to see the video, but because at least then I can have some hope for human decency. But I highly doubt it. I’m sure it is what most people believe it to be, and that disgusts me. It disgusts me that women are still diminished, marginalized, and even attacked for speaking their minds.

Yes, in other places women have it far worse – institutionalized abuse and assault, unwanted circumcision and genital mutilation, cultural inferiority, and so on. And I think all those things should stop, too. But the fact that we are in a country that claims equality and still tacitly permits the silencing, ostracizing, and marginalizing of women should not be treated lightly (see Tudor Jones’s recent comments on women in finance or Fox news’s on-air treatment of women for non-gaming examples).

Permitting the smaller actions – like unfair flagging of Sarkeesian’s video – can produce a slippery slope: first flagging videos, then dismissing women’s voices from public forums, then excluding them from the workplace… As though all those things don’t already happen, to one degree or another. Refuse to allow them, and you (anyone) refuse to sanction the kind of actions that produce sexism and rape culture. Small steps, no matter how small, will eventually get us to where we need to be. Bigger steps move us faster, yes, but even the small ones move us forward.


Games with Real Guns

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Today a friend of mine linked on Facebook to this video, entitled “Is Buying Call of Duty a Moral Choice?” from the Idea Channel. I have to confess that initially I was surprised at this, not expecting this particular individual to be in the “videogames are bad” side of the debate. But I watched the video anyway.

And it actually made some very good points, and I found myself firmly nodding in agreement throughout. Not because Mike Rugnetta says that violent games cause violent behaviors, since he explicitly says the opposite: “Now am I saying that videogames are going to teach you to do something stupid and dangerous with firearms? No, I am not. And furthermore, that line of reason is infuriating.”

The point of the video is that some videogames are not only depicting firearms and having players shoot things/zombies/monsters/people, but some games are actually replicating real guns. But that isn’t really the problem, either.  The problem is that not only are they replicating real guns, but many of them are paying license fees to real gun manufacturers in order to accurately replicate not only the appearance, but also the functionality of actual weapons. And Rugnetta – who is himself a shooter player – takes issue with the fact that gamers are (knowingly or unknowingly) funding arms manufacturers.

First, it seems deeply and upsettingly hypocritical that the NRA is attacking the games industry as the source of violence when their supporting industry (gun makers) are in fact profiting off of certain parts of that industry. If there is any truth (and I’m dubious about that outside of the simulations built for the military for just that purpose) to the assertion that violent games are “training” for the killing of actual people, then using “real” guns instead of hypothetical fantasy or even just generic guns would exacerbate that problem. If not, the use of real weapons is still supporting the gun manufacturing industry, who do make the actual weapons that people do actually use to kill one another.

This isn’t to say that I’m anti-second amendment. I’m not. But I am against being able to make an informed decision about whether or not I need to be providing money to the people who make AK47s and rocket launchers. Other entertainment industries – films, tv, books – aren’t paying licensing fees to use guns (often because they’re using generic weapons or prop weapons or because they’re BOOKS), so why are games? In essence, while I don’t have an inherent problem with absolute verisimilitude, I do have an issue with games that would choose to fund the gun industry and not say so publicly (whether the developers’ or the publishers’ choice, I’m not sure) just for the sake of modeling a real gun instead of one they’ve invented themselves.

Second, there’s the idea that many FPS (first person shooter) players aren’t aware that they’re funding the arms industry. And maybe some of them think that’s great, some of them don’t care, but some of them might be upset by that (since gamers as a unit tend to politicize more on the left side of center), and they don’t realize that their money isn’t just going to Treyarch, but to the makers of actual firearms. So what I see as the most important point is that developers should be more transparent about the fact that they’re paying money to the gun industry (if they are).

As a consumer and a player of FPS games, I will likely now make the choice to buy games that aren’t as realistic in order to avoid giving money to the gun industry (which I’m pretty sure makes enough money all by itself without having to license digital replicas of its products). Not because I think such games are inherently more dangerous (because I don’t), but because I want to be able to make the choice not to support an industry that I do think makes the world more dangerous, because ultimately, its bullets are real.

TLF: PAX Bostonia

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At the end of March, I got lucky enough to have a presentation at the New England Modern Language Association annual conference in Boston at the exact same time as PAX East 2013. PAX – Penny Arcade eXpo – was started years ago by the guys that run Penny Arcade, and has since expanded to include PAX East (Boston instead of Seattle), PAX Dev (for developers), and PAX Aus (Australia). In other words, it’s enormously popular. The passes sell out every year.

So when I noticed that I was going to be in Boston anyway, you can bet your britches that I was going to go. And this was my experience. It was, in a word, awesome. Sure, there were a couple of minor downs, but overall, PAX was full of ups, and gives me hope that with the right leaders in terms of attitude, the gaming community will join the rest of the Western civilized world in recognizing equality as something open to everyone, not just straight white men.

TLF: Violence, Virtual Space, and “Serious Games”

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Linking over to yesterday’s The Learned Fangirl post on “Violence, Virtual Space, and ‘Serious Games.’” It’s a more positive spin on my usual rants about why we shouldn’t blame games to talk a bit more about why games are a good thing. Coming off of PAX East (which was a blast), it’s a bit of a reminder about why gaming is both popular and healthy… and why as a form of entertainment media, it not only isn’t causing us active harm, but in fact has a great capacity to do good.

Think Like a Gamer

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I was talking to a game designer I know the other day, and he said something interesting about violence in gaming: “The reason that we shoot people in games is because it’s the ultimate one-ups-man-ship….Ending someone’s life is the ultimate definition of power.” He went on to talk about how it would be really interesting to have a game where you as the player were incapable of killing your opponents, not because of ethical or mechanical considerations, but because – for instance – you were playing a race of beings (like angels, say) that simply couldn’t be killed.

What would our games be like if we were to face such constraints? What would the ultimate expression of our power, our victory, be like in the situation where we became incapable of permanently removing the (living) impediment to achieving our goal?

Our discussion seems to indicate that such a game would become more about stealth, about puzzle-solving, and about “traps” than it would about defeating enemies. It would – in many ways – become like the non-lethal tactics in Dishonored, Deus Ex, or the Thief series. More about brains and skill than brawn and hair-trigger reflexes.

But, more importantly, our conversation revealed that gamers see games much differently than non-gamers. Non-gamers see the plot, the narrative, the characters, the “dressing,” to use this particular designer’s term. Gamers see through the “dressing” and play with the mechanics of the game. In that situation, the virtual “people” become like the little dots in Pac-Man, points to chew through in pursuit of leveling up or reaching an achievement goal. The game is about understanding the mechanics, the tactics, rather than character and narrative immersion.

This is not to say that narrative and “dressing” aren’t important. They are. There’s a reason that there are gamers who won’t play games with graphic cutscenes. Sure, some gamers ignore the graphic violence or even like watching it (after all, Quentin Tarantino’s movies are enormously popular), but others won’t. Nevertheless, there is still a difference between the way gamers play games and non-gamers perceive games. A non-gamer – like my mom, for instance – sees Bioshock as a game that asks us to decide whether we kill or don’t kill a little girl. Gamers see that theoretically ethical question as a mechanical choice – “Do I want this immediate reward now, or do I want to see what Tennenbaum means when she says she’ll ‘make it worth your while’?” – about resource management (one that ultimately rewards the player for making the “right” choice).

And there’s no faulting either side. I don’t understand a lot of what’s happening in ballet, for instance, because I don’t understand the level of technical skill it takes to execute certain moves that to me appear rather simple but could be incredibly difficult. On the other hand, I don’t try to tell ballet dancers what they should and should not do in their performances. And that’s what this whole debate on the validity of games comes down to.

As an outsider, a non-gamer, you don’t understand how the game is working on a gamer’s psychology. You only see the player shooting other “people” and assume that such a scene must be enabling or at least anesthetizing the player to violence. But the player does not perceive the game the same way you do. They see what Ian Bogost calls the “procedural rhetoric” of the game: the structure that underlies not only the gameplay, but even the narrative, leading the player along the trajectory that will culminate in “winning” the game.

And this is why it bothers me so much that people who aren’t gamers are trying to legislate gaming. Why I find it disheartening that people who have never played a game are getting louder voices than those who play or build those games. Why I really hope that the people who will study the influence of gaming as a science – psychologists, etc. – will be (or at least will include on their teams) gamers. Because they understand how gamers think, and understanding how gamers think is vital to understanding how they are being influenced by the games they play.

Damsel in Distress

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I’m talking about me, not Peach, and my distress is the kind that will end with me punching my way through the prison wall and navigating my way out through a maze of guards all by myself, thanks. But seriously, this is about Anita Sarkeesian’s project, Tropes Vs. Women in Videogames. Given how much space I’ve devoted to it here, the fact that I’ve blogged about how I’m getting kind of sick of the project, and the (finally!) release of the first video in the series just a few days ago, I don’t think any of my readers are going to be surprised that I’m going to post about it. The first video – Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games: Damsel in Distress: Part I – looks at the history of the trope in games from the 1970s forward, with Part II promising to deal with contemporary games. Like VGW’s Jen Bosier, I have “some mixed reactions about it.”

As the video opens, Sarkeesian does remind us that we can be both critical and enjoyably engaged – something that a lot of detractors of criticism tend to forget. And this is very important to remember. I can like playing a game (or watching a movie or reading a book) even though I recognize the things about it that bother me from an ideological and/or a methodological standpoint. Criticism does not equal (at least not always) inherent dislike.

Okay, so the purple female fox was switched to Starfox, but while it may be true that Crystal’s outfit change was completely unnecessary, I think there was probably more to the change than just wanting to eliminate her as a hero. For instance, using a known and popular hero (Starfox) probably made the game more marketable, as it already had an audience. While I do agree with Sarkeesian that Crystal’s transformation into a literally “foxy” damsel in distress was both problematic and unnecessary, I don’t think that the choice to turn the game into a Starfox sequel was not necessarily the worst choice they could have made.

It is totally valid to point out that Nintendo seems to have, as Bosier notes, a trend of passing over or changing female-hero games in favor of male-hero ones, and she says that “the cause/effect of this would make for a great discussion. Unfortunately, this is abandoned to instead discuss the history of kidnapped females and how they worked their way into video games.” And here I have to agree with Bosier.

Perhaps it’s just me, but if we’re watching to hear about games, do we really need to hear the entire history of the phrase “damsel in distress”? Also, if we do, why did we skip the entire genre of chivalric romance, which, oh, invented the trope in its present form? But that’s just my academic side having completely unnecessary fits for the sake of largely irrelevant historical accuracy. But seriously, the whole “damsel in distress” segment should probably be its own video, rather than a part of a videogame critique.

Overall, though, I think this series – which is hard to judge from Part I of a segment alone – might ultimately prove to be a good thing, even though I think that it’s overly simplistic in its approach. There were a lot of things I liked about it, and I think that she’s trying to take on a subject that’s enormously complex and reduce it to something she can put into small, 30-minute-or-less segments. And that’s no easy task.

I liked her point that Peach (from Super Mario Brothers) was once briefly playable, but that she hasn’t been since (outside of some of the multiplayer versions). This is a valid point – as is her remark that female characters tend to occupy the object-position to the male subject-position within a lot of games. Yes, this is true, but everybody – up to and including my proverbial uncle – knows these games exploit this trope to the level of the ridiculous: as Bosier says, “I don’t know a single gamer who would point to Peach or Zelda as accurate or compelling video game portrayals of women.”

But – again – I want to hear about what we can do now, how games are creating a problematic ideology now, rather than what happened in 1970s and 1980s arcade games (like Donkey Kong’s cutscenes of DK carrying the blonde up the ladders). While Peach is the proverbial “damsel-ball” between Mario and Bowser, and many games have picked up on and perpetuated the formula through the 1990s, I want to see how this trope has been changed – or, more frighteningly – if it hasn’t. And, as Bosier says, Sarkeesian doesn’t mention the positives: “Also, as an aside, for as much time as she spends discussing the damsels of the 80s, I noticed she didn’t mention that it was the same time period that also birthed Samus Aran.”

When we get down to it, what I really want to hear about is not a catalogue of games that use a trope that predates their creation by several thousand years. Yes, the damsel-in-distress trope is enormously problematic and rests on a cultural tradition of misogyny. But videogames are not to blame for its existence. They are also not the only medium to employ and perpetuate it – films, television, books, and so on are also horrible culprits. Yes, she acknowledges this, and I agree with Sarkeesian that appeal to tradition is no reason to perpetuate the trope, but I’m not sure I find as much value in the historical analysis that she’s doing here as I would be in seeing her critique current games that are still exploiting the damsel-in-distress trope (what she’s doing in Part II).

Now don’t get me wrong – I think there’s a lot of inherent value to doing a historical reading of this trope in games from the 1970s-1990s. In fact, the academic in me thinks that it would be a great way to examine the way in which our social practices with relation to the job-market and career-choices in the real world are being reflected by the frequency and type of damsel-trope exploitation in videogames. In other words, do these games accurately reflect the ideological conceptions of gender of their decades, or do they attempt to cling to outdated tropes… and why?

Sarkeesian does begin to approach the question of contemporary games, as when she discusses Nintendo’s 2007 Ocarina of Time – which, I have to say, has one of the more sexist commercials I’ve seen in a while… I mean, really? “Wilst thou get the girl? Or wilst thou play like one?” Not exactly a shining example of gender equality. Sarkeesian says that the use of the trope actively disempowers women in the games in which they are damsels in distress… and that it creates a dichotomy in which male characters can only be empowered when women are disempowered. She also says that male characters are allowed to escape their imprisonment – while women are expected to passively wait for rescue (usually by a male). And she’s absolutely right that this strips them, in the world of these games, of agency and even personality in most cases.

(Can I just say, in a side note, that Dragon’s Lair is awful? And Princess Daphne… I… I’m just not going to say anything, but did you see her [lack of] outfit?!)

Sarkeesian’s closing becomes a little too political, I think, for the kind of project she’s working on. Yes, she’s absolutely right that games are a reflection of our social practices, and that they can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Absolutely. And she’s also right that developers can choose to have female heroes in their games. But I think that just making women protagonists isn’t the answer to the “problem” of the damsel-in-distress trope. The “problem” is in large part that it isn’t as simple as just making the hero female. For instance, Tomb Raider as a series doesn’t do a lot to remove the labels of either misogyny or objectification from videogames, and it has a female protagonist.

Like Bosier, I was left with “the burning question in my mind was simply, ‘What’s the point?’” Okay, yes, this trope exists, it’s a problem, but what do you want me to do with that? It’s the same question I ask my students when they present me with a catalogue of “look at this thing in this novel!” So what? What’s the actionable part of your thesis? Why is this relevant? Why should I care? As Bosier says, “My concern is that I really, really wanted this video to start a serious conversation. Not only start a conversation, but advance the conversation. This video merely states facts that are already known and with her constant referencing Peach and Zelda, it feels like we’re spinning our wheels.”

I want to make it clear that I’m supportive – despite my being rather tired of the constant invoking of Sarkeesian like some sort of martyr to the feminist-online-cause (and I am still sick of it) – of her work. I didn’t support the Kickstarter financially, but I do support her project spiritually, even if I’m not 100% on board with her methods or conclusions. As she says in the opening of her video, we can criticize things and still like them. But because it’s Sarkeesian, there are any number of people who have crawled back out of the woodwork to once again raise a trollish-level stink, as Gameranx notes in its piece from yesterday, “Comments Aren’t Disabled.” Because clearly that was so effective last time.

Ultimately, I think that this series will do more good than harm. In fact, I don’t think that beyond prodding the proverbial hornet’s nest of internet trolls, it will do much harm at all. While I would like it to be more critical, more engaged with the nuances of the industry, and more reflective of its purpose behind a vehicle for complaint, I think it’s far better existing than it would have been never to have been made. And I applaud Sarkeesian for her desire to make it. I’d like to see someone more familiar with the industry, more academic (or at least, more trained in formal critical practices), add to the conversation, but I’m glad Sarkeesian is making them. I also hope that other people – men, women, cisgendered folks – will join in the conversation, because as much as I support Sarkeesian’s project, I don’t want her to speak for all feminist, female, or non-standard-white-male gamers. I want her voice to be heard, yes, but I don’t want it to be my voice. So while I’m going to work on my small chirping from this corner of the academic feminist-gamer side of the world, I hope other people aren’t deterred either by the content of Sarkeesian’s work or the backlash that she’s receiving. I hope she inspires others to speak up and make videos and posts of their own, or to hunt down places (like The Border House or Stay Classy) where others are already doing so.

The Academic Game(r)

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This week, Gamasutra ran a blog post about gaming and academia by Rami Ismail. In it, Ismail talks about an encounter he had with an academic at IndieCade East:

Last week, I gave a talk at the first ever New York City IndieCade East. Completely unaware of the expertise level of the audience, I decided to try a talk I’ve wanted to give for a while. Besides at venues filled with peers, I often speak at art- or culture-related events with audiences that have little pre-existing knowledge of the medium. This specific talk (which has gone through an absurd amount of iterations before I felt comfortable giving any version of it) is an entry-level explanation of the ideas and core principles of player agency – without using the words player agency….

After the talk was over there was a short slot for questions – which one person happily did. This person grabbed the microphone and carefully cleared their throat. This was an academic that ‘couldn’t fail to notice my stance on education’ and pointed out that I might’ve missed a tremendous wealth of theoretical knowledge about my chosen profession. The question that followed this quite frankly eye-opening rant was: ‘Do you know what player agency is?’

Ismail says that “this rubbed me the wrong way,” because he had spent a lot of time trying to distill the term “player agency” for his audience and the academic in question had not recognized that clearly he understood the concept. While I would humbly suggest that this particular question could have been solved by Ismail beginning with the phrase, “Developers like to use the term ‘player agency,’ which is a really complex idea that I’m going to attempt to describe as we go,” that’s not really the point of his piece. (Although I’m a big fan of both using and explaining terms like “player agency.”)

The point is that there are two essential schools of thought, Ismail says, about education and game development. One of them – held by Ismail – is that you don’t need formal education to design games. The other – obviously held by the academic – is that education is essential. I’m going to say that educationis vital, but that the means of acquiring that education can be either academic or practical. Ismail gained his education practically – as he says, by creating games and struggling in the industry:

I learned how to make videogames by tinkering around with game creation since I was six years old. Somehow, I learned running a company by selling computers at an electronics store; by having a game design cloned and dealing with the supportive yet rough media fallout after that; by realizing I had undersold a game during negotiations because the other party instantly agreed to my opening bid; by having our accountant mail us about a few missing forms.

This is a completely valid education, as far as I’m concerned. There’s absolutely no reason why Ismail’s education is any less valid than someone who has a degree in game design. However, I think that practically educated designers like Ismail are going to become less and less common, just as practically educated filmmakers, novelists, and playwrights are far less common than they used to be – now, they are all expected to have college degrees, where decades ago, they weren’t.So while a degree in game design might now be more rare than not, and while developers might in fact still sneer a bit at someone with such a degree, within ten or twenty years, developers will be expected to hold them. (Side note – I’m not saying this is the way it should be, but that this is the way it almost certainly will be.)

But one thing about Ismail’s point doesn’t account for is that not all participants in the industry are developers, and that there is validity to academic training for those of us who aren’t creators or publishers or programmers. Those of us who are academic gamers – the theorists, the critics, the analysts. And that leads me to the flip side of Ismail’s argument – which is to say that academics shouldn’t be discounted from contributing to the evolution of the industry, either. Ismail focuses only on academics who are developers – those who make “serious games,” social games, and experimental games.

But just as theory and criticism have come to shape the way films and literature are made, so, too, will they influence and shape even triple-A game titles… and some of them already are. Bioware was founded by academics whose primary field was not gaming. Academia has a lot to offer the games industry, if the industry can stop thinking in dichotomous terms of “us” the developers who make the games and innovate, and “them” the academics who tell us that we’re uneducated. But the academics also need to stop acting with the sense that their extensive years of higher education somehow make them better than “uneducated” developers who have similar years of practical experience in the industry. In short, we need to learn from and with each other instead of each side assuming that the other doesn’t “understand” and is therefore inferior.

Ultimately, it comes down to the same core problem that the gaming community is finding in the gender divide: us versus them. Perhaps this is more of a tendency in the gaming community because games are by their nature competitive, and an us-versus-them mentality is a part of that competition. Perhaps it is because the industry has long been dominated by a homogeneous population of young, white males. Whatever the reason, though, the industry as a whole will benefit (as in genetics) from heterogeneity, and all sides need to learn to play nicely with one another.