Remember Me

So, Capcom has a new game coming out, I guess? So their Facebook advertisement tells me.
It's called Remember Me. No, not that one, but this one. I don't see any punctuation in the title, so I guess it's a command.

It would be easier to remember her if something other than her butt was the focus of the ad, though. The funny (sad) thing is that there's actually a lot of other things happening there that would probably be of interest to me as a person who plays games. First of all, she's got some kind of wacky robot arm thing going on... I'm a sucker for cyborgs, so maybe, Capcom, you could have made that the focus?

There are a number of other pictures on their page that show a gritty dystopian landscape with a very Bladerunner-esque vibe, and heavily armored guards straight out of Batman Beyond. Why not go with some of that stuff?

But, no, instead you go with exactly the same pose that Emily Asher-Perrin was complaining about over at Tor.com

I'm not actually surprised or anything. It's just... not only is the sexism of this kind of advertising stupid and pandering... it's boring. There's nothing interesting happening in that advert, despite the fact that the rest of the images they have suggest some kind of action oriented gameplay. You don't need to "sex it up" to sell it.

Advertising posers...

Via Wandering Librarians, there's an article up on tor.com about a particular pose that crops up a lot in advertising involving women characters. I'd go further and say that the particular "looking-over-the-shoulder-butt-shot" is pretty common in animation and comics, too. Hell, it's become one of the "go-to" poses for women and girls in comics, even comics that are, in large part, marketed as "comics for girls"
The thing that I don't understand is the endless defenses of these sorts of ridiculous advertising and drawings. One commenter posts "Seriously though, I do see your point, and yes, those films are marketed towards men, and yes, it is effective."
But, really, is it?
The original article pointed out that this was the sort of advertising done for Elektra, but Elektra was hardly a success. Advertising is certainly important, and there's no doubt that it can sway people toward or away from a film, but it's really absurd to suggest that just slapping a sexually suggestive picture as your advertising is somehow an effective marketing campaign.
That kind of defense is actually tremendously anti-man, too. What does it say about men if you honestly believe that that is the best way to advertise to men? Am I really supposed to believe that the advertising for Avengers wouldn't be as effective if they had Black Widow, you know, doing something--anything almost--other than showing off her ass? It's an action movie about a bunch of comic book heroes having adventures and fights and explosions and such. There's just no way that you need to pretend the movie is about Black Widow's derriere in order for that movie to be a blockbuster.
I don't remember Iron Man having a bunch of posters of women's cleavage or posteriors to be successful. I'm just tired of seeing other men argue that we, as men, are so easily duped. That we're so shallow that all soemone needs to do is slap some T&A on a movie poster or a book cover or whatever, and we'll fall all over it. I just don't believe that's true. I think that men, like women, are actually interested in being entertained, and that having a bunch of sexually suggestive posters advertising a movie is secondary to whether the movie is actually good. If it's a fun, exciting movie, it's going to generally do well, even if the posters are covered in women's asses. If it's a shit movie, having a bunch of butts on the poster won't save it. So let's stop pretending that it's somehow a winning advertising strategy, right?
For your reading enjoyment, there are a number of blogs that discuss, debate, deconstruct, and otherwise [insert "d" word] the issue of really, really bad understanding of women's anatomy. Escher Girls "Striking a Pose" by Jim Chines (and the follow-up "Posing Like a Man" is really good, too). "This Needs to Stop and Let Me Tell You Why" by Ils.

Shooting zombies in the face with a side order of racism and sexism, please.

A couple of months ago a friend of mine picked me up a copy of Left 4 Dead for my birthday. Given my love of video games, and the fact that I loathe the undead, it seemed like a perfect match. As far as the game itself goes, I think it's pretty solid. It's a lot of fun most of the time, despite a few bugs and the controversy around the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.

For those unfamiliar with the game:
Left 4 Dead is presented as being sort of a cinematic experience. You play a campaign in 5 acts. The AI controlling enemy behavior and item drops is called the Director. The game takes cues from film in the way that it alerts players to changing events--when a mob of zombies is about to come running onto the scene you get specific "zombie mob" cue music. When there are boss zombies around, they have special theme music alerting you to their presence. That kind of thing.

Every campaign follows the same four survivors trying to go from Point A to point B in an effort to escape to a safe zone free of zombie infection. They do so by traveling from safe-house to safe-house. The game does a very good job of creating atmosphere and mood--the safe-houses are filled with the scrawled graffiti of past survivors, and you sometimes come across the bodies of former survivors who died trying to escape, or houses/buildings where survivors attempted to make a stand but fled.

The game is generally pretty light on story, being mostly focused on presenting an engaging multiplayer experience, so we don't get a whole lot of backstory about the survivors, except through the things they say to each other, or the dialogue they have throughout the game. Zoey, Francis, Bill, and Louis.

I have a few groups of people that I usually end up playing with, and most of the time, if I limit myself to those people, it's fine. But if I start playing with random groups, I get treated to constant bickering about Zoey and Louis. See, Zoey is a woman, and Louis is a black man.

Louis gets pounced by a zombie? Oh, it's because he's black.
Louis wanders off alone? Yeah, he's black.
Louis makes a comment about finding weapons in another room? Of course he did... he's black.

A male player plays Zoey? "I always knew you were really a girl."
Zoey gets attacked by the smoker? "Even the zombies want to rape Zoey!" Yeah. For real.

It's at the point where I refuse to play on random servers because I just cannot stomach the level of hate and bigotry on display. The other day I was treated to ten minutes of listening to a back and forth about how gay various players were, before I finally quit. I've tried calling people on it, but, it doesn't seem to help.

Mostly this is just a rant, because I'm fed up with it. It's too bad, because if you get rid of all the complete assholes, L4D is a pretty fun co-op game. When you pull of a really well coordinated attack, or fight through a particularly tough episode as the survivors, it's a ton of fun. Unfortunately, you always risk the complete assholes.
*sigh*

Regarding Shadow of the Colossus...

Tycho, at Penny Arcade, had this to say:

The dread starts at the very beginning, simmering in your gut, and it never gets better ever - hour upon hour. You know immediately that you are engaged in something like evil, if not evil itself, but our appetites as players demand that we seek objectives and conquer them - and the game scourges us for this dereliction of conscience. The technology at work often obscured the game itself, but the emotional wavelength has resounded years after the fact. At this late hour, I can recall no camera foibles or performance valleys. All I can recall now is the black bargain, and concentric waves of anguish.

And that's exactly why people like me point to that game as an example of how games can become art.

Regional differences?

So, I picked up Wii Fit last week, and only got around to using it this week. I'm very surprised by it. I don't expect that it will get me in the best shape ever or anything like that, but I've heard from several people that it helped them stay on a routine and that it was good as a warm-up or as a supplement to working out, or for days when their regular workouts weren't going to cut it.

So, moment of truth: I'm in *terrible* shape. I haven't worked out regularly since... uh... how long ago did I have to take gym class, again? Seventh grade? I went through a phase in undergrad where I was working out semi-regularly, but mostly running and stair climbing. And the reality is that I'm getting older, my diet has been pretty consistantly crap for the last few years (for a variety of reasons), and I've gone from working a retail job where I was doing a lot of lifting boxes and climbing stairs and generally being active for 7 hours a day 5 days a week, to holding desk jobs and being a grad student who plays more video games than he should.

So, to say that I'm not in the best shape of my life is, in reality, laughable. I'm clearly in the worst shape I've ever been in. And I know that my weight is not indicative of my health, and I try to remind myself that it doesn't matter how big my waistline is, as long as I'm healthy. Of course, that would carry more weight (no pun intended, actually) if I was actually healthy. Which I think it's safe to say that I'm not.

Anyway, the point is that I picked up Wii Fit because I'm trying to make a commitment to getting healthier. I'm also giving up soda and chips (two of my MAJOR weaknesses, thank you very much. I've gone from multiple cans/bottles of soda a day to only one bottle of soda in the last week. Unless you count seltzer, which I don't, since it has no sugar or chemicals in it, and doesn't actually taste very good).

Anyway.
The first time you turn on Wii Fit, it goes through this whole process of figuring out how healthy you are and setting up goals and all that fun stuff. I selected my Mii character (the little character you make on the Wii that represents you). I put in my age and my height, and then I stepped on the magic board to, I assume, get weighed. Then it spit out my BMI.

Now, I fully recognize the problems with BMI, but as noted above, I already know I'm not healthy, so when it told me that I was seriously overweight, almost at obese, I was not actually surprised. What I was surprised by was when it took my little Mii guy and blew him up like a balloon to show me how fat I am!

He looked very unhappy at the process, by the way.

And then, when I started doing exercises, if I didn't do them very well, it would sort of give me this passive aggressive or outright mean remarks. Not like "Come on you lazy fuck, hold the pose!" But, on one of the balance exercises, I was having trouble keeping my center of gravity where it wanted me to. So, after the exercise, while it's showing me my results, it says something like "Wow, you had trouble with that one. Do you often find yourself tripping over your own feet?"

Ouch.

As it happens, I don't.

Anyway, I started thinking about it, and I realized that there was another game that exhibited this kind of blatantly hostile attitude towards players when you wouldn't expect it... Animal Crossing, back on the Gamecube. You'd move into this cute little town, filled with cute anthropomorphic creatures living in cute little houses. You dig up shells, you buy cute furniture for your house, and you're supposed write letters to the other townscreatures or do errands for them. The thing is, you go up to them to say "hi" and they greet you with things like "Oh my goodness! I was scared. I thought you were a monster, but then I realized you're just wearing an ugly outfit!" They're just plain mean to you, the whole time. They tell you you're funny looking, they tell you how much better other people are at writing letters, and they insult your intelligence and your taste in art/furniture/clothes/etc.

It's weird.
It's got me wondering if there's some weird translation thing happening, where they increase the a-hole quotient when they translate the game for American audiences. Or maybe I'm just interpretting the interactions differently than other people?

I don't know, but it's very curious to me.

In Animal Crossing it made me write them really nasty, mean letters. Which was funny, until the other people who were playing the same town with me started to complain because the animals would brag about what a great letter they got from me, and it would be a letter telling them that I was going to burn down their house.

Mirror's Edge...

via: Twenty Sided

My total interest in E3 this year was... well, not very high. I asked my friend who works in the industry about it, so I guess I had some interest, but his "Meh" was enough to make me think that I probably didn't miss much. I mean, really, it's not like that much happens at E3 anymore, anyway. Most of the things they show there have already been making buzz on the magical intertubes for months, at least, by the time E3 arrives.

But, Mirror's Edge almost makes me wish I'd paid more attention to E3 coverage. Almost.



Mirror's Edge sounds pretty interesting, and I've been enjoying the information coming out, for the most part. First person game that looks like it's going to break away from some of the more traditional aspects of the genre and put emphasis on exploration and movement instead of on weapon collection and shooting stuff? Interesting. Level design that requires the player to think vertically as well as horizontally when planning movement? I am intrigued. Sci-fi story that involves a dystopian future disguised beneath a highly polished finish? Fascinating. All those little touches like the head movement while you run, the ability to see your own feet in a first person game, the sounds of your breathing and grunts as you exert yourself, the shouldering open doors as you run into them? *insert synonym for "interesting"*

I could go on and on about how great some aspects look. Okay, maybe I will just a minute longer. I *love* the look of the city as presented in the videos. My impression is that the game takes place at some point in the relatively near future. There's something about the city design that gives the impression of "future" without going full-on Blade Runner or 5th Element on us. No flying cars or anything like that. Just a highly polished cityscape (beneath which, apparently, hides DYSTOPIA! OMGS!). I'm a total sucker for the whole "things are not as clean and orderly as they seem" sorts of sci-fi stories.

So, yeah, color me interested. There's a lot there to be intrigued by. Watching the character discard weapons as soon as a fight is over? What kind of first person game does that?! And I don't see any onscreen info about the character, either- no health bar, no inventory, etc.

I even mostly like the main character- Faith. The eye tattoo is a little... whatever. I mean, it just feels like, at this point, creating a character with a tattoo or mark over their eye is ridiculously cliche', but I can overlook that, I guess. Other than the mark on her eye, she seems like a decent design- she seems to be fairly appropriately dressed for what she's doing. She's looks athletic, and is wearing exactly the sort of outfit I see messengers running around in. So, kudos to that? She's doesn't really seem to be hypersexualized that I noticed, which is also good. The only area that bugs a little bit is that she's sort of the Asian martial arts master cliche'. Obviously, we'll know more about that as the release approaches- November, I think?

Anyway, check it out, let me know what you think. Between this, Spore, Rock Band, and Left For Dead, EA is really turning things around. When did EA start caring about making good games again?

Creating better games...

I'm still touch-and-go as far as internet is concerned, and so I've only been loosely following what's been happening on other sites lately. Last week, I think it was, I read a post about a "Fat Princess" game, and the first four or five comments about it, over at Feminist Gamers. Well, it looks like there was sort of the expected reaction- i.e. lots of trolling and ridiculous name-calling- from the HardCoreGamers.

And while I don't have a lot to say that hasn't been said a billion times about these sorts of reactions, I do have a lot to say about game design. Because, quite frankly, there's a lot of room for improvement. So, I'm thinking of a few posts about gameplay and games and how they could be made better. I'm sure that some of this will rehash what other people have already said, for which I apologize, I'm just sort of letting my thoughts flow, here.

So, a month or so back, I finally got around to completely finishing Mario Galaxy- I got all of the stars with both Mario and Luigi, and I got the final bonus star. And yes, that is me pulling a muscle patting myself on the back. And I have to say, I thought it was tons of fun (except the damn "blow all of this garbage up with bombs that have long fuses even though you've got very little time" minigame. That was, in fact, the opposite of fun. Which is to say, stupid. But I digress). But, after I beat it, I started talking to Jaclyn about it. The conversation about Fat Princess reminded me of my conversation with Jaclyn, in that our conversation turned from "the ways that sex/gender are portrayed in Mario" into "ways that Mario could be made better".

Now, I'm hardly the first person to tackle a Nintendo game on this front, but I have to say, Mario doesn't fare that well in the ways it represents women. There are only a few female characters in the game at all:

Obviously, there's the Princess, whom you're out to save from a kidnapping at the hands of, who else? Bowser. She's hardly the most empowerful of characters, as presented. I mean, despite the fact that she's ostensibly the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, her main job seems to be "getting kidnapped. By an angry turtle. Repeatedly." I did, however, notice something interesting at the end of Mario Galaxy. Without giving away the story *coughMarioSavesHercough*, there's a scene where Peach, Mario and Bowser are all in the same place. I don't think it's a coincidence that the scene ends with Peach making with the soft eyes at Bowser. I'm just saying, maybe she's less "kidnapped" and more "run off"... Just something to consider. Or not.

Besides Peach, there's also Rosalina, a sort of mysterious woman who is the caretaker of the lumas, and your guide to the galaxies. The good news is that you're never charged with rescuing her from a kidnapping. The bad news is that she spends the majority of the game asking you to go out and find her missing stars. Which makes her only marginally less helpless than the princess for about 90% of the game. So, not so awesome on that front. There is, however, a really great part where she's responsible for blowing through a dozen or so of Bowser's warships without much effort. Which is pretty cool. She also seems to grow to about twenty feet tall, which suggests that she'd kick some ass in a fight. So, she's kind of a mixed bag, but for the majority of the game? Yeah, not so awesome.

Except that part where she tears through Bowser's fleet. Damn. That part was sweeeeeet.



*ahem*
Anyway.
The only other specifically female characters are secondary. I think that one member of the Toad Brigade might be female, but they're really there for comedy relief, and I paid very little attention to any of them. There's the Queen Bee, but we only really see her a few times, and, like the princess, she ends up asking you for help because she's incapable of doing things on her own. Her entire design is meant to make her look like a giant helpless creature.

The Lumas don't appear to have a gender, and neither do many of the enemies in the games, since most of them are things like plants, angry stone blocks, and walking mushroom creatures, although I suspect that most people probably read them as male. Bowser definitely reads as male, as does Bowser Jr., but the Kamella Koopa is almost certainly female. Still, most of the things characters that have a sex read as male.

Now, I'm sure that none of that comes as a surprise to anyone familiar with the franchise. In a game like Mario, we've come to expect certain things. We expect that the game will focus on Mario. He'll spend a lot of time doing ridiculous and dangerous things involving jumping on floating platforms. He'll be responsible for completely screwing up the local economy by discovering and recovering thousands upon thousands of gold coins. He'll probably put on a costume that gives him some insane and drug-induced powers like flinging fireballs from his nose or turning into a flying raccoon or something. And, he'll probably end up rescuing the princess. Again.

The thing I want to talk about for a moment is how a game could be made that would give us the Mario action we all love, but also do a better job with representations of women. Because it's my belief that we could get a great Mario game that wouldn't have to rely so much on archaic representations of women as helpless victims in need of prince plumber to rescue them.

Now, with that in mind, I actually think that Mario Sunshine was on the right track. Instead of having Mario start off having to rescue the kidnapped princess, Mario was charged with cleaning up graffiti being spread by a lookalike. Of course, it quickly became a case of rescuing the princess, but it didn't need to be. Or consider Super Mario 3, where, for the first seven levels, Mario was charged with saving various kingdoms under siege, with the belief that the princess was safe at home. It wasn't until the end of world 7 that it turned out to be a trick by Bowser to ... kidnap the princess.

At this point, it'd be downright subversive to have a Mario game where the point wasn't to rescue a princess. I'd love to see a Mario game where Mario sets out to prevent some other disaster being perpetrated by Bowser that doesn't involve a princess in captivity. Given that plot is really an afterthought in most Mario games, it's not like it'd need to be something particularly deep. Bowser is a stereotypical mustache twirling Dan Backslide evil villain, so it could be that he's planning to destroy the Mushroom Kingdom with his weather dominator or something like that, and Mario is out to save the kingdom, instead of just Peach. I mean, Bowser is exactly the type of character to do dumb evil things just for the sake of doing dumb evil things, why not capitalize on that?

That alone would go a long way to fixing some of the issues, I think. Getting rid of the helpless women cliche would certainly be a good start. I think that the next step would be to include women as characters that have some strength and agency. This is tougher, because pretty much everyone in the Marioverse is completely inept except for Mario, and even that's questionable. But, it'd be nice to see that there were women doing something active to help the situation. Instead of the princess just mailing letters, it'd be nice to see her doing something. Even if it was just in cut-scenes, it'd be nice.

One of the best ways that Nintendo could give some agency to the princess would be by making her playable again. I don't even think it'd be necessary to go back to Mario 2 style play (although I think that'd be awesome), but I think it'd be swank as hell to beat the game and discover that Peach had become a playable character. Or, perhaps spread some secret bonus levels through the game where you play as various Mario characters like Peach, Toad, Luigi, and even Yoshi.

Since they love to spread bonus worlds throughout the games now, anyway, why not do bonus worlds where you're tasked with playing levels from the perspective of other characters, and build the levels with those characters in mind? It'd be a neat way to get some of the other characters some screentime, and diversify the gameplay a bit. Imagine that you're playing and you come to a bonus level where you have to play as Peach. Peach has her hover ability, and the gameplay is designed around that. You get to the end of the level, and it's a Switch Palace, Princess flips the switch and, like in Mario World, it turns the yellow outlines into yellow blocks, thus making it so that the Princess is playing an active role in helping Mario defeat Bowser.

There's no reason, at this point, why princess Peach has to stay a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of a character. Or why the Mario world couldn't include some new women. I'd love to see more villains like Kamella, and the supporting cast could use some women who aren't in peril. And I firmly believe that it could absolutely be done in a way that wouldn't require substantial changes to the gameplay we've come to love from the Mario franchise.

Would adding some sections where you play as other characters or bonus levels where you can choose characters ruin the game? Would having Mario set out to save someone other than Peach or even set out to do something that wasn't "rescue a princess" ruin the game? Would having more prominant female characters that aren't helpless victims destroy the franchise? Obviously, I don't think so. Nobody plays Mario for the deep stories or nuanced plots- I play because I like running around ridiculously impossible dreamscapes full of talking mushroom people and wacky, ridiculous costumes. There's no reason that I couldn't do that just as well without the Princess Being Kidnapped Again.

Oh, right... Grand Theft Auto is coming out...

Samhita has a post up about a GTA4 trailer. I haven't watched the trailer, because... well... I'm at work, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's a bit on the ol' NSFW side. Just a hunch.

Anyway, I read the post, and started reading the comments, and I can't help but be surprised by some of them. The Grand Theft Auto series of games are an easy target for analysis. They're full of racism and misogynistic violence, and they don't really do anything to hide that fact. In fact, the series has pretty much embraced that fact, and the creators go out of their way to try to outdo themselves with each game.

So, some of the defenses are really surprising to me. The suggestion that killing prostitutes "is never a story goal" or was "obscure" and that it's a game of "choices" bothers me. It's been a while since I played any of the GTA games, but it was *never* a secret that you could kill prostitutes. From at least GTA3, it's been pretty common knowledge that you could go out, pick up a prostitute to regain your health, and then kill her to get back the money you lost when you picked her up. It was never an obscure part of the game at all, even if it wasn't manditory. The bit about it being a choice is irrelevent. There are plenty of things that the game doesn't let you do- there are no children in any of the GTA games, so you won't find yourself a child-killer, for example. So, the choice to include prostitutes that one can then murder? It's about choice- the choice of Rockstar Games to include that element.

Similarly, a commenter suggests that the "in-game consequences are only negative" when you kill one of the prostitutes. That's not accurate. Killing NPCs in front of the police or other characters has a potentially negative consequence- it increases your wanted level, thus making the police try to arrest or kill you. But, killing anyone- prostitute or not- also has positive consequences in that you can steal any money or weapons that character is carrying. Further, killing someone in a place where you're not being watched or where there aren't any police doesn't increase your wanted level. And, for many players, increasing your wanted level isn't actually a negative consequence- I knew plenty of people who made a game out of getting the highest wanted level possible just to see how long they could last.

I really took umbridge to Scilian's comment, though:

Well Grand Theft Auto is simply a game based around violence and crime.

Violence, sex, and more violence.

Anyone can be killed at any time - so would the game be ok if women were removed completely from the game?

Or maybe if women couldnt be killed in the game?

But then the rife hypocrisy here at feministing rears its ugly head as usual - since the violence is about 99% towards males, wouldnt that reek of misandry?

Kind of funny, you know, this bullshit post coming from samhita when she constantly talks about racism against black males who tried to kill someone by kicking in their heads with steel toed boots, but then shooting people in a video game is suddenly misogynistic?

So real world violence is ok, but a game that has nothing to do with killing females is suddenly misogynistic?

Logic must have the day off today.

Where to start? First of all, it looked to me like Samhita's post was largely about the fact that "not only are the sex scenes very real looking, most of the women are killed shortly after forcibly performing sex acts." It's not just that the game is violent- it is. Yeah, you can kill pretty much everyone in GTA. But, there was a choice made about which characters you could pay for sex with and then murder, and, hint- it wasn't the characters with penises.

And Scilian's bringing up the Jena Six case is disturbing, as well. That case is ongoing, and I don't think that anyone has attempted to say that the fact that one of the white kids was attacked was good- only that the Jena Six aren't being treated fairly, and they're being punished in a way that exceeds their crime, while the white kids who also engaged in serious acts of violence are going free with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. It's not that violence in the 'real world' is okay.

And, really, this attitude that, because she's complained about the treatment of women she must necessarily also complain about the treatment of men or it's a double standard? It's bullshit. It's a game made by men targeting a male audience about a male character who spends a lot of time doing terrible things to other men. There are complaints to be raised there, for sure- but Samhita, a woman, is under no obligation to discuss them given that the game *also* features nasty treatment of women, too.

Hell, we can discuss the treatment of men all day- and I'd personally suggest that, if Scilian is really concerned with the treatment of men, a better tactic than accusing Samhita of hypocrisy would be to become an activist and write about or do something about it. Pissing on somebody else's movement isn't a good way to get your issue addressed. And, I find the criticism difficult to swallow given the width and breadth of male characters available absolutely dwarfs the portrayals of women in games.

More generally:

I'm certainly not in the habit of trying to tell people what is or is not a feminist attitude. If someone tells me that they're going to play GTA4, I'm not going to try to revoke their feminist street cred. Nor do I think that the GTA series of games are completely without merit. The sandbox style and the ability to create tremendous car crashes, do Hollywood action movie style car chases and jumps, etc? That stuff is all a lot of fun. I love that part. But, the sad fact is that they've consistently packaged a really fun free-roaming car driving game inside of a really nasty narrative. The game is full of racist, sexist, and heteronormative/homophobic bile. And for that? Yes, I do think it belongs in the hall of shame. Which is too bad, because, yeah, I've actually had a lot of fun outside of the story of the game, flying helicopters and racing bikes through the city.

Ultimately, I have no interest in playing GTA4, despite the consistently high marks that it's getting. I'm not interested in more racist drivel being passed off as story. I'm not interested in seeing what kind of stupid, ignorant stereotypes they'll embrace in the portrayal of an Eastern European character. I mean, we've been treated to an Italian who joins the mafia, and a black gang member, so we've got reason to believe that they'll treat him with respect and not fall back on stereotypes. Right? Right?

edited 3:38 PM -
Shamus has a great quote about the difficulty of rating a game like GTA4. He makes a comparison between rating the game and rating a restaurant: "How do you rate a restaurant that serves mouth-watering steaks for $5 and a punch in the face before the meal?"
Too right.
Anyway, his piece is about how some publication was granted an "exclusive review" of the game prior to release. Penny Arcade mentioned the same thing, and I'll go ahead and throw my gamer hat on to agree: Exclusive reviews raise some significant questions about, you know, objectivity. Color me "not a fan".

Video Game Review: "Dead Rising"

So, a few weeks ago, my roomie picked up Dead Rising for X-Box 360. I've been playing here and there when I get a chance, which, unfortunately, isn't very often. Anyway, I'm most of the way through the game, now, and I thought "why not do a review of a years old game, now?" So, that's what I'm doing.

Dead Rising isn't very complicated in terms of concept. It's basically Dawn of the Dead meets, say, Beyond Good and Evil. You're freelance photojournalist Frank West out looking for the scoop that's going to make your name. At the start of the game, you're flying into a small mid-west town via chopper, on some kind of tip or something you've got that something is going down. So far so good. As you're flying into town, you notice that the military appear to have cut off all the roads to the town. As you get closer, you quickly see why.

Zombies.

The chopper drops you off at a mall, and you spend the next 72 hours of game time (12 hours of game time = 1 hour of real time) fighting zombies and psychopaths, leading survivors to safety, photographing scoops, and trying to uncover the truth about the zombie outbreak.

From a strictly gameplay perspective, Dead Rising is more hit than miss. The mall setting is fully realized- it's easily as big as most major malls I've been to, including a large green space, and even an attached full sized grocery store. There are working escalators, generic mall music, and almost every store can be entered. And the stores have individual personalities, even if they've got similar wares. Add to that the fact that almost every object in the game world can be picked up, smashed, thrown, or somehow used to aid you in some way, and you've got a pretty awesome sand-box world. I still haven't got tired of exploring the mall's many corners.

Of course, none of that would matter if it weren't for the combat. I've said it before, but it bears repeating, zombies are generally a safe pick for gaming enemies. If you want to have a bad-guy that almost everybody can agree deserves to be taken out, the living dead are the way to go. They're one of the trinity of ultimate badguys. Zombies, robots, and nazis. These are pretty traditional zombies- they shamble around trying to grab you and take a bite out of you. They're well animated and designed. They stumble around aimlessly until they spot you. They groan and moan and generally act creepy. Many of them are still holding onto things like shopping carts. They occaisionally fall over, trip, or fall down stairs/escalators. The real appeal of the game is the ability to use everything in the environment as a weapon. Baseball bats, frying pans, swords, guns, a frozen fish, televisions, cash registers, golfballs, clothes hangers, a lawnmower, a car, propane tanks... if you can find it, you can probably smash a zombie with it.

I'm not gonna lie, it's very satisfying.

It's not all good, of course. The survivor AI is horrible most of the time. You'll be trying to lead survivors to safety and, instead of running *around* a group of shambling undead, the idiot survivors will plow into the middle of them and begin screaming for Frank to come back and help. Another problem for people who don't have HD televisions (me), is that the missions objectives are waaay to tiny to read. Most of the time, the mission becomes obvious when you show up, but it'd be nice to know what the heck you're in for before you show up to a machette wielding madman. And, lastly, the use of a radio for getting missions was particularly frustrating. Otis, the janitor, calls you to tell you when he spots survivors, but if you answer his call, you have to listen to his entire message, and you can't speed it up in any way. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that you literally can't do anything but walk while you're on the radio. You can't fight zombies or jump while on the radio. And the radio is loud when it's beeping. Which often puts you in a position of being annoyed by the radio or letting yourself get chomped by zombies. Oh, and if you get attacked while on the radio? Yeah, Otis calls back and starts the message over from the begining. Lovely.

Now, that's from a strictly gameplay perspective.

I have some concerns/issues to take with other aspects of game. Let's talk about -isms.

Let's see... the good news is that there are some things to be pleased with in the game. First of all, despite the fact that Frank is a white guy, it was refreshing to see that he was actually a pretty normal looking, if possibly slightly "ugly" guy. I'm so used to seeing ridiculously attractive characters in games that it was kind of awesome to see, in Frank, a guy who wasn't a paragon of beauty. he looks like he maybe had his nose broken before, and he dresses sort of frumpy, and he's kind of... well... a normal looking white dude. As always, I'd have rather had the option to choose from a few characters, rather than have the default be a white guy.

Frank's main ally in the game is Brad, a black federal agent in charge of locating and a scientist. Brad is an interesting character- he distrusts Frank at the begining of the game, but he provides good support and fights alongside you through a number of battles. I don't have any complaints about Brad, really. He was sort of a jerk at times, but it fit his stuffy DHS persona, and he avoided most of the really nasty racial stereotypes I've come to expect in games. *Spoiler* He was fully realized enough that when Carlito locks him in the room full of zombies, my roomie and I both sort of went "Oh... shit... no!" And kept hoping beyond hope "Well, maybe he's okay... I mean, we've survived more zombies than that... maybe he's okay..."

Yeah. Not so much.

I'm going to have to pay more attention as I walk around, but there are two areas that I'm feeling disappointed about. First of all, unless I'm mistaken, all of the survivors are white folks. Every single last one that I've noticed has been a white person. I could be wrong, and I'm going to go back through to make sure, but I'm pretty sure. Which just feels... weird. In a town of 53,000+, every single person is white? Except for the DHS agent, a janitor, and the Hispanic siblings from the fictional town of Santa Cabeza?

The area that I'm much clearer on is the weird gender issues in the game. It's very... weird. Now, the good news is that, as far as I could tell, the women in the game fight just as well as the men if you give them a weapon. There are a couple of women you have to pick up and carry to safety because they've been injured or are too scared to do anything, but for each of them, there's a corresponding male character in the same situation, so I felt like that was actually pretty even. And while it's hardly evidence to anything larger, the survivor I had the easiest time saving was one of the women who, once I gave her a gun, managed to keep clearing zombies off of me while I saved a guy, and the guy who should have been easiest to save because I found him wandering around with a shotbun blowing away dozens of zombies, ended up getting himself eaten.

But, while the game did a good job there, it does a less good job with the photography aspect with regards to women. You get bonus points for taking photographs that depict extreme situations- get a picture of a zombie being killed or killing someone and you get a bonus. Get a picture of a rescued couple embracing each other? Bonus. Get a picture of a zombie with a hanger stuck in it's head? Bonus. Get a picture of a female zombie's cleavage? Bonus.

Wait... what?

Yeah. That's right. Female zombies with cleavage get you an erotic photo bonus.
*barf*

Further, many of the female survivors will yield the same bonus if you photograph them. And, I've been told that one of the survivors will actually give you a special photosession in which you're supposed to privately photograph her.
*sigh*

Why?
This is one of those cases where, to paraphrase how Naomi put in our WAM! session, it seems like they felt like they had to put wank-material into an otherwise good game. It doesn't make sense, and it's actually pretty distracting to me. It doesn't fit with the rest of the game.

Another thing that I noticed that I haven't decided how to take is the ability to dress Frank in... er... a dress. When you go into various stores in the mall, you can try on different outfits and basically play dressup with Frank. Change his clothes, and you're treated to a short sequence of him modeling whatever outfit it is. Put on a snappy suit, and he'll sort of turn and check himself out in the mirror and tug on the cuffs a bit. Put on some sharp shoes and he'll extend a foot and check them out. Put on a dress... and he dances provocatively and runs his hands over his body in a stereotypical "stripper dance." Which... I don't know. It rubbed me the wrong way. Not that you can put him in a dress, but that doing so is immediately hypersexualized. It's just... weird. Maybe there are dresses that don't do that, and I just haven't found them yet? I don't know.

Overall, I really enjoy Dead Rising. I've been having a ton of fun with it when I get a chance to play. It's the sort of sandbox game that I really enjoy. If it weren't for the weird sexualization issue and the completely idiotic survivor AI, I'd actually say it was near perfect. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it pretty damned well. Oh, sure, I'd still have some complaints- some items do way less damage than they ought to, but... yeah.

Anybody else got strong feelings on Dead Rising?

Getting back to my roots...

I don't know how I missed Token Minorities before, but let me point you there, now. I originally stumbled upon the link via a guest post at Racialicious, and I went back today to read some of the archives, and got completely sucked in. Great, great anlysis of video games, there. Check it out.

WAM! session thoughts...

Ahhh. I'm back in lovely, windy, cold, wet Michigan.

I'm feeling a little more rested and recovered, and still extremely excited and invigorated by my experiences at WAM!. I just wanted to share a few of my favorite sessions and moments at the conference. It all seems like such a blur in a way. I might be experiencing an information overload, in fact. There was so much energy packed into three short days- between attending sessions and meeting all of these amazing feminists and listening to the killer key notes... it was a lot to take in.

Let me start off by reiterating just how completely awesome "Breaking the Frame" was. I get a little giddy just thinking about it. Emily Douglas was the session moderator, and introduced the other three members of the session. I knew that I was in for a treat when Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project started talking. I wish I could have recorded the session, because her words were like lightning- sharp and hot. She pointed out how far we, in the pro-choice movement, miss the mark when we focus almost exclusively on reproductive justice as abortion rights. The maintstream media has us convinced that The most important issue in reproductive rights and justice is the right to have an abortion. But, for many, many women that's just not the case. Current campaigns use the language of rights to talk about ending pregnancy, but those campaigns often fail to connect with the minds and realities of many young women and/or women of color.

And that's due, in part, to the framing we've allowed to happen. We've let the right convince us that the most important discussion is whether a woman has a right to end her pregnancy, but for a lot of women, the real questions are about having the ability to make all kinds of choices. Thorne-Thomsen talked about the concept of justice for women as being the economic, social, and political power to make healthy choices for themselves and their communities.

In other words, it's not just about having the choice to get an abortion should you desire one. It's about having access to preventative measures. It's about having access to sex-education and contraception. It's about having access to healthy food and medical care should you want to have a baby. It's about reproductive rights of all kinds and about the socio-economic and political barriers to making informed and healthy choices for yourselves.

The discussion about justice as intersectional versus rights as more individualistic was important as well. In the interest of actual justice, one has to dedicate time and energy towards the people who are most impacted by the issues. We have to work on engaging with and working with the women from all backgrounds to find out what kinds of issues they're actually dealing with, and to find out how their lives can be improved by working together on the issues that are most impacting their lives.

Cristina Page, the author of How the Pro-choice Movement Saved America, was a great compliment to Thorne-Thomsen. Where Thorne-Thomsen was focused a lot on how we, as feminists, need to work on embracing the diversity of experiences and concerns within women of color communities and younger women, Page discussed the anti-choice movement and some of the ways that we've let them control the discussion. One of her major focuses was debunking the myth about the concern for reducing abortion rates. The anti-choice movement's most vocal and political supporters often talk about there being a right to life, and being a movement concerned with reducing the number of abortions and wanting to protect the sanctity of life, but, as Page points out, they've consistantly taken steps that actually contribute to abortion rates.

It's no coincidence, she says, that abortion rates are lowest in places with strong pro-choice movements, but high in places with strong pro-life/anti-choice movements. The reality is that many of the most vocal supporters of the movement aren't pro-life, they're anti-women. This is one of the major reasons, Page claims, that so many politicians who claim to be "pro-life" do things like oppose comprehensive sex education, oppose funding to programs designed to provide support to children and working mothers, attempt to redefine contraception as abortion, etc. Anti-choice politicians routinely strip out the very tools that would otherwise contribute to women's abilities to raise children, making it harder to have and raise them.

The connection, of course, is that often times pro-choice advocates don't do enough to retarget the debate onto those issues. Often times, we're so focused on Roe v. Wade that we lose sight of the fact that, for example, a woman getting an abortion because she can't afford to raise a child isn't actually making a free choice- she's essentially being coerced. It's only when we've created an environment where women are truly able to make the choice to abort or carry the fetus without fear of social damnation or economic ruin that the choice is really free. If the choice is between aborting or losing your home, it's not much of a choice.

I thought a particularly awesome moment in the session came when it was pointed out that the so-called "pro-life" movement, which typically bills itself as the part of family values, is, in point of fact, opposed to traditional family values. The opposition to contraception, to enjoying sex, to abortion, to providing support for children... all of those things seem to run against many of our lived experiences... and yet, few of us call them out on this.

Amanda Marcotte, of Pandagon, was the final speaker, and her focus was on the strategy aspects of discussing reproductive justice. Her advice was not to be afraid of engaging critics- challanging the misinformation and lies that they spread are an important part of our work. It's important to be able to call bullshit when you see it. She also advocated moving away from overly academic language and discussions of reproductive justice in the abstract, and forcing anti-choicers to take the discussion to a real level. That is, to start talking about the women who are really effected by these issues and to talk to people in the ways that people really do communicate.

When the mainstream media ignores discussions about reproductive justice and the very real women who have experienced abortions in favor of the six second soundbite and the political message, it hurts the movement. It erases the lived experiences of women in favor of political talking heads- typically male.

The Q&A part of the session was equally mind blowing. There were so many great questions and comments made from women all around the room. I wish I had the names of the people asking, but, alas, I wasn't able to get them in time. There was a point made about how one of the ways that more academic feminists miss the boat in the discussion is by conflating anti-choice with religious. The commenter pointed out that there are strong women of color communities for whom faith is an important part of their pro-choice work and their identities as women of color and feminists, but, when we talk about the anti-choice right, we end up treating faith as something to be mocked or something that only our enemies have, and we end up silencing our allies because of this.

I'm still thinking about all of the great things that came out of the session. It really was a profoundly moving and inspiring session. It also set the bar really high for the rest of the conference. The speakers were so powerful and packed so much into such a short time, that, I have to admit, I couldn't help but be nervous about my own session. I don't know if I was lucky or not- Naomi and I presented our session in the final slot of the conference. We were the last presentation slot on the last day. Which, of course, meant that everyone who came had already attended, potentially, four other really amazing sessions.

No pressure.

Really, though, the session was amazing. I have to give serious thanks to Naomi- she put together a spectacular PowerPoint presentation for our session. I also want to give a huge shout-out to Latoya Peterson, who can be found over at Racialicious (and as their new editor! Huzzah!), too. She was practically a third presenter once the Q&A started. She had a lot of really great information to share, and, I'm not gonna lie, it made me go "Squee!" inside when she told everyone who she was.

Like I was saying, the session itself went really well, I think. I was originally worried that we wouldn't have enough to present or that we wouldn't have much of an audience, but both fears turned out to be completely unfounded. There were people from all kinds of gaming backgrounds- from a board gaming enthusiasts (Hello Anna! Again, very excited to have a contact for gaming!) to people who infrequently game, to a half dozen or so people who actively describe themselves as gamers. Naomi and I launched into our session, and it quickly became apparent that we weren't going to get through all of the information we had prepared, which was both sad and exciting. Sad, because a lot of work went into preparing the information and a lot of it was really good, but exciting because it just further illustrates how important the conversation is, and how much people are interested. In the end, we did almost an hour of Q&A, and only stopped because we'd run a half hour over our allotted time, and the conference was, you know... over!

We mentioned some sites in the presentation, and I just wanted to make sure to put up some of the links we talked about- for people who are interested, there are some really great feminist communities forming around gaming. One of my favorites and pretty much a daily read for me is Mighty Ponygirl's site, Feminist Gamers. There's also Andrea Rubenstein's blog Official Shrub.com, the online gaming magazine Cerise (which covers a variety of gaming types, from tabletop to video), and, of course, The Iris Network, which is an amazing project. There are tons of great links at all of those sites, too, and the community of feminist gamers is growing all the time. And, of course, please share any links in the comments section, too.

I'll have one more post on my experience at WAM! later, because not only were the sessions really great, but I had an opportunity to meet some really terrific and inspiring people, too.

Oh, right... I actually attended three other sessions, too- they were great, and I may still talk about them later, but I attended a session on Strategies for Making Change which focused on some of the ways that progressives can work with independent media and DIY culture as well as leverage more mainstream outlets to help get the message out and improve the lives of women and make sure that women's voices are silenced in the media. I attended a session called "Stereotypes and Typecasting in Reality Television", too. That one was a great look at the ways that pop culture influences and impacts our perceptions of women in society, and how the narratives that are being created on shows like The Swan or Beauty and the Geek play into and reinforce harmful stereotypes about women. Also a great session. I can talk about them more later, if people are interested, but, for now, it's back to work with me.

*Good* video games news...

I realize that most of the writing I do about video games is to complain about the sexism or racism contained in a game, or to talk about the problems within gaming culture, and that there are times when people coming here must think "and this guy likes games?"

So, I want to thank Mighty Ponygirl for writing this post about libraries in my home state providing access to video games. It's a brief article, but very interesting. Some of the local libraries have started keeping video games as a part of their collections, and have even begun hosting competitions for games like Guitar Hero.

The same article appears in the Houston Chronicle, but allows comments. Which, as you might imagine, are less than enthusiastic. Of course, there's the manditory "what about people who go to the library for peace and quiet?" comment. I have to wonder when the last time someone who makes a comment like that was actually at a library. Many libraries have: computer and internet access, televisions with movie viewing, children's play areas, music listening stations, etc. None of those things have stopped the library from also having plenty of space for people who are looking for peace and quiet. Many libraries have specific rooms set up to allow for groups to meet or for allowing people to view videos or listen to music.

My favorite comment is probably the third one down:

And the degradation of society continues. Is the library system here actually dumb enough to think that by renting video games that the kids will actually maybe check out a book? No...all they are assisting in is the expanded breeding of zombies with no social or intellectual skills.

Ah, yes, the good ol' "Video games will rot your brain!" argument. That never gets old. First of all, is anyone else tired of hearing about "the degradation of society"? Because, really, I'm not seeing it. We hit bumps and snags, but you know what, I think, in the scheme of things, society gets better over time. At what point in time do these people think we were better off? The 80s? The 50s? The 1850s? When were so much more cultured and morally virtuous? We're by no means perfect, and we've still got a long way to go, but, really... we were better off when people of color and women were treated like property, most people in our nation didn't have indoor plumbing, and the average life expectancy was less than sixty years?

Oh, right, when people talk about how society is crumbling, they usually mean either "there's something new that I don't like, and it scares me" or "my moral values are being questioned and opposed, and I don't like it." My mistake.

But, seriously, what does this person think that the library is full of, right now? Nothing but Great Works By Important Dead People? Becuase, as MP points out, there are plenty of, shall we say, socially and intellectually bankrupt books in a library. I used to check out Christopher Pike books all the time when I was young. If Tales From the Crypt and Saved By the Bell got together and created paperback spawnlings, Christopher Pike's books would be the result.

Which is to say: they're total pulp.

Delicious, delicious pulp, but pulp none-the-less.

The points that writer was getting to are a pretty common, though. There's this idea of The Library that's currently at war with what libraries are becoming. It used to be that people thought of The Library as some kind of massive brick or stone structure full of Important Information. Like Ye Olde Hall of Knowledge.

I think that's why we have the stereotype of the librarian as a mean old woman with glasses who hisses at us to be quiet all the time, and why we imagine rows upon rows of old, dusty books on stacks up to the ceiling.


The reality is that the role of libraries has been changing for years. Libraries themselves are changing. They're not just those massive intimidating stone slabs, anymore- they're becoming more and more modern, all the time. Many put as much emphasis on technology and art as they do literature. Libraries are an archive, yes, but they're not just a text archive. They're also a social institution.



As society has changed, so has the function of a library. One of the greatest things about a library is the invaluable service that it provides a society. Libraries not only collect and archive the products of a society, but they provide access to information and services and to the people who would otherwise be unable to share in them.

There's a social benefit in providing access to things like computers and film and, yes, video games. Even if video games were a completely worthless pursuit (which they're not)... so what? I actually think that, yes, the mere fact of getting the kid into the library to play the game has the potential to get the kid interested in books. Especially if, as MP suggests, the staff are using the opportunity to cross-promote related books, like displaying music related books around are in the area where you're hosting a Rock Band competition.

I think that there's still a lot of discussion to happen about how, exactly, we see the role of the library- particularly in the information age, when it's starting to seem like everything is available online and in digital form. But I think that the concept of the library as the Hallowed Hall of Written Text and Knowledge is long over. If someone is completely offended by the idea of the library as community space, I suspect that they're not visiting enough libraries.

In other, related, news:

I mailed my graduate application today. Let the nervousness of Waiting to Hear Back begin.

Headline News: Video Games Blamed Again. In Other News: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead

h/t Twenty Sided

I'd say I'm shocked... but, well, this kind of story is pretty common, now. Not the disappearance- although, that, too, isn't really shocking to me, either- but the fact that video games are being blamed.

The story: A former marine who was seriously wounded in a bomb explosion, and who witnessed his best friend be decapitated, disappeared last week, after he rode off on his motorcycle following a gaming session of Call of Duty. Apparently, the man had been hallucinating and having flashbacks, following his return to the States.

Honestly, I'm surprised by how softly games are blamed in the article. I'd have expected the headline to read "Video Game Traumatizes Soldier, Tears Family Apart" or something like that. As it stands, the headline and the story aren't completely inaccurate- it's true that the game may have sparked the disappearance, in that the game triggered what sounds pretty clearly like post traumatic stress disorder.

But it also seems pretty clear that the guy was having some serious problems way before he played Call of Duty. If you're hallucinating and having flashbacks, you're probably not in a good place to begin with, and while Call of Duty may have prompted an episode, it could have just as easily been a Rambo commercial that did it. Or a car backfiring. Or, hell, the smell of dinner cooking.

That's the thing about war stress- the things that can trigger flashbacks are limitless. Call of Duty didn't screw this guy up- being nearly killed in a bomb explosion that literally took his friend's head off did. Spending 13 weeks in the hospital recovering did. Being forced to spend extended periods of time in life-or-death situations, shooting at people and being shot at did. And all of this when he was 21 years old.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine (via this article.), about 20% of U.S. troops who face combat situations will return with serious symptoms of depression, anxiety, or PTSD. If 20% are coming back with serious symptoms, imagine how many are coming back with moderate or light symptoms, too.

But, hey, Fox News, way to miss an opportunity to talk about the serious issue of how little we're doing to help the men and women we're sending over to bleed and die for "freedom and country". I mean, it's not like we've got soldiers being stuck over there 2 or even 3 times as long as they were ever supposed to be, right? Of course not. It must be because he played a video game that he took off.

I see articles about how hard it is to be away from your family, and the pressures on the men and women who are serving over seas, being asked to do far above and beyond what they were originally told, or what was ever expected when they enlisted, but I see very little attention given to the serious problems that these men and women face when they return to the private sector. And, really, that's been the elephant in the room since, like, WWII. We've known for decades that war takes a serious mental toll on the men and women who fight, but very little is really done to help.

I hope that he's found alive, and that he can finally get the help he needs- he was released almost 3 years ago, and he's still having hallucinations and flashbacks. As someone who has friends and relatives who've served, and who lived with the ghosts of their time in combat, my heart goes out to this man's family. It's tough on both the soldier and the soldier's loved ones. But that's not as good a story as "Video Game Makes Man Dissappear", I suppose.

Shorter McCullough: I've never played video games and here's why we should ban them...

I don't read Townhall.com, and I don't really know that much about Kevin McCullough, but this story makes me glad that I'm not a regular reader, for sure.

To save you the pain of reading it- McCullough is outraged- Outraged, I say!- about Mass Effect. It's pretty obvious that he's never played the game. He's got a great list of claims about it, everything from claiming that game-players are universally male (fyi- the only people I personally know who've played the game are actually women), to claiming that it allows players to engage in "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived" and that they can "hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of." (Conceived! Get it? That's funny! And "hump"? Really?) *ahem* Anyway- It's got a very realistic relationship, but the most realistic sex ever conceived? It's less than a minute long, and less explicit than half the stuff you see on network television.

I also love that McCullough thinks that character creation is a "disgusting idea" that "tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships". Nevermind that the only customization you can do is in a limited area, and that the ability to create custom characters is actually a beneficial gameplay aspect that allows players from diverse backgrounds and physical types to create avatars that they can personally identify with. And ignore that the sex only happens as a result of multiple hours of relationship building. Showing people (and aliens, I suppose) as having complicated relationships- relationships that, yes, involve sex- isn't objectifying. The argument seems to be that any depiction of sex must necessarily be objectifying.

The criticisms just go downhill from there, ending up with the claim that Mass Effect:

can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the gameplayer wishes.

With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.

It's worth noting, here, that Mass Effect isn't an online game.

I know I've talked about this before, but this is just another example of someone taking an issue that's important and should be discussed- the sexism that exists within games and gaming culture- and completely missing the mark by not knowing what sie is talking about. There are games that allow the player to, yes, rape with the push of a button. And there are games that go to great lengths to objectify women or that push unrealisitic and unhealthy attitudes about sex, or gender, or relationships. But, spreading lies or untruths about games and gaming culture doesn't do anything to address those problems. Instead, it makes the conversation harder to have. It obfuscates the real issues, and puts gamers into a defensive mindset. It destroys the credibility of your argument when you can't even be bothered to find out what level of customization you have over a game, or whether it has online play.

The silver lining here is that a lot of McCullough's readers have called him out on this article. The comments (over 500 of them right now), are filled with plenty of people pointing out "Wow, you've clearly never played this game."

WAM! Registration has begun! I'll be there, and so should you!

The Women, Action & the Media conference is fast approaching, and it's time to consider registering. This is a great chance to see some totally ass kicking presentations by a variety of feminists on a ton of interesting topics. This is a rare opportunity to get a chance to see sessions by, meet, and network with some really amazing people, on a variety of really important subjects. But, you have to register.

But, before you do, I know you've got a question, right?

"Who is going to be there?"

I'm glad you asked! This year's keynote speakers are none other than Helen Thomas and Haifa Zangana.

Helen Thomas, the first woman officer of the National Press club and first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, is a noted author and presidential correspondent. She's been covering presidents since JFK, and has been raising conservative ire with her criticisms about the current administration, and the War in Iraq. Helen Thomas is, as Jill's post suggests, awesome.

Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi artist and author, and a former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime. She escaped execution, and eventually ended up working with the PLO in Damascus, Syria, before moving to London in 1975. She's also a cofounder of Act Together: Women Action for Iraq, one of the founding members of the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, and is the chair of the Iraqi Patriots in Media and Culture. She's a contributor to such publications as The Guardian and Red Pepper.

As if getting a chance to see these two amazing women speak wasn't enough, there's a fantastic bunch of feminists putting together some really interesting sessions. Feminists like Brownfemipower, Ann Friedman, Lisa Jervis, Audacia Ray, Jessica Valenti, Amanda Marcotte, and and dozens more.

And they'll be giving sessions on topics like "Battling Backlash: Strategies for Fighting Back, Rising Above, and Making Progress", and "Dying for Your Entertainment: Gender Bias in News Coverage of Britney, Lindsay, Courtney & Owen". Or "Gender, Justice and the Future of Media - Building Our Long-Range Plan" and "Immigration in the U.S.: The Women's Rights Crisis Feminists Aren't Talking About". And more!

And, as a dubious bonus*: I'm going to be there! I have the extreme pleasure of being able to present with Naomi Clark. Our session is on video games and gaming culture, and is called "Feminism and Video Games: Expanding the Discussion of Sexism in Gaming Culture".

In order to attend, though, you're going to need to get registered, -OR- volunteer!

The regular registration fee is $145 for the entire event. That includes access to both keynote speakers, all of the workshops and panels, as well as breakfast and lunch on Saturday, the Saturday evening party, and a Sunday brunch. To put it mildly, it's a hell of a deal. But, I know that a lot of you are students, right? Well, WAM! has you covered- if you're a student of any kind, you pay only $45. For the whole event. Food, panels, party- the whole nine yars. That's a hundred dollar savings. And, if you volunteer as little as six hours of your time to the event, you get all of the above for free.

Of course, you'll need to get to the conference, and you'll need a place to stay, right? WAM! has you covered, there, too. The amazing women at CNW have put up a discussion board to facilitate car-pooling, and another board for finding room arrangements. The Cambridge Marriott is offering a special rate at $199 a night, and the HI-Boston Hostel offers dorm-style accomidations for as little as $40, which includes breakfast and WiFi, and is located right by the subway system.

Some of you have already been looking, I know, and, in fact, I've been told that the very first person to register mentioned my blog as being how he found out about the conference! A hearty thanks to Derek! Hooray!

The point is, it's going to be an amazing conference, and I'm hoping to see as many of you there as possible. It's not just a chance to net-work with and meet some of the amazing feminists that you read about all the time, it's also a chance to actually make a difference- it's a chance to find out what other people are doing to make a difference, and to learn what you can do to help. I really do hope to see you there.

* Bonus only available if you actually like me and want to say hello. In which case the bonus constitutes "will be glad to see you and say hello".

More on Sex(ism) in Video Games

Back when I worked at Ye Olde Book Shoppe, we used to stock a full assortment of Adult Magazines, most of which seemed to be aimed at either straight or gay men. Despite having to deal with the sale, ordering, and placement of magazines like Playboy for several years, I'd pretty much forgotten about this (nsfw) intersection of pornography and games). I had completely forgotten that Playboy runs an issue every year that features the "girls of gaming".

Who, exactly, thinks that something like this is a good idea?

I'm sure that all of the people who were slamming Jade Raymond and Ubisoft are all over this story, right? Right?

Alright, maybe not. Sure, there are a couple of comments along the lines of "Wow, this is pretty blatant" but there are a lot of comments more along the lines of "Why didn't they get hotter characters that we know?"

And then there's this wonderful piece of advertising criticism.

Now, as the comments there show, this sort of advertising is really transparent. We're not stupid- we know when you're trying to use nudity to get us to buy your game, and if it's a shitty game, we're not going to fall for it. And yet, we keep seeing crap like this. From Kane and Lynch's Playboy contest, to that Need For Speed ad, to the Playboy pictorials, to promo material for the new Soul Calibur game, there's a sense that gamers only care about one thing as much or more than games... breasts. Of course, recent events have done little to counteract that impression.

These are instances are a company that is exploiting women for the sake a few dollars. When they do things like this, they contribute to the generally culture of sexism that gaming is currently saturated with. These sorts of things encourage pretty shitty attitudes towards women, and are one of the things that lead to gamers treating women who game like their sole purpose is to expose themselves for male gratification. Ads like this display the attitude that gaming is a male hobby, and encourage "men's club" attitudes. After all, gamers can say, "video gaming is a guy thing, if women want to get invovled, they need to expect it."

Prior to the Playboy debacle, I was interested in Kane and Lynch, so this doesn't really change my feelings there. But, I was interested in Conan, Tabula Rasa sounded interesting, and Jericho has been getting decent reviews. Now, I'll be putting my money elsewhere.

Wednesday Randomness...

Did you know that Wednesday is named after Woden/Odin? Or that, according to wiki, it's "popular tradition" to wear sweater vests to work on Wednesdays? Does anyone do that? I've never noticed it, for sure.

I also didn't know that the line "Wednesday's child is full of woe" was the inspiration for Wednesday Adams. That makes sense, though.

I did know that Solomon Grundy (born on a Monday) was married on a Wednesday. It's a shame he died on Saturday.

Of course, that led me to discover that the name "Solmon Grundy" was most probably derived from the dish salmagundi, which, quite frankly, sounds awesome.

Which is to say that this post is just a little random weirdness and (I hope) fun stuff to get you through the middle of the week. Because, can't we all use a little bit of silliness in our lives?

Take, for example: The Superest! If you're like me, you've often pondered the imponderable ponders- could Batman really beat Captain America in a fight (Survey says "no", according to these fans)? Could Wonder Woman take down Tony Stark? Scarlet Witch or Zatanna? Well, you won't find your answers at here, but you will find a battle of super powers being played out to determine who is the superest.

Basically, it's a game being played out where each player tries to come up with a character that counteracts the abilities of the character before it. One of my favorites is Magma Carta, who limits the rights of the monarchy, while instantly vaporizing plastic (it vanquished Queen Zip of the Loch, a character who heavily taxed plastic bags). Sadly, my beloved Magma Carta was defeated by the cold jaws of the Iron Cabinet (who files documents away... forever!).

But, can anything really defeat the glory that is Poachbot 12-p6? It's the deadliest mechanical-monster-poaching poaching-mechanical-monster known to all of mechanical-monsterkind.

You know what else is awesome? Spot the differences. I know, I know. We used to do this silly things on the backs of the magazines in the doctor's office, right? Well, these are flash-based, and they've got some really cool designs.

Speaking of Flash: if you loath the undead as much as I do, you might want to take a glance at Herbert West: De-Animator- a Flash game by Bum Lee (and a sort of spoof on the Lovecraft story "Herbert West: Re-Animator"). It's pretty simple stuff, but I've killed more than a little time shooting zombies on it, I have to admit.

Character Assassin's Creed... More Misogyny in Gaming

I really want to post something good about gaming.

I really do.

Instead, I'm forced to keep pointing out the failings of games and gaming culture. The problem is that, despite my love for games, gaming culture remains a pretty awful place in a lot of ways. It's bad enough that gaming itself is treated like male hobby, despite the many, many, many examples to the contrary. But, when I read a story like this one, from feministe, it's enough to make me scream.

I admit that I might be late on this one- much of my online time is spent at work, and I don't read much gaming news (if they've even touched this story), but for those even more behind than I am: Jade Raymond is a producer for Ubisoft, and her latest game, Assassin's Creed, came out recently. By most counts, it's supposed to be a pretty awesome game. You'd think this is good news, right?

Not so much.

See, there are two problems.
1. Raymond has a vagina.
2. Raymond works in a field that is seen as male territory. She makes products typically made by and for men.

Now, really, neither of these are actually the problem. The real problem is that there are some assholes out there who see the fact that they find her attractive or that she's a woman in a "male field" to be justification for treating her like shit.

It started with comments about hot she is on sites like Kotaku and in other gaming publications. Who cares that she's working on one of the hottest games of the year, a title that people have been clamoring for since the first video trailers were shown, a title that's graced magazine covers and had gamers drooling for months and months now... she's hot, and that's all that matters. It's much more important to hear about how fuckable she is, or how much people wish they could meet her or find a "girl" as hot as her.

And the really sad thing is that these sorts of comments? They barely register anymore. They're so common in the gaming world- the constant objectification of women associated with gaming- that they're easy to miss. They don't even appear as blips on the radar to most people. It'd almost be more noteworthy if the forums and boards weren't filled with sexist bile. I can't speak for my fellow bloggers, but on the rare occasions that I do go onto a non-feminist gaming site looking for news or information, I know that I can't stay too long or pay too much attention, because the level of sexism and misogyny tends towards "extreme".

If it had stopped with mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers lamenting how they wish they could touch her and how hawt she is, most nongamers probably wouldn't be reading about Raymond, because... well... that's status quo. We're at a state right now where about the best you can expect is that any woman associated with gaming is going to be put on display and talked about like she's a piece of meat. Gamer forums are going to be filled with disgusting posts about her body. If woman plays or makes games, she's seen as public property on gaming forums, and they'll endlessly debate how hot she is.

And the fact that I've come to expect that level of misogyny makes me beyond sad.

But, of course, it didn't stop there. It didn't stop with those types of comments and it didn't stop with hoax postings about her posing for Maxim. Instead, World Class Asshole and All Around Class Act Dave Cheung decided to up the ante and created a pornographic comic depicticting Raymond as a bikini-wearing idiot who services fan-boys.

*sigh*

Nevermind that this is one of the major creative forces behind Assassin's Creed. Nevermind her degree in computer science. Nevermind all the hard work she's put in. Because a bunch of gamers have decided she's the hotness, she's depicted as a fan-servicing moron who can't even pronounce "creative".

As Holly points out, the typical sexist apologism has already started and is in full swing:

People can say whatever they want because of free speech! (Wow, congratulations on being lucky enough to have rights. Now stop using them to be an asshole, why don’t you.) It’s all Ubisoft’s fault for exploiting her as a poster girl! (Which is why it’s OK to treat her, personally, that way? Also, it’s part of her job.) Who does she think she is, wearing a cute top like that and standing in front of the other Assassin’s Creed developers? (Serious shades of Sweatergate right there.) It’s not her game and I bet she didn’t even do any of the real development!

Raymond and Ubisoft have been fighting back- a cease and desist letter was sent to Something Awful, and while I fully support her fighting to get the comic removed, I recognize how hard that's going to be- these things tend to become viral very quickly, and it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to find all of the comics and remove them. And, of course, even as she fights to assert her rights, she's demonized for it. The creator of the comic is taking her fighting back as a sign of "victory" of a sort- he's put a "Made Jade Cry" notice on his site. Classy, right?

This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm going to be talking about at WAM!

This is just one of many reasons why women end up feeling threatened and intimidated by traditional "male" careers and industries. You read stories like this, or the Kathy Sierra story, and you have to ask yourself, "if I knew going into my career that people were going to try to humiliate me and harass me and post disgusting, potentially threatening comments about the things they'd like to do to me, just because of my gonads, would I still want to get involved in that career?"

I wouldn't.

And if you show even an ounce of compassion, prepare to hear at least a few people comment about how she deserved it in some way:

Poor taste, but then Ubisoft must be fairly naive if they think they can capitalise on a hot woman in front of a bunch of undersexed geeks and get away with it. - fire&wings

The same stupid argument has been trotted out over in the thread on feministe, too. How dare Ubisoft present the producer of the game as the public face for inteviews! It's simply outragious! And obviously unheard of!

Because, clearly, nobody else gives interviews about the games they're making, right? Certainly, there are no men who capitalize on fame within the gaming industry. Miyamoto who? Hideo Kojima? Never heard of him. American McWhosit? Civ Meier? Williams somebody? Will right? Tommy "I'm a Huge Tool Who Reinforces Everything Bad About Gaming" Tallarico? Nope, clearly, Raymond is the only person who has been presented as a public face for gaming. Nobody else has ever been as much or more in the spotlight than the games they were involved in making.

And, really, I want to know how, exactly, Ubisoft was exploiting her to market the game. I've seen dozens of ads and videos for this game, and until yesterday I had no idea what Raymond looked like, at all. The ads have largely focused on the gameworld and the innovative control scheme (I haven't played it, but that's what the marketing has been about). Interviews? I knew she was giving them- but, again, that's her job- I expect the producer of a game to give interviews- particularly on a game as highly anticipated as Assassin's Creed was.

The interest in Raymond came from sites like Kotaku and from game forums and blogs and the rumor mill. It came from people completely unassociated with Ubisoft who were more interested, or at least as interested, in talking about Raymond's body than in talking about Assassin's Creed. The blame for Raymond being the focus of some sites coverage of AC doesn't lie with her or with Ubisoft, but with the sites themselves. Ubisoft can't force Kotaku to publish intelligent articles. That's up to the writers there.

Apparently, the creator of the comic released this statement:

Hoo boy. Who’d have thought 2 hours of messing around in Photoshop due to random boredom one night could result in so much DRAMA! Actually, it was probably inevetiable since the internet is full of morons who think they know everything (myself included).

So, to dispel some misunderstandings caused by up-their-own-arse moralistic faggots, here’s a “Buy Jade’s Game” MORAL-O-FAQ!

Q: Did you Buy Jade’s Game?
A: As a matter of fact, I did. I’ve had it pre-orderded since before I knew of poor Jade’s existence, since it looked quite nifty. Sadly, despite being promising in many areas, it gets very boring rather quickly, and has the most ridiculous plot since Star Ocean 3 (This is Jade’s game… with a Sci-fi/Horror twist). Oh well.

Q: Why do you hate Jade? Leave Jade alone!
A: Personally, I have nothing against her. I just found the entire situation of HER being more heavily marketed and gaining more “press” (and I use the term loosely) coverage, than THE GAME to be somewhat amusing. In fact, fair do’s to her working her way to a cushy position like “Executive Producer”, it really is the ideal job; since all you do is sit around doing nothing and get paid for it. RESULT!
But I digress, this has nothing to do the matter at hand.

Q: What statement are you trying to make with the Jade Comic?
A: If you would take some time to read the links I originally posted along with the comic, you see that the primary reason for it’s existence is the “Jade Hype” on videogame forums, blogs and “news” sites like Kotaku (lolz). Although Ubi-Soft UNDOUBTEDLY whored Jade out to an extent, it really wasn’t any more than how say, Cliffy B whore’s HIMSELF out. The difference is, forum nerds, bloggers and Kotaku (lolz) got rather more hot and bothered for Jade than they would for old Cliffy.
So, I suppose Jade could be classed as “Collateral Damage”, which may not be very fair, but honestly, if you really care about something as trivial as a comic, you’re a collossal faggot (that goes for you ladies too). A joke is a joke, and is only as harmful to you as you let it be.
When someone makes a joke about you, it is YOU who chooses whether or not it becomes EPIC BUTTHURT, not the other way around.

Q: What if Ubi-Soft sue you?
A: They won’t, because they don’t have a case. As obviously tastless and unsubtle as the comic may be, it is no different to (for example) Dave Chappele dressing up as R.Kelly and pretending to pee in someone’s mouth or cartoons in newspapers showing George Bush as the devil. It is merely bullying tactics, and would reflect more badly on them than anyone else.

Q: What is a “moralfag”?
A: A moralfag is a person who’s principals are so far wedged up their own backside that they believe that any any remotely derogatory commentary made on anyone else is unnaceptable, unfounded, sexist, racist and, possibly, EVIL. That is, of course, unless they are the ones doing it. Moralfags are also utterly convinced that their view of morality is the ONLY view, and anyone who disagrees can GTFOTHX!
In summary, a moralfag is 99% of DeviantArt users. OH SHIT!

Q: Are you a moralfag?
A: No, I’m just a self-satisfied cunt.

Have fun flaming, arse-lickers!

Well, there you have it.
These are the words of a person who considers himself a "liberally minded person".

And that is what we're up against. Even the guy who made the comic admits that the bulk of Raymond's publicity came from blogs and forums, not from any official source, and that she's "Collateral Damage", but, hey, it's fine, because, you know, it's just a joke!.

Har. Har.

At this point, I almost worry that I'm becoming a broken record. How many times do we have to point out "It doesn't matter what she looks like"? "It doesn't matter if you think she's hot- her attractiveness doesn't have anything to do with what she's doing"? "Judge her actions, not her appearence"? If the game is good (and it's been getting generally positive reviews, not that that means much), who cares whether the producer is attractive or not? It's still a good game. And, if the game sucks, why would it matter whether the producer was hot or not? Whatever she looks like doesn't change how good or bad the game is.

So, how do we get that across? How do we fight this kind of thing?

For me, one of the things that I do is, when I hear about a story like this, I make sure that I talk about it with as many of my gaming friends as I can, and I explain why I'm outraged and I explain why this is a problem. My hope is that I get across how important events like this are- how much it hurts women, how much it reinforces stupid stereotypes about gamers, and how bad it makes gaming culture look. My hope is that they'll talk to their friends about it, too, and that it'll spread over time.

That, and I post long, angry diatribes about how pissed off and sickened I am by things like this.

-edited: 2:11 PM EST-

More thoughts that I forgot to include...

I love how Ubisoft is getting slammed for "using Jade" to push the game (again, despite the fact that it's the producer's job to give interviews and raise interest), but these same people have been strangely silent about, say, the use of Playboy to push a game. Last time I heard, Kane & Lynch still wasn't about Playmates, so, there still isn't any reason for Playboy to be the major advertising push.

Anybody want to bet that these are the same people that complain that we're too sensitive about things like the Resident Evil controversy?

And yet, these people are apparently outraged, outraged that Ubisoft would let Raymond give interviews. I know, I know, none of that actually proves anything. Maybe I'm wrong, and these people are equally outraged about the Playboy thing, but, still...

You know, about one of the most highly anticipated games of the year. The only games that I can think of that might have more anticipation were Halo 3 and Bioshock. So, you know, this game was kind of a big deal.

Anyway, I also meant to mention that Luke, over at Shrub has a post up about this, too, and it's well worth reading.

Other related posts:
The Angry Pixel says "We Heart Jade Raymond".
Broken Toys nails it with "Clearly We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People.
Game Girl Advance reminds that Jade Raymond is for Real.
Shameless: For Girls Who Get It explain why you should care, even if you're not a gamer.
Rabid Space Dog laments that we have such a long way to go.
Elaine over at Confutatis.org explains the problem with the "It's Ubisoft's fault!" arguments