Acid for Blood

Choice of the Dragon

Choice of the Dragon is a web-based multiple-choice game. It's also available for Android, the platform on which I primarily played the game. The premise is fairly basic:

[Y]ou play a powerful dragon that likes to kidnap princesses and sleep on a hoard of treasure. Dominate the local kingdom, loot and pillage, and inspire terror in the hearts of your enemies!

The execution, however, is quite entertaining. It plays like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, where the reader must decide what the protagonist should do. Your choices affect the outcome, and they have a meaningful impact on the game.

In addition to your decisions having an impact on how the story unfolds, they also have an impact your dragon's stats. This feature lends itself to the player getting attached to one's dragon, as one begins not only to judge how a choice fits in with the dragon's personality, but also how that choice will affect the dragon's physical and mental abilities. Your dragons are based on several factors. Three of those stats have two dimensions: Brutality/Finesse, Cunning/Honor, and Disdain/Vigilance. Your dragon is also rated on Infamy, Wealth, and what Wounds (if any) zie has.

The engaging writing style really helped in feeling some level of attachment to my dragon. I wanted my dragon to be powerful and rich, with a minimum amount of permanent injuries, so I was making careful choices that were also in line with the personality of my dragon.

One very positive aspect of Choice of the Dragon is how it deals with sex and gender. One of the game designer self-identifies as a feminist, and he made a conscious decision to be progressive on sex and gender issues:

Many video games assume a male protagonist, and I actively wanted to avoid that presumption. At the same time, our games require a certain amount of identification between the player and the character. A game that’s written in the second person runs into problems if the player can’t accept that “you” means both the character and the player.

Once we settled on a dragon as the protagonist of our first game, “Choice of the Dragon,” many of the gender issues became easy. No need at all for us to assign a sex to the player’s dragon—it’s perfectly easy to ask the player what their dragon’s sex is.  Likewise, even the mating scene could be done in a purely gender-neutral way.  Players who wanted to play a straight male dragon could. Players who wanted to play a female dragon seeking a female mate could. And people who wanted to leave that whole issue vague could as well.

Furthermore, NPCs in Choice of the Dragon are just as often female as they are male. Not only that, women in Choice of the Dragon are just as often knights and fighters as males are. While this is probably a small detail, it's incredibly progressive for games. Games still have a long way to go in terms of even approaching equal representation in terms of sex and gender roles.

Choice of the Dragon subverts and questions many traditional patriarchal fantasy tropes, such as kidnapping princesses. This approach to sex and gender produced an experience that was far more entertaining and engaging than it would have been had patriarchal fantasy clich́́́és been presented without question.

Choice of the Dragon is a short game. I've played it several times over, each time ending with a dragon that had different strengths and weaknesses in terms of stats, varying levels of wealth and infamy, and with different permanent injuries. I don't feel that the game's length affected my enjoyment at all. It may be a short game, but it's quite enjoyable, and  I look forward to the next installment, and to more games from the Choice of Games team.

[Via @kateri_t]

Mirror's Edge: Burdened by Words

A recent GameSetWatch post, "Design Diversions: The Video Game as a Picture Book", by Andrew Vanden Bossche discussed how Mirror's Edge could have been a stronger game overall, art even, had it not been for the tacked-on plot:

There is more emotion in a half second of Mirror’s Edge gameplay than in its entire script. While it's disappointing that the dialogue couldn’t live up to the standards of the art direction and gameplay, this is DICE’s success, not their failure. Faith’s movements are highly detailed, from the impact of landing to blur of acceleration, and it is these little details that bring the exhilaration, panic, tension, and joy of flying from rooftop to rooftop to life. This wordless story was the real Mirror’s Edge.

I noted in my review of Mirror's Edge that the environment, the city, was a prominent 'character' in the game, and I think the urban landscape and environmental details contribute to a story told through game play. Mirror's Edge, when I wasn't screaming at its frustratingly difficult game play, delivered a particularly immersive experience. All the details of that game world, conveyed in Faith's breathing, the sensation of running and jumping, the background chatter on the radio, posters displayed on the walls—provided a more compelling and emotive experience than the narrative itself.

This paragraph gave me pause for thought:

Faith herself was supposed to be a bold step forward for heroines; tasteful, independent, and not overly sexualized. While she is these things, she is ultimately just built out of less offensive stereotypes rather than the depth of real person. Her somewhat irrationally violent personality is, disappointingly, all too common in videogame heroines. Again, Mirror’s Edge seems to step forward only with its visuals: Faith’s character design is far more revolutionary than her personality.

Faith is indeed "tasteful, independent, and not overly sexualized", but is Faith "built out of less offensive stereotypes"? I'd argue that the charactacterisation of Faith having an "irrationally violent personality" as an example of a common trait amongst videogame heroines isn't entirely inaccurate. I feel that the majority of videogame protagonists, male or female, seem to have "irrationally violent" personalities. To specifically call out videogame heroines and citing Faith as an example of this obscures this key point.

The article goes on to critique Faith as a character, stating that she lacks iconic status and is not memorable, which I completely agree with. Faith is not a very deep character. Whilst she has a driving motivation in the game, unfortunately it falls into tired story modes: her sister is in danger, and Faith must go save her. Whilst Mirror's Edge is quite unusual in that we have a woman saving another woman, bypassing the disturbingly common videogame trope of a man saving a woman, it is still something we've all played before.

Getting back to the main point, while Mirror's Edge disappointed on the writing and the character side, the incredible game play (apart from the unforgiving design and crushing difficulty) and art direction are unique in games.

The Border House: Breaking Down Borders in Gaming

I joined forces with a group of cool people to start a feminist-friendly and inclusive group gaming and virtual worlds blog. After weeks of planning, setup, and flurries of emails all around, The Border House is now up and running.

The majority of group gaming blogs tend to be exclusively run by, written by, and implicitly written for straight, white males. Whether those barriers are erected by design, or (more insidiously) by coincidence stemming from the warm, comfortable blinders of privilege, this situation marginalises those who don't fit in those categories and doesn't speak to the diversity of gamers (or games bloggers).

The Border House, created from the ground-up to be inclusive, aims to be a platform for marginalised voices to talk about their experiences and perspectives of games and virtual worlds—all through a feminist lens. Our contributors are: female, male, people of colour, white, multi-national, multi-cultural, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, heterosexual, trans gender, gender queer, cis gender, disabled, temporarily able-bodied (TAB)—the list goes on and on.

There should be a lot of discussions ensuing from the exploration of sex, race, gender, sexuality, and other social issues within the sphere of gaming and virtual worlds. It's shaping up to to be an exciting and awesome project. If you'd like to read about the experiences of gamers who don't fit into the SWM box, you're invited to check out the blog and join in the discussion.

[Read]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Cinema Event

This post is coming fairly late after the fact. I was too busy playing actually playing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves to be more timely about writing this.

On 5th October, I was one of several hundred people in four cities that attended the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Cinema Events. These events, held at cinemas in San Francisco, the Seattle area, Los Angeles, and Chicago, invited a select group of people to view developer playthroughs of (at the time) never-before-seen levels in Uncharted 2, watch behind-the-scenes videos of the development process, and participate in a tournament to win the grand prize of the ultra limited Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter's Edition. 

How did one procure free passes to this event? I got passes by following @SonyPlayStation on Twitter. It was by good luck that I happened to glance at my Twitter feed at the time when Sony put the call out. They directed people to a reservation link, through which one could reserve passes on a first come, first serve basis, and print them for the event. Within short order, all of the passes for each of the cities were claimed. I actually didn't realise how big a deal this was until after I read the comments on the Sony PlayStation blog and grasped that Uncharted is really, really popular. If you read my previous post, you know that I didn't follow Uncharted much until recently.

The event was really cool. The walkthroughs and behind-the-scenes videos were especially interesting. It was neat to see what went on behind the development process. One of the interesting aspects is how every cut scene in the game was actually motion-captured by the actors on a set. This added a realist touch to the character's movements in the game. Because the actors were directly interacting with each other, you could really see that chemistry come through in the game's cut scenes. Another thing that was interesting is that the cut scenes were rendered using game play models, which is a fairly impressive thing. I really liked hearing the developers talk about the cinematic feel they wanted to capture for the game, and what they did to accomplish this.

Another fact that stood out is that the Writer and Director of both Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a woman, Amy Hennig. Why is this at all significant? Well, because both games treated the female characters with respect. I feel the generally good portrayal of female characters in the Uncharted games is not something that would have come immediately or easily had the creative direction of the project not been driven by and/or heavily influenced a woman, considering how male-dominated the videogame development industry is, and considering how most people continue to cling to outdated views of gender. If you think that's not accurate, then you'll have to explain to me why triple-A games are constantly fucking this up. See Halo 3: Orbital Drop Shock Troopers for a recent prime example of how female characters are yet again disrespected by development teams who obviously have very traditional, very archaic views of gender roles. If you compare Elena Fisher, who appears both in Uncharted and Uncharted 2, and Chloe Frazier, who appears in Uncharted 2, with other female characters in games, I feel there's a huge difference in their portrayal. While there are some problematic issues (no game lacks these), I would say that, in general, these two women are good examples of how to do female characters in videogames right. I really can't gush enough about how happy and pleased I am with the Naughty Dog development team for the way they portrayed these two characters as strong, competent, witty, smart, insightful, and fantastic women. I'll talk about them in another post, when I review Uncharted 2.

It was incredible to see the levels played on a cinema screen. Apparently they were using these new, high-end Sony digital projectors, which supposedly made digital images look even better than if other projectors were used. I can't speak to a comparison, but I was very impressed at the image quality on the big screen. It was really amazing. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. The developers were able to play through several different levels and they chose levels which gave the audience a good feel of the diversity of game play settings. There weren't too many spoilers, either, which was good.

In between developer videos and big screen demos of Uncharted 2 levels, they ran a couple of rounds of tournament play. I decided not to participate in the tournament because I'm pretty terrible at these kinds of games. The tournament was okay to watch, but these things are generally more fun to play. Two of the stations had the ability for their screens to be shown on the massive movie screen, and the emcee made a point of saying he wanted the most charismatic or most skilled gamers to play at those stations.

At one point, the emcee had one of the few women participating in the tournament play at one of these particular stations. He asked the crowed to give this woman encouragement because according to him, she seemed a little shy. I didn't see this. I just thought she may have been slightly uncomfortable about him singling her out. I thought his behaviour was a little problematic because the emcee never asked the audience to give encouragement to the many, many dudes who previously played at that station. Furthermore, the crowd did give encouragement to this woman, but they they also did something that they never did with any of the dudes who'd used that station: they yelled out instructions, tips, and hints at her when she played poorly. Keep in mind that this was a brand new game, and no one in the tournament was expected to be an expert. So why yell out instructions to a woman, but not the men? The men weren't giving instructions in a mean or mocking way, but this is why sexism is just so insidious. Seemingly small incidents, where people are well-meaning and think they're doing a good thing really just reinforce sexist treatment of women. This ridiculous behaviour by the men in the audience pissed me off. Now, it's entirely possible that this woman welcomed the instructions. I don't know. But the problem was that every single man who proceeded to give her instructions whilst she was on stage, playing, didn't ask her whether she wanted help, they just assumed she did.

Regardless of the sexism, whether you're a man or a woman, many people don't appreciate backseat gamers, especially if you don't even know the people yelling out instructions at you. Seriously. When was the last time you went to an arcade or tournament and welcomed an audience telling you what to do? Wouldn't you be annoyed at that? 

I mentioned this incident on Twitter, and commented that it was sexist. Another person who was at the event tweeted back at me saying that the woman was doing well after listening to the advice the men were yelling out at her during the tournament. Talk about missing the point, dismissing sexism, and just being all around clueless! Now, a few people might not think that this incident was a big deal or that I'm being overly sensitive. These comments are Classic Derailing Tactics, and those who feel that way should really need to go read this and this. 

During the event, I was keeping an eye on Twitter. @SonyPlayStation was tweeting from the San Francisco event. Evidently, the San Francisco event started on time. From their Twitter updates, they were a bit ahead of us in terms of their activities. I saw on their Twitter updates that every single attendee in the San Francisco cinema was given a swag bag that included copies of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. This made me quite excited, because there was a possibility that they'd do the same for the Seattle area event! About half an hour later, they announced at our event that we'd be getting the game for free! Yay! Not only did we get the game, but we got a nice bundle of swag that included a cloth bag, an Uncharted 2 shirt (XL, so unfortunately I can't even wear it), and an Uncharted 2 poster. Here's the swag, with my VIP pass:

It was really cool of Sony and Naughty Dog to give out free copies of the game to everyone at the event. And we got the game more than one week before its actual release date! We immediately made plans to play and complete the game before the release date. We were able to finish Uncharted 2: Among Thieves four days before it was released in North America. We didn't even rush to finish it, either. The Uncharted 2 poster now hangs in a place of prominence above the television. Since finishing the game, a week ago, I've been playing a lot of online multiplayer. It's fun, but boy am I terrible at it. I'm really glad that we were able to go to the cinema event. It was cool, and we got free stuffs!

Convention Sexual Harassment and #EAFail

I haven't spoken up about the failness that is #EAfail, partly because I've been doing detective work, collecting many of the links you see in this post, keeping tabs on what's going on in the Twitter stream, and just gathering my thoughts on it after several days of perspective. 

If you haven't heard about it, this post gives a good overview of the Dante's Inferno "Sin to Win" contest, which EA Games ran at San Diego Comic-Con this year.

I think there are several interconnected issues at play here, and a broader context that many of the articles I've read about this incident that I feel people have not discussed enough, which I will cover towards the end of this post.

First is the misogynistic, sexist, and heteronormative bent of the contest itself. It appears targeted to males of a certain mindset (immature) and social aptitude/ability (incompetent) and/or Males Who Don't Give a Shit About Women. It presupposes that straight women and gay men are not interested in buying this game, therefore part of the prize EA and the Dante's Inferno development team offered up were just"two hot girls", no equivalent prize for straight women or gay men. This is setting aside the fact that awarding people as prizes is gross objectfication. I feel it's safe to assume they didn't consider that lesbian and bisexual women play games, either, because the language and imagery used by EA were quite sexist and disrespectful of women, in my opinion. The graphics for the contest, a woman's chest and cleavage, and the tattooed silhouettes of two women, on their hands and knees, with their asses in the air in a provocative position that presents themselves as sexually available and subservient was just gross.

Further, labeling women 'girls' is, to many women, sexist as well, because it infantilses them. A girl is a prepubescent human female. Do adult males get called 'boys' all the time? No, they're usually called 'guys'. But it's different for women. Women are taken a notch down, they're 'girls'—they aren't adults, they are children. "You throw like a girl!" is a common insult—just one tiny, tiny facet of society's partiarchal power structures in which men are raised up and women are devalued. I know many women who don't mind being called 'girls'. I'm cool with that. It's their choice. I don't look down upon them for it, because it is a woman's own personal choice in how she identifies. Personally, I won't rip your head off if you call me a girl, but it gets on my nerves because I haven't been a child for a very long time. In the specific context of this contest, however, the terminology, combined with all of the other sexist content, further stresses the disappointing lack of respect for women.

The second issue is treating women as objects (that men are entitled to). They were being given away as prizes. Booth workers/models/"babes" are there to do a job. Whether people approve of booth babes or not, they are human beings and deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity afforded to any other human being. Dangling a couple of booth babes as prizes in this contest is not respectful in my opinion. I don't feel the need to elaborate further on this point, because it seems pretty obvious why this aspect of the competition was problematic.

Thirdly, there is the objectification of women. Just because EA or any other company hires attractive women to work at their booth does not mean the women are "asking" to be objectified or harassed. Supporters of this contest argued that "booth babes know what they are getting into" and that the possibility of being groped (in other words, assaulted) is "part of the job", which is a dumb argument. Why? Because employers have a responsibility to ensure their employees' safety. Sexual harassment or assault should never be "part of the job". To put this into a little perspective, so that people of the dude persuasion can perhaps understand better:

As to the guys saying "if your job is to look pretty and pose for pics in a bikini, you're asking to be harassed," well gee, your "package" is out on front of your body---I think you're asking for it to be smacked. I have the right to decide that, don't I? IMO, if you aren't wearing a cup, you're asking for it and it's fair game. If you don't like it, then either wear a cup, cut it off, or get used to it---because you've asked for it.

Both the above statements are ridiculous---but that's my point: assuming that a woman's clothing (or lack thereof) is an invitation to harass her makes just as much sense as a woman assuming a guy not covered by a cup is asking to be hit in the package with a 2x4. Since when does *she* have the right to assume you're asking for it, get into your personal space and flatten your package, based on her own ideas about how a man should properly hide his goodies?

These above two points—the fact that people objectify women, and the fact that women are being treated like objects—are different, but related. As Eleniel said, "Just because people objectify models doesn't mean models become objects when they do their job!"

Fourthly, there is the ignorance of convention fan culture on the part of EA, which fans  who have some awareness or critical thought know, is rife with misogyny—sexual harassment, incidents of stalking, assault, and just general badness towards women. Geek conventions can be a safe, accepting haven for many who have been derided or shunned because of their hobbies in other social environments, but geek fandom is a very male space, where women, unfortunately, get treated poorly with disturbing regularity. I'm going to elaborate on this point by discussing one of my own personal experiences with creepiness at an anime convention. Before I begin, I'd like to note that this incident happened when I was much younger; I would probably behave differently these days (hindsight is 20/20):

I was hanging out in the Video Game room, watching people play a fighting game, and I wasn’t really bothered to play it. This guy walked up and stood beside me to watch the others play the game, as one does. This fellow was a very large man, in terms of height, and in terms of girth. He had thick glasses, unkempt clothing, and dark, messy, curly hair—in short, a typical geek. However, he was standing so close to me that I felt a little on my guard.

Like many people at anime conventions, my badge name was different from my real name. In this case, my badge name was 'Samus Aran', because I like Metroid so much. He started the conversation with me by looking down at my badge—keep in mind he was already standing very close to me—and saying, "So you're a Metroid fan, huh?" We started talking about Metroid and fighting games. That was okay. He started talking about his online girlfriend in Taiwan, who he was going to visit very soon. That was fine, too. But then he started bragging about how he spent over £100 on anime porn at a previous convention. He kept going on and on about his girlfriend, their long distance relationship, and his porn collection. The fact that he discussed his porn collection and his girlfriend at the same time disturbed me and creeped me out, because he was just so keen on bragging about both. He wasn't talking about her like she was an actual person, but a trophy, another part of his collection. I also felt undertones of Asian fetishisation/exotification in the way he talked about his girlfriend, and this racial dynamic also made me uncomfortable, as someone who identifies as Asian.

At this point, I really wanted to leave, I didn't want to hear about his porn or his girlfriend anymore, and I was thinking of how to extract myself from the conversation without making a scene. Luckily I spotted a friend of mine, and excused myself.

In hindsight, I consider what happened to me to be sexual harassment. Uninvited, a total stranger launched into a discussion of a sexual nature completely out of the blue. This dude had no sense or understanding of social boundaries, and it made me feel very uncomfortable. I've experienced a few other incidents of general creepiness from men at conventions (and outside of conventions), and they were uncomfortable experiences as well.

My experiences were tame in comparison to what many women experience at fandom conventions. Sexual harassment, stalking, and even physical and sexual assault, are not recent problems at cons, either. The incident I described above happened to me nearly a decade ago.

I don't live in fear of going to cons. I've been going to and working at cons for a long time. If I didn't enjoy them, I wouldn't go. My good experiences of conventions outweighs these few negative experiences, so I hope people don't get the impression that I am against fandom or conventions. I'm against people getting hurt at conventions.

I have insight on this issue from another point of view. I've been on Otakon Staff for ten years* now. Otakon is the second largest anime convention in the United States. Every year, about 23 000 people attend. When you work behind the scenes in running a convention you know that there are incidents where convention staffers have to help out a member who is having problems with another member, and sometimes those incidents involve sexual harassment. That is reality. I won't get into details, but there are definitely a lot of disgusting and creepy people out there.

SDCC has continuing problems with sexual harassment. Last year, people called for a no-tolerance sexual harassment policy to be instituted. The convention administration has remained silent and not addressed the concerns of women and members who complained. I looked through the SDCC website and found no policies on sexual harassment or any type of behavioural policy**. The pleas of fans last year seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. This year, there were yet again incidents of sexual harassment at SDCC.

For EA to run a contest like this in complete ignorance of the problems that fan conventions have with stalking, sexual harassment, and other problem behaviours, was not a good move, in my opinion. Many men at fandom cons already have problems recognising social boundaries and the personal space of women who are fellow attendees, without any external prompting or encouragement. Contests like the Dante's Inferno "Sin to Win" promotion invites contestants to go beyond social boundaries by committing "acts of lust" with any booth babe. It puts not only EA employees workers at risk but also the employees of other companies. Furthermore, it leaves the door open for this type of inappropriate behaviour towards regular attendees, who may not have the same protection or power as those with exhibitor badges.  As the link round-up post concludes, "It encourages behaviour that makes cons unsafe for women."

EA's response? A not-real apology (saved here, in case they try to take it down again), the kind that blames you for being offended and "confused". It didn't actually address people's concerns.

While EA may learn from this, I wonder whether this even registered on the radar of SDCC convention staff.

* At the moment I'm not active because living on the West Coast makes travel to Baltimore to staff a con impractical.

** Full disclosure: Shortly, after reading the blog posts about what happened SDCC last year, as well as the ridiculousness of the Open Source Boob Project, and after the establishment of the Con Anti-Harassment Project, I proposed to other Otakon Staffers that Otakon institute a sexual harassment policy. Convention leadership felt that the very broad existing disruptive behaviour policy already included sexual harassment and was adequate for the con.

Ada Lovelace Day: Spotlight on Paulina Bozek

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day to draw attention to women in technology, in which bloggers from around the world write about a woman in tech that they admire. Today, I'm going to write about Paulina Bozek, a fellow LSE alumna and the Executive Producer of one of my favourite videogames, SingStar.

Paulina Bozek is the award winning Executive Producer, and Game Director of the SingStar franchise of games, which was developed at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Studio London. Prior to her stint at Sony, Bozek had previously worked at Ubisoft and GameLoft. She later decided to pursue a Master's degree in Media and Communications in the media@LSE department at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 2001 - 2002. After graduating from the LSE she joined Sony in 2003, starting out as an Associate Producer. 

Bozek is cited as one of the key developers of the SingStar franchise, having guided the direction of conceptual technology towards the popular social music game we know today. About the early days in her role as a game designer on SingStar, she says:

"SingStar already existed as technology -- that is, the programmers were developing something with which players would interact by singing rather than pressing buttons. My role was to look at it as a possible product and ask questions like how will it play? Who is it for? The technology had already existed for a couple of years. It could have been used as a music tuition tool, but we wanted to develop something more intuitive that didn't require a manual -- just a pick up and play game that would be entertaining and fun."

A significant number of women were part of the development team for SingStar, which is a rarity in the games industry. Thinking about why this was the case, Bozek mused:

"It might have something to do with the nature of the game as it is not as male-focused as many games and women might see it as relevant to them, but lots of people are interested in working on it and women in the industry also play 'male' games."

The game was initially going to be targeted to women and girls, with the knowledge that it would appeal beyond the target. Bozek emphasised how important it was to keep the target market in mind in the development process:

Music is universal. The development team used music as a way of segmenting target audiences, i.e. through music genres. The key lessons Paulina has drawn from SingStar is that it is all about the user and their experience and that it is central to innovative game design to prioritise what brings most value to the experience.

SingStar was released on the PlayStation 2 to mainstream popular, as well as critical, acclaim in 2004. As of February 2009, the SingStar franchise has sold over 15 million units in the PAL region alone. SingStar has achieved a huge success in bringing gaming to traditionally non-gaming markets. Very few videogames get advertised in publications targeted to women, and SingStar is one of them. SingStar and its creative team won the 2004 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Originality in Video Games. Paulina Bozek also won the first ever BAFTA Interactive New Talent Award in 2004.

In 2008, Bozek was named one of the 'Top 35 Women Under 35' in Management Today. She was also listed as one of the members of the exclusive Courvoisier Future 500 List for 2008. After her success at Sony, she joined Atari in 2008 to develop games for a new internal games studio.

Media consumption is still gendered in many ways, and this is abundantly clear in the realm of videogames, where there seems to be a huge divide in terms of what is specifically targeted to women and girls, and what is targeted to males. Furthermore, games that are enjoyed by both sexes, such as World of Warcraft, are seen by mainstream, traditionally non-gaming audiences as targeted specifically to men and boys. Unfortunately, game developers and publishers continue to hold the assumption that the vast majority of their audience is male, and this assumption impacts development at every turn. They base these assumptions upon past sales demographics. However based upon current trends in games marketing and advertising, it seems that many aren't looking to future potential -- that their games could grow beyond current markets -- or they are averse to taking risks and spending money on promoting games to non-traditional markets.

94% of teenage girls aged 12 - 17 and 50% of women in the United States play videogames, so there is huge potential for growth in games, but it requires a lot of cultural and social change in the way non-gamers and gamers, alike view games and gaming. It requires companies to shift how they market and design games so that they are more inclusive to women and girls. The marketing for SingStar included demographic segments that are usually completely ignored by the games industry, such as women, teenage girls, and gay men. The marketing and box art for SingStar games typically includes at least one, if not multiple, women in active roles. Furthermore, the women that feature in SingStar marketing materials are generally not depicted in hyper-sexualised ways. All told, these marketing tactics send important signals to consumers that Sony has thought of them during the development process, that Sony has made it a point to include them, and that Sony wants them to play these games.

Designing games with inclusiveness in mind, where the design team operates with the key assumption that women and girls will comprise of at least half of their audience, has positive impacts. Bozek says that "Women can bring a different point of view" to game development, and that "the industry is looking for more women and wants to get more girls playing games to expand the market."

I admire Paulina Bozek because she played a pivotal role in developing a piece of voice technology from a product that could have been a niche educational toy into a cool, fun, competitive singing game that achieved mainstream and critical success. She and her team recognised that women and girls are an important part of their audience, and this is reflected in SingStar's marketing and advertising. In turn, their excellence, innovation, and hard work were rewarded and recognised by consumers.

[List of  Participating Blogs]

WOC and Allies Blog Carnival - March 2009

The latest WOC (women of colour) and allies blog carnival is up. Two of my posts appear there, in the section on Gaming.

Renee, the organiser, writes about the aims of the WOC blog carnival:

Tell It Women Of Color Speak, is dedicated to giving voice to women of color. Historically we have been marginalized, exploited and silenced. Throughout our difficult history we have struggled to maintain our dignity and self-worth.

There are a lot of really fantastic posts on a variety of topics, so do check it out.

[Read]

RapeLay: Reinforcing Rape Culture

There's some discussion going on in gaming circles about how RapeLay, a game in which the goal of the player is to violently rape women, was removed from Amazon.com. The best analysis of this controversy that I have read so far doesn't come from gaming blogosphere or the mainstream media, both of which seem to have missed an important point about what the existence of games like RapeLay say about society. Cara at The Curvature writes:

As someone who doesn’t think that violent video games caused the Columbine shootings (or any other incredibly violent act) any more than Marilyn Manson’s music did, I’m entirely inclined to agree that playing this game would not cause someone to rape, and that if it did somehow give someone the push they need to commit the act, they would already have to be a misogynistic person with violent tendencies.

Which is why it’s not the point. The point isn’t "oh my god, this game is going to create rapists."  The point is "oh my god, this game is going to make rapists think that people are on their side." Which, of course, too many people actually are already, through their rape apologist jokes and excuses. The premise of the game reinforces the idea of rape as okay and not a big deal. It reinforces the idea that women exist for the sexual pleasure and abuse of men.  And the preview of the game Boing Boing, which does not include any actual rapes but only attempted rapes, also ends up reinforcing the dangerous and stereotypical idea of your "real" rape victim who always cries, calls out in distress and overall completely breaks down at actual violence or threats of it.

Genuine and logical criticism of the game, I think, isn’t about it causing an actual number of rapes, but about it supporting and expanding the conditions that already exist, virtually around the world, that allow rape to be committed. The game might not create rapists, but it does make life more comfortable for the rapists who already exist, and life a lot more difficult for their victims.

The entire post is definitely worth a read.

[Read]

Comparing Female Protagonists: Portal and Mirror's Edge

Over at The Hathor Legacy, a blog about women and gender issues in media, Kris Ligman wrote a post comparing Portal (2007)and Mirror's Edge (2008). I disagreed with most of it, and I will go through the main points.

Ligman asserts that Mirror's Edge was trying to copy Portal, and based upon superficial evidence, she draws comparisons between the two characters and the marketing of the two games. The only similarities the two games have are: woman of colour protagonist (Chell's race/ethnicity are ambiguous), first-person perspective, minimalistic graphical user interface (GUI), and a theme song with the same name. It's hard to find weight to the imitation argument because the games have quite different design philosophies and different goals for their lead characters. It terms of marketing, it's difficult to draw useful comparisons, because each was released with different promotional goals in mind.

She first argues that Portal was "subversively feminist" because Valve de-emphasised Chell's sex and ethnicity:

Why is this progressive? Well, as much as video game theorists often try to pose games as narratives, video games are frequently about as character-driven as pinball. First-person titles in particular are known to dispense with developing their protagonists beyond a certain extent because the protagonist is merely an avatar; a proxy. It makes sense (lazy sense), then, for most game designers to unerringly default to what is “neutral:” in many cases, something white and male. Even as gamers grow accustomed to different races and ethnicities for their leading men, casting a woman in the lead protagonist’s chair, as in film, is always a conscious choice and a statement. So if we’re talking presentation, what is bold about Portal’s Chell is that the game makes no effort to make any such statement. She is a matter-of-fact component of the game that Valve does not attempt to either justify or show off.

Whilst Ligman believes that only Portal is progressive, I actually believe that both games are progressive in their own ways. Portal is progressive in that it plops the player into a very standard blank slate FPS character in Chell. This normalises the notion of having a woman as an avatar, which is a good thing. Mirror's Edge is progressive in that it normalises quite another notion -- having a woman as your protagonist and star of the videogame in a way that is not, in my view, particularly problematic from a sex or race perspective. This is also a good thing.

Ligman goes on to discuss Faith's presentation in Mirror's Edge:

Contrast this with the recent Mirror’s Edge and how their female protagonist, Faith, is presented. First, the player is always aware of Faith and her gender: we hear her panting as she runs and grunt when she gets hurt; we see bits of her body out of the corner of her vision and can see her reflection in glass windows. We also hear her address other characters, and she serves as our narrator as well. None of this is bad, but for a title so overtly attempting to parrot Portal that it even commissioned a theme song with the same name, we already see significant divergence from the other’s approach.

Portal and Mirror's Edge were designed with different goals in mind. Chell is a typical first-person perspective tabula rasa character. She has no personality to speak of; she is merely an avatar for the player. Portal provides no explanations for how Chell got to where she is, no insight into Chell's feelings, and no overarching plot to provide a framework for Chell's activities. Portal is a primarily goal-driven game. The game play is the most prominent selling point of the game, not the story and not the character.

However, Faith is an atypical first-person perspective character. She has a personality, motivations, and emotions. Mirror's Edge is a character-driven game. The story of Mirror's Edge provides context for all of Faith's actions and motivations. There is a definite goal by the developers to actively tell a story (through dialogue and cut scenes), which is not the case with Portal, where there is very little active storytelling. Whilst the game play is one of the selling points of Mirror's Edge (like most games, really), it was not the only marketing hook. We also had the additional selling point of the plot.

One of the design underpinnings of Mirror's Edge is freedom of movement, and the way they wanted to accomplish this was through making the player feel as if she is Faith. The reason that the experience of embodying Faith is played up to the degree it is in Mirror's Edge is not only because DICE had the distinct design goal of providing this immersive experience to the player, but also because of the character-driven nature of the game. I think it's incredibly progressive for a game to do this, because in most character-driven games, you have no choice but to play a white male.

The scope of the two games was also different. Portal was never meant to provide a stand alone gaming experience -- it was packaged with other games when it was first released. It wasn't long enough or marketable enough to stand alone. Mirror's Edge, however, was meant to provide the player with a well-rounded, stand alone gaming experience. Mirror's Edge has a Story Mode, Time Trial Mode, online functionalities, and unlockable extras. Portal did not have anywhere near the same amount of content as Mirror's Edge either in terms of actual game play or extras.

I don't think the argument that Mirror's Edge was trying to copy Portal is a particularly strong one, given the fact that each design team had hugely different goals underpinning the projects and that Mirror's Edge has only very superficial similarities to Portal. I also don't think there is any weight behind criticisng Mirror's Edge for failing to be more like Portal.

Ligman later analyses Faith and the Mirror's Edge marketing campaign:

Then, there’s Faith herself: featured prominently in the flurry of promotional materials and emblazoned across the game’s box art, she is anything but the virtual easter egg that Chell is. She’s ‘the Female as Exotic:’ a character whose difference becomes part of the sales pitch. The lithe and pretty Asian-American Faith is cast by the game’s story as an individual alienated by society, who through a combination of poor life circumstances and innate athletic talent has taken up an illegal, high-risk occupation as a black market rooftop courier.

I did not view the marketing campaign of Mirror's Edge as particularly sexualised or exotifying Asians. I strongly feel that it wasn't overt, in fact. It's not like I wasn't expecting problematic content in the marketing, either, as a feminist and an Asian woman. If anything, I was pleasantly surprised to see very little (if any) Asian exotification or othering with Mirror's Edge's marketing. I never got the impression that EA/DICE sought to slavishly to pander to the male gaze. I didn't think EA/DICE were really flaunting Faith's sexuality or her "exotic" race. Mirror's Edge's marketing campaign depicted Faith as strong, skilled, fierce, and active. I didn't see Faith's presence or treatment as any more prominent than the presence of lead male characters in the marketing campaigns of their respective. Mirror's Edge is a character-driven game, and it's natural for promotional materials to display her image. Therefore, it is a highly problematic idea that Faith's mere presence in the marketing materials exotifies her, that simply existing as an Asian American woman is an overt, and blatant cry for attention to her sex, gender, and race (tekanji has more on this). It's like the problematic notion that women are just asking to be harassed because they exist (see the experience of any woman who attempts to speak on Xbox Live).

Let's recall how Portal was marketed. Portal was not marketed at anywhere near the same level as the other games contained in The Orange Box. Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, which were both contained in The Orange Box along with Portal, were marketed heavily. Portal may have gotten some passing promotion, but all of the marketing muscle was behind The Orange Box in general, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 specifically. The reason that Portal was included in The Orange Box was because Valve did not believe that it could be packaged on its own and still sell reasonably well. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 were marketed and promoted more heavily than Portal because an innovative first-person puzzle game where you don't rack up a huge body count and in which you play a non-sexualised, mostly invisible woman, does not have the same recognisable marketability as Half-Life 2 or Team Fortress 2. We have to remember that the typical target audience for games like HL2 and TF2 is slightly different from that of console gamers. I think marketers believe they are selling to an even more sexist, male dominated audience than console games.

I don't think it's a useful comparison to draw, really, because Portal, by itself, was not viewed by Valve as a AAA game, and Mirror's Edge was viewed as standalone AAA material by DICE. That is why Mirror's Edge had the level of marketing muscle behind it, and that is why The Orange Box as a whole had a similar level marketing muscle behind it, and Portal, on its own, was not marketed to the same degree.

This sentence from Ligman also stood out to me:

In the long run, however, the fact that Mirror’s Edge and its surrounding marketing call so much attention to her as female and non-white is not doing female, non-white protagonists many favors.

Again, I disagree. I don't think Mirror's Edge or its marketing called much overt attention to Faith as female or Faith as Asian. Therefore, personally, as an Asian woman, I am happy to see someone of my race and sex portrayed in the way that Faith is -- strong, driven, skilled, aggressive, independent, etc. It's incredibly rare to find a WOC (woman of color) like Faith in videogames, in a starring role, and potrayed in a pretty positive way. When I think of the few female Asian videogame characters (and I can't think of that many) it makes me sad at the level of hyper-sexualisation and exotification out there. It's bad enough that I rarely ever see myself represented in media, it's even worse when the representations I do see are so appallingly bad. I think Faith is a massive step forward for WOC protagonists in games.

Ligman concludes:

Both games should certainly be acknowledged for choosing to go with female, non-white protagonists over the typical option. And Mirror’s Edge, if it succeeds in nothing else, does manage to inch along the positive trend which Portal brought to the fore in 2007. Still, the key is not imitation, but reflecting seriously on what is presented and how. Portal brought us something distinctive, while Mirror’s Edge, when it was all said and done, just gave us more of the same.

I am a little baffled about the mention of "trend" as I really don't know what this references. Again, I don't think that Mirror's Edge imitated Portal to a degree that it supports any of Ligman's arguments

There are so few non-sexualised, non-exotified Asian female protagonists in games, and I think that to call Mirror's Edge and Faith "more of the same" or to state that Faith is not doing non-white protagonists many favours is a just absurd. Rather than doing a disservice to non-white female protagonists, I think Faith does the opposite, and for that, Mirror's Edge and Faith are both worthy of distinction.

I would suggest that a better comparison of marketing of AAA games that have female Asian protagonists (or even WOC) is Mirror's Edge and Heavenly Sword. If there is an example of an Asian woman marketed in the way that Ligman states -- playing up the character's sex appeal, othering her, and highlighting and exotifying her sex, race, and culture -- it's Nariko from Heavenly Sword. Not Faith.

I think it's a massive step forward for DICE, the developers of Mirror's Edge, to consciously and willingly decide not to depict Faith in a sexually objectified way, and to try and stay true to her character and her profession in terms of the way she is presented. I am so sure that there were some marketers at EA Games, or maybe even internally at DICE, who wanted to play up Faith's sex appeal, but the DICE developers seem to have resisted that. I work in the games industry, and I can tell you that this would have been no easy task. It is the job of a marketer to advise companies to do whatever it takes for them to move product off of those shelves. Conventional marketing "wisdom" in the industry is that sexy women on game boxes attracts (young, male) customers and will sell bajillions of copies. This conventional "wisdom" is depressingly common in marketing departments industry-wide. For Mirror's Edge to have defied that in terms of its marketing is impressive to me. I viewed DICE's attempts to not treat Faith as an exotic Asian sex object as successful, contrary to Ligman's view.

In conclusion, I don't think Ligman's comparisions and analyses of the two games and the two protagonists supports her assertion that Mirror's Edge exotifies Faith as an Asian woman.

Parkour and Gender

I'm still playing Mirror's Edge. Free time has not been so readily available. Another reason for my slow progress is that I'm masochistically attempting to complete the game without firing a weapon. I also really suck at platformers, and a first-person platformer is even more difficult for me. Mirror's Edge is not nearly as frustrating a platformer as Castlevania: The Adventure for the GameBoy, which is one of the most difficult, frustrating, and unforgiving platformers I have ever played, but Mirror's Edge at times skirts the same level of frustration. I'm sticking with it because I really like the game.

The design team of Mirror's Edge drew a lot of inspiration from practitioners of parkour, an activity which stresses practicality and efficiency, and challenges traceuses (women) and traceurs (men) to get from one point to another in the quickest and most efficient way possible.

Today, I read an article called, "Parkour: Issues of Gender" which discusses gender issues in parkour culture. The article begins by stating that parkour culture, which is a gender-neutral activity and espouses a philosophy of universality, is male-dominated and has become masculinised:

...the image of Parkour has heavily coincided with conceptions of Western masculine heteronormative behaviour. While the media is largely at fault for this, the Parkour community has also played a role.

...it is important to note that almost all male bodies portrayed in the mass media of Parkour have been spectacularized. 

It is often said that competition is a natural and inherent trait to the human species, and one can find intense competitiveness when looking at anything from football to dance to placement in a symphony. While this is true, direct competition is culturally engendered as masculine, despite the sex of the parties involved.

The article then goes on to discuss participation in parkour by women, in a section that echoes many an industry article regarding how many women work in the videogame industry:

It goes without saying that because few women get involved in the discipline, even fewer step up to play a leadership role. Yes, there are a few scattered here and there, who work largely under the radar for whatever reason. Ultimately, without female representation, less women will be inclined to become involved.

It discusses the differences between male and female bodies and how this may affect interest in parkour by women. Many women interested in parkour erroneously believe that they will build up muscle mass equivalent to men if they get involved in the activity; they are concerned about looking too masculine. Objectification of women in parkour culture, also something that we experience in the games industry (and everywhere else, really) was also touched upon:

Traceuse or not, women are rendered cultural spectacles. So much of “femininity” is derived in appearance, in making up what is “femininity.” It is when we see this that we understand that gender is a cultural fiction, because a woman must assert her femininity on the outside.

Quite simply, when it is spectacularized, the value of Parkour as a whole is diminished. All we do and all we have worked for, in a single instant, is trivialized into obscurity and meaningless cultural babble.

The concern for traceuses is that they will be initially and immediately spectacularized, and in a completely different manner than traceurs. This is often, in popular culture, referred to as “objectification.”

The author states that parkour is an activity for both sexes, all genders, all people, and for it to have such a masculine culture and to be so male-dominated goes against those principles, therefore practitioners should have more awareness of gender issues gender equality within the discipline.

I thought the article was quite interesting and a good read.

It's interesting that DICE decided to go with a female protagonist in Mirror's Edge, given that parkour culture is so male-dominated, but not so surprising considering their goal:

We’ve spent time in developing Faith. And the important thing for us was that she was human, that she was more real. 

We really wanted to get away from the typical portrayal of women in games, that they’re all just kind of tits and ass in a steel bikini. We wanted her to look athletic and fit and strong [enough] that she could do the things that she’s doing.

I for one am glad that DICE chose to have a female lead in the game, and made the decision to depict Faith in a more realistic and far less sexualised and objectified way as compared to other female videogame protagonists. Hurrah for DICE!

[Read via Iris Gaming Network]