‘Feminist Whore’-ing: Why the industry isn’t sexist: A response
The games industry is sexist. But only a little.
Back in the early days of video games – back when we could still unequivocally call them games and not “a new medium of storytelling” or, more controversially, “art” – there was nothing wrong with creating characters which fell into gender stereotypes.
Preteen boys wanted to go bounding after the princess because, as a motivator, it proved just sufficient enough of an incentive for them to go and kill some goblins and solve some puzzles (and buy the sequel). It worked, and still is working, for Mario and Link and we wouldn’t call them sexist, although in retrospect had Nintendo given those characters voices might we think differently?
Jump ahead to earlier this year and Duke Nukem Forever. We have all heard the controversy, be it the twins administering oral sex on the titular character or the Capture the Babe multiplayer mode where players are encouraged to spank the babe you have thrown over your shoulder. Randy Pitchford (CEO of Gearbox Software) can argue all he wants that within ‘Duke’s world’ it is all perfectly normal, however, out here in the real world it is fairly deplorable.
Time will tell whether Duke proves the final straw which broke the camel’s back, but there is no denying that to the majority of developers and publishers, there is only one sort of woman they want in their game, genre be damned.
We can play as the tight leather-bound British spy Violette Summer in Velvet Assassin (featuring those entirely coherent sequences where the main character inexplicably doses up on morphine and pranced around on-screen in a skimpy negligee) through to Dead or Alive Beach Xtreme Volley Ball and all the advances in breast physics which brought the world. We find ourselves rooted firmly between Halo’s Cortana and Resident Evil 4’s Ashley; the pleasingly well-proportioned female lead or the plot device for the men to go and deal with.
So I finally get to the controversy of the day: the ‘feminist whore’ perk buried within the questionable beta code version of Dead Island which was released by accident. Is it a sign that all game developers are misogynistic pigs? No. What it is though is an insight towards a mentality which persists among game developers. And lest we forget, statistics do show that one gender more than the other dominates the world of game developers.
The games industry is not sexist – not to any serious extent. Studios are not filled with men will to perpetuate a paternal hierarchy in society.
What the industry is is juvenile.
The children who killed Ganan and beat up Bowser 20 years ago are today’s games designers and artists. The fundamentals of what made great games back then is being projected onto today’s through a grimy 21st century filter. The innocence of vanquishing evil and ‘getting the girl’ has faded and in its place stands something else.
Women in games are the eye candy to break up the brown walls and space marines – that character to include on the box art to shift more units. When you turn to those developers who take a mature approach to women in games, for example Portal 2 (where need I remind you the protagonist, antagonist and just about every single turret is female), the strides forwards in redefining the gender roles in games becomes lost amongst peripheral elements (in Portal 2, once more, you are more likely to take from that game a cool portal gun, than the concept of a strong female lead). First person Parkour jumps to mind first when you think of Mirror’s Edge, a game sadly at the other end of the commercial success scale.
It is of entirely unfair to tar the entire games industry with the same brush. What I hope to have expressed here is not that the entire games industry didn’t quite shake their twelve-year-old mentalities, but that certain trends exist which need to be addressed.
Many may like to view the industry as standing on the first step towards creating art, but until they can address the more fundamental flaws in current games it is wholly deserving of the name “game”. They sure aren’t mature enough to be called anything else yet.
Read the original article by Alice Scoble-Rees here: ‘Feminist Whore’-ing: Why the industry isn’t sexist.
Excellent response, very good points raised. There was also a study done that showed that in most games the race/sex/age of NPCs isn’t representative of the real world, it isn’t even representative of the demographic of gamers – it’s a match with the developers. Developers are mostly middle aged white dudes, hence games are full of middle aged white dudes. Interesting stuff.
I don’t know…I think its safe to say that most games seem to be filled with one version of Nolan North or another.
I would say that one of my points in there is actually wrong – statistics show that games with women on the box art sell worse than…well…worse than a game with a version of Nolan North on the cover.
Plus there are many other factors to consider. Especially when you expand just looking at trends such as representation of different sexes and races in games to consider the attitudes of game developers towards violence.
Plus there’s a very blurred line between ‘ironically’ enjoying sexist stuff and actually being sexist – like in Duke Nukem. If you make a game intending to be tongue in cheek, but the audience accepts it as normal/okay, is it okay to keep being tongue in cheek about it?
Yes and no. There is a line, but defining it is the tough bit. Bikini clad zombies sprinting at you in Dead Island (feminist whore acheivement aside) is a bit of a tongue in cheek twist on the zombie theme.
Duke Nukem is just entirely 2D and shallow.
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‘Many may like to view the industry as standing on the first step towards creating art, but until they can address the more fundamental flaws in current games it is wholly deserving of the name “game”. They sure aren’t mature enough to be called anything else yet.’
Aside from the slightly confused grammar leaving me not fully able to understand what you mean, you’re talking in absolutes here, sunshine, and it’s very hard to talk in absolutes without being wrong. Woah! See that! Let’s avoid the ‘are games art’ subject for a moment because neither of us have the time for that, and just stick with the absolute comment. ‘They sure aren’t mature enough…’ – dude, this is you being a bit lazy. Look further, write harder. It’ll make your case (which is one worth making) a lot stronger.
Admittedly it is not the best structured argument in the world. It was written simply to provide a counterpoint to the previous article posted up on Joystuck.
The structure’s fine, amigo. You have to be careful with your word choices with these things. People can call one out on ‘careless’ writing with an ease that is fucking frustrating considering the time and thought you put in to writing the damn article. Your writing and how much work you put into it reflects on you. I know I sound like a holy wanker but you’ve got good things to say and maybe a few suggestions from an internet passerby could be worth a cent some day along in el futuro.
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