{"id":904,"date":"2014-08-17T13:24:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T17:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/?p=904"},"modified":"2014-08-17T13:24:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T17:24:21","slug":"to-fix-or-not-to-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/2014\/08\/17\/to-fix-or-not-to-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"To Fix or Not To Fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, Gamespot ran a piece on how Dontnod, the developer who made Remember Me and is currently working on Life is Strange<\/em>, isn’t “trying to fix the industry” by featuring female leads<\/a>. This struck me as odd on a couple of levels.<\/p>\n

First, Dontnod is “trying to fix the industry” by having female leads, but not in a pushy kind of way, which is probably why they said what they did:<\/p>\n

“That’s not us trying to be different for the sake of being different,” creative director Jean-Maxime Moris told Joystiq <\/a>at Gamescom. “It’s not as if we’re trying to ‘fix the industry.'”<\/p>\n

What this says to me is that Dontnod is trying to make games that are good, games that are unique or “fresh” (to use one of the buzzwords), games that aren’t the same cookie-cutter white-male-shooter games that everyone else seems to think is required for success. What that means, really, is that they are<\/strong> trying to be different, but not “for the sake of being different” – the idea is to make an original game because that’s a good thing, not just to shock people or stick out like a sore thumb.<\/p>\n

I find it a little odd that people disparage the idea of being different “for the sake of being different” – that somehow wanting to make something original is not a legitimate goal in and of itself. But that is as it is. Certainly, if a company wants to be successful, they need to make a game that is fun, a game that is popular, but I’m not sure why Moris went out of his way to assure players that “being different” isn’t one of the goals.<\/p>\n

Second, art director Michel Koch explains the presence of female leads by saying that<\/p>\n

“We have women in the dev team–not that many because it’s still the video game industry and there are not that many women–but we have women working on the game,” Koch said. “And our writer, which is an American writer we’ve worked with before, he’s consulting with his nieces. He’s showing scripts to them, to read it and see if it feels genuine and fresh.”<\/p>\n

There are women on the team. (Admittedly, having women on a development team is a thing that is sadly rare, but here seems more like an apology than a reasonable statement – but that could be the way it’s framed and not what Koch intended at all.) Women are a part of the development process, and the game has female leads. Sadly, this is as unusual and innovative as the article frames it – but it shouldn’t be.<\/p>\n

But that aside, the headline – like the quote – also makes some basic assumptions about videogames and gamers that is still bothersome. It has become headline-worthy point when a developer makes not one, but two<\/strong> games in a row that feature female leads (that aren’t a series, like Tomb Raider<\/em>). My god. I applaud Dontnod for doing it, mind you, but I’d rather see the headline be about the game instead of about a developer defending the choice to make two games in a row featuring female leads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, Gamespot ran a piece on how Dontnod, the developer who made Remember Me and is currently working on Life is Strange, isn’t “trying to fix the industry” by featuring female leads. This struck me as odd on a … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9130,9134,104,9136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-criticism","category-gaming-community","category-gender","category-videogames"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6XN03-eA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}