Gender in gaming has been an extremely controversial topic across game journalism for the last two or so years. With anything to do with social politics there are very extreme divisive sides and heated subjective opinions that have created an intense land field around the topic. As such this week I will not attempt to summarise the entire issue but rather present a few of my personal thoughts on the topic:
-The definition of "Strong Female Characters" is extremely subjective: I have a couple of friends who were heavily into feminism and in my friendship with them I have spent a lot of time researching different feminist theories and spent a lot of time in discussions with them trying to sympathize with their opinion and listen to their wants and ideas about how the video game industry could improve. For a long time based on two particular friends, I thought they wanted to see better written strong female protagonists. Female warriors either wielding a gun or a sword, who could go toe to toe with female counterparts, are not oversexualised and designed with muscle and sensible armour. What these particular friends wanted were female characters that were hardly any different from male characters in terms of role and ability. And for a while I thought this is what all women wanted in games. Then I started dating my girlfriend. My girlfriend was a whole new world and I had to very quickly learn modern day third wave feminism doesn't apply to everyone. My girlfriend loves pink and feminine qualities. She is constantly disappointed when playing games with me that there aren't enough "pretty" female characters, pink clothing and fashion options in the games we play. A very opposite set of ideals to what my feminist friends want out of their variation of "strong" being masculine qualities given to female characters, my girlfriend would be much more attracted to a video game if "strong" was defined by strong feminine qualities given to female characters. This has taught me a lot that gaming needs to be very diverse with the definition of diverse not defined by a single ideology of social politic. -If you want to see something in a game, make it. I am not a fan of retconning culture. It bugs me when changes to established characters or canon take place, especially when minority groups are shouting the loudest and putting a lot of pressure to change someone else's artistic design and choice. As such I don't think game developers should ever have to be bullied to change their characters, or narrative (Unless they promised and sold a product lying about what the end product delivered: I.E. see Mass Effect 3 ending debacle). If people want to see something in a game, they shouldn't call for a change, censorship or retcon of art. They should go out there and start working and talking about the game they want to see. An example of this I am going to use is not specifically related to gaming, but when Marvel Comics heard a call from people wanted more diverse superheroes they could look up to, rather than retcon a pre-existing character (like D.C. Comics are more likely to do), Marvel launched a variety of legacy characters with well written backstories, worldviews and mantras that justified their existence in the world. One of my favourite characters in the Marvel Universe at the moment is Ms. Marvel, A.K.A. Kamala Khan a teenage Muslim girl from New Jersey. She is one the best written diverse characters I've ever seen because she deals with issues of her own culture, she makes her own choices about how to behave as a superhero but she doesn't step on the toes of the previous Captain Marvel, she's not a fill in or a replacement, she's her own character leading the front lines of representative for both female comic book fans and Middle eastern and Islamic comic-book fans. -The last point I wanted to touch on incredible briefly is Gamergate. I do not have the time to get into the whole ordeal of Gamergate. But please check out my links in my references below. Gamergate is an issue that impacted game journalism last year and I think it it is one of the most concerning and important issues that has ever arisen in gaming culture. Basically when Game Journalists were caught out for unethical and inappropriate behaviour (to do with collusion, biased journalism and mistreatment of their own fan base) they turned around blamed the entirety of gamer culture, shifting the blame and responsibility from their own actions and on to radical feminist social justice side issues that all gamers were “privileged white and male” and all gamers were “misogynistic and sexist”. This was a huge abuse of power as the influence of game journalism grasped most of the web warping the narrative away from important discussion of gameplay and how we can make games actually a better place for female gamers. It was a dark time for game journalism as they pushed "gender studies" theories as their means for reviewing a game, rather than the actual gameplay and integrity of game. Games especially indie games could lose points in a review or be refused to be reviewed because game journalism acted on subjective systems of bias and gender politics when reviewing games. I really personally believe after tracking the events of Gamergate for an entire year that the games media behaved disgracefully and really hurt a lot of gamers of all genders and ethnic groups with their forced stereotypes and assumptions that were ultimately about them receiving more money from clickbait articles. References: https://gitgud.io/gamergate/gamergateop/tree/master/Current-Happenings
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AuthorBen Spanos is currently playing Undertale, Uncharted: Among Thieves and Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes. Archives
March 2018
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