Censorship in Games - Are Developers Pandering to the Wrong Audience?

In spite of not following gender issues in gaming as closely as I used to, I still follow plenty of people on Twitter to keep myself informed of what gaming's most easily-offended critics are currently annoyed about and how gender issues play a part in gaming nowadays.

It isn't like there has been a shortage of issues to write about. For Street Fighter V, Capcom released an update that switched camera angles for two characters -- Cammy and R. Mika -- to make their poses less provocative. There have been two localisation changes for Xenoblade Chronicles X; adding more clothing to a bikini-clad thirteen-year-old character and removing a slider to change a custom female character's bust size. The Western release of the newest Fatal Frame game has several revealing alternate costumes omitted, replaced with costumes paying tribute to Samus and Zelda instead. And most recently, Koei Tecmo US has chosen not to release Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 in the West, only for Play-Asia.com to criticise the move and pledge to sell the English-language version released in Asian markets through their website.

There are two reasons behind all of this censorship/refusal to ship games to the West. The first is specific to Xenoblade and Fatal Frame and it's due to Nintendo's steadfast family-friendly image. They're basically doing the exact same thing they did back in the late eighties and early nineties, when they would censor minor instances of nudity, as was the case in games like Final Fantasy VI, seen here:

Examples from the Japanese Super Famicom/GBA, American SNES and Western GBA releases of FFVI.

Where this falls apart is when games like Fatal Frame deal with horror, death and suicide and these are somehow considered less controversial than a woman in lingerie as an alternate costume. The number of games that feature dismemberment, disembowelings and beheadings are somehow considered acceptable compared to a game featuring women playing volleyball. The gaming media has stirred up a non-controversy to such an extent that Japanese developers are under the impression that all Western gamers are uncomfortable or offended by sexuality, rather than just a very vocal minority with high-profile positions. And no talented game developer wants to be called a 14-year-old boy by some talentless hack at Kotaku.

Which leads to the second reason: good ol' fashioned prudishness. I know I've said this before -- probably several times -- but it's remarkable that an audience who claim to want video games to "mature" as a medium have such a fundamentally immature attitude towards sexuality in games. What kind of adult feels threatened by a bunch of polygons on a screen? Essentially what we have here is a tiny contingent of critics who feel it is appropriate to bully and shame developers into making the games they want, based on what they feel is suitable for all Western audiences. Gaming critics have reached the peak of entitlement and the worrying thing is that they're the ones being pandered to by game developers now.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with characters in games being sexually attractive. Developers have a right to create any kinds of characters they want and audiences, men and women, have the right to enjoy them (as a matter of fact, one of the criticisms against Xenoblade's removal of the bust size slider was that it prevented large-chested female gamers creating characters similar in appearance to themselves). Petty authoritarian bullies stomping their feet and throwing a tantrum because they feel uncomfortable is their issue. It isn't the developer's responsibility to change their game because of hurt feelings.

Regarding Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, game developer American McGee wrote this on Facebook regarding the whole issue. He isn't the only person to speak out against this type of censorship. Following the news that DOAX3 wasn't going to receive a Western release, a female voice actress tweeted this:

(The tweet has since been deleted so, out of respect for the voice actress, I've redacted her name. I wouldn't want her to suffer online harassment or lose voice acting work for speaking out against feminism.)

Apart from the obvious reasons why this is an issue -- games having content removed/not being localised because of puritanical outrage -- it's also an issue because of the recurring claim from gaming's Social Justice Warrior and feminist critics that "we're not coming to take your games away". Katherine Cross wrote about it on Polygon, also quoting Carolyn Petit saying the same thing. Jim Sterling said it about Anita Sarkeesian too.

Yet it's remarkable when censorship of games does occur, how quick this same crowd preaching about sexism from their soapboxes acts as if they don't have any real power whatsoever. As if these same journalists who have given countless column inches to Anita Sarkeesian for the past three years, who called game developers 14-year-old boys, awarded Bayonetta 2 lower scores due to being offended by a sexualised character rather than anything to do with the game's quality, warped #GamerGate to be about sexism rather than ethics in journalism and gleefully used a mass shooting to their advantage tell people to get over Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 not coming to the West are suddenly the least-influential people in the games industry.

As Anita Sarkeesian is so fond of telling us in her Tropes Vs Women videos, "these examples do not exist in a vacuum" and I've only mentioned a few examples. Do these people really think high-profile gaming sites and Kickstarter/Intel-funded Youtube critics who have been arguing against sexually-attractive women in games for years are completely unrelated to sexualised elements in games being removed for the West (or the games not being localised at all)?

If so, it sounds like another example of playing the victim to me; even with their monopoly on gaming journalism and the many years of hammering home the same warped sexism narrative, they still insist that they're helpless, silenced victims.

I actually planned on writing about Feminist Frequency's new video -- Jonathan McIntosh's "5 Ways Men Can Help End Sexism", the first video from Feminist Frequency I've watched in around two years -- but had more to say on this subject than I thought. I may write about McIntosh's video too because, even though it's more of what we've come to expect from McIntosh and Feminist Frequency -- Jonathan sounds more like Anita than Anita does, bizarrely -- it is a hilarious video.

Merry Christmas!

"Ethics & Diversity"

I'm sorry for not updating sooner but I came down with an illness at the same time I planned on writing a new blog.

College has started up again and my games design course kicked off with a focus on Ethics & Diversity as part of the induction. There isn't a lot to say about it -- just as there wasn't much discussion about it last year -- but I'll relay what was discussed.

Rather than a typical class of students, this year's course involves each group working together as if they're each an individual studio. Each "studio" has its own name, logo, etc. but before we reached that stage, we had to research mission statements from existing developers and create a "do's and don'ts" poster about ethics and diversity, after discussing it for a while.

Prior to creating the posters, the students had to list examples of discrimination they could think of either in games, the gaming community or the industry, under different headings on big sheets of paper the tutor provided. Headings like "Have you ever seen discrimination in the games industry?" and "List some examples of current ethical issues in the games industry". The one that stood out was "Why do you think women are under-represented in games?"

It's clear that it's a loaded question and your response is probably the same as all of mine were (but I didn't list). Could there be more female characters in games? Yes, as well as more varied and diverse characters in general. Do I think women are under-represented in games? No. I don't believe that just because few AAA games have female characters means women are under-represented and games with female protagonists are plentiful if you cast your net wider, particularly towards Japanese titles. Even if only AAA games are focused on, there are still plenty of strong female characters being represented, even while not playable. Plus, I don't think it's stressed often enough that just because there's a main character in a game with the same skin colour, sex and sexual orientation as me, that doesn't mean he "represents" me in any way. Sharing a few similar characteristics doesn't mean that character is representative of me or anyone else who shares those characteristics. I've spoken about this before, saying it's often easier for me to identify with someone who doesn't share my characteristics, such as a female protagonist, than a character who does that I dislike (Final Fantasy X's Tidus being being one of many examples).

In fairness to the tutor, he seemed reasonable enough. I spoke to him about having "heard" counter-arguments before to accusations of sexism in games -- without naming names, I mentioned that some critics had a habit of taking examples out of context and diminishing good female characters by ignoring/minimising their most praiseworthy attributes -- and he seemed happy to hear me out.

When speaking to the entire class, however, there were two things that bothered me. Firstly, a student mentioned women in the games industry being paid less, which the tutor acknowledged and also mentioned that it was common across all industries. This particular "fact" has been debunked many times over the years, to the point that it ended up on Christina Hoff Sommers' TIME piece "5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die" (and Sommers also wrote this article for the Daily Beast if you would like more info on the subject or you can check out the report yourself). Not to go into it too much but the wage gap doesn't take into account hours worked, experience, incentives for relocating, travelling long distances or being poached from another company. It's the same story in the case of the games industry but bear in mind that games have been a male-dominated industry for thirty years (and still is). Senior figures in the industry are more likely to be male and their salaries are obviously going to be larger than those of the entry-level employees that their salaries are being compared against (which, while still male-dominated, is more likely to have more female employees because the games industry has tried to appeal to women more in recent years). When you collectively weigh the male salaries against the female ones, it's obvious that the male salary is going to be higher overall.

The problem is that saying that in a classroom when everyone except the tutor is silent makes you look like a nut. Just saying "that's not true" doesn't do much good and it wasn't as though I could back it up with a PowerPoint presentation on the subject.

The second thing that bothered me was when the tutor asked outright, "has anyone here not seen any examples of discrimination in games?" The problem with that is it occurred after talking about the wage gap, after the class had wracked their brains to come up with examples of discrimination to write underneath the headings and after everyone had read out at least one example. After that, nobody is going to say "I haven't" and I doubt they would have even at the start of the session. It's also a loaded question, given it's not structured to account for answers like, "sure but [context, artistic direction, etc.]". That's not to say there isn't discrimination in the games industry -- most notably in online games, where trolls are indiscriminate about who they discriminate against -- but I wouldn't describe, say, the women in Dead Or Alive as an example of "discrimination" or "misogyny". Those terms are too strong to describe something so minor and waters-down the severity of actual discrimination and misogyny. I know this has all been said before but it's worth repeating.

At some point, one of the things the tutor said was something like, "ethics and diversity has become a bigger issue in recent years and will only become bigger as time goes on". To that all I have to say is ... great! One of the biggest misconceptions gaming's Social Justice Warrior critics have towards people who critique their viewpoints is that we don't want to have the conversation. That's not the case at all. I want this conversation as long as it is a fair conversation, with all viewpoints being given equal consideration. To date, that has not been the case.

Comparing 2002 to 2014: How Have Things Changed?

This blog post features spoilers for The Wolf Among Us and Metal Gear Solid 2.

I apologise for not updating more regularly but, as you'll know by now, it's mainly due to college work building up at inopportune moments. The final five weeks are coming up soon and I sense that the assignments are all going to be crammed in at once. Plus, if that wasn't enough, I've been avoiding gaming sites like the plague because I was intentionally trying to stay away from any information about Dark Souls II, wanting to go in completely blind, so if any major news about gender issues in gaming cropped up, I haven't heard about it. I know Anita Sarkeesian accepted her GDC Ambassador award but I haven't watched her speech, and don't intend to.

Anyway, I'm finally able to finish this blog post that I started writing in early January. There'll be a few places where I write things like "lately" and "last week" but it's outdated in a few places. I even linked to the Penny-Arcade report at one point, which is no longer available. However, the majority of it was written today (and focuses on books from over ten years ago anyway), so it's not particularly important that it's a few months old:

Lately, I've had to scour a bunch of books on gaming as part of a written assignment, hoping to find anything that would help me with a hypothetical game proposal (e.g. - info on target audiences, costs, number of people in the development team, etc.). I found a few interesting perspectives from women working within the industry. Nothing groundbreaking but also not the typical opinions we read on gaming sites.

Marketing

"Additionally, as you’re proofreading, keep your audience in mind. Does the press release appeal to your audience? While your ultimate audience is the person reading the news, your first audience is the gaming press. Who are these people? Well, they’re males— mostly. When asked about the male/female ratio of game reviewers at Gamespot, Andrew Park noted that, “currently it’s infinity, which is what you get when you divide by zero.” While the age range of the gaming press is typically viewed as very young, Park reports the average age of Gamespot reviewers as mid-20s to early 30s. Aishoshi of IGN sees an age range of 16 to mid-50s. He also notes the male to female ratio as “about five males to one female over the course of our existence.” Take a glance down the editor photos in a PC Gamer and you’ll see a row of seven white, male faces and, at least at the time this article was written, one female face.

So, what does all that mean in terms of your press release? Not to say that these guys aren’t in touch with their feminine side, but your best bet will be to focus on the “dude!” elements of your story. How many levels? How many Mechs? How many weapons? Any intense bands on the soundtrack? While the number of female gamers appears to be growing, like it or not, until more women join the ranks of the gaming media, you should probably focus on the guy-appealing aspects of your game."

- Beverly Cambron, Secrets Of The Game Business (2002)

Last week, I was reading a blog over at Vicsor's Opinion about female representation in games and Vicsor brought up a game that I'd completely forgotten about over the last few months; Remember Me, the game that was at the centre of a Penny Arcade report about games starring female protagonists supposedly only being granted 40% of the marketing budget of a game starring a male protagonist. I don't think I mentioned that at the time but, if that's the case, it's pretty despicable that a publisher would actually designate more funding to games with male heroes. Yes, that is a significant case of women being held back in the games industry and everyone suffers because of it; we receive fewer interesting, varied protagonists and it shows a low opinion of the audience. Although I think it'd be interesting to see the budget breakdown of a game like Tomb Raider (2013), to see exactly how it can star a female character but need over five million sales to succeed. Although that's obviously the exception rather than the rule.

Vicsor's blog was in a similar vein. He took a look at the different representations of male and female characters and I like that we share the same opinions on varied characters. However, Vicsor did something that I can't believe so few others have thought to do, me included; look at the game sales. Although we'd need to look at more sales figures to see if there was a correlation, it did establish that in spite of the Penny Arcade report raising its stature, Remember Me still failed to sell. In spite of the criticism directed at cynical marketing teams, people didn't buy Remember Me to avoid turning the "people don't buy games with female protagonists" belief into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The marketing and sales figures for games starring female protagonists is a chicken-and-egg situation; does a lack of marketing cause them to have low sales or do low sales lead publishers to give them a smaller marketing budget?

Beverly Cambron's quote above doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know but it's interesting to know that developers write press releases for the sake of the reviewers as well as the mainstream audience. It makes me wonder if and how marketing for games has changed since 2002. Part of me thinks that, with diversity and gender issues in gaming becoming a bigger issue, this kind of cynical stereotyping of audiences would've died down ... but with the prevalence of the "stubbled male protagonist, face-pointing-down, eyes-pointing-up" pose on box art, it feels like the opposite. As Cambron's quote above shows, this isn't an accident; it's clear that marketing teams know they're pandering to some "dudebro" audience and stereotyping gamers (particularly male ones) as a marketing tactic. Ken Levine said much the same thing when defending the box art for Bioshock Infinite, saying that the design was made following visits to "frathouses and places like that". The reason behind this is the same one that was directed at Anita Sarkeesian about why certain female portrayals and plot devices exist; because the games industry is a business, with developers intending to make money. It might be unfortunate but if something works, why change it? In fact, if the cover of Bioshock Infinite and other games are anything to go by, it must've been a marketing tactic that was so successful that developers begun to emphasise the "'dude!' elements" a lot more.

I have to admit, part of me also wanted to include the Beverly Cambron quote as a response to the people who used to tell me, "don't you know that negative male portrayals are made by men?!" as if that somehow made it justifiable. It's unrealistic to assume any situation in gaming we currently dislike is the fault of either sex specifically.

Currently, according to Beverly's Twitter feed, "My game industry days are (happily) over".

Portrayals & Character Design

"There are stereotypes that people in the past have gone with that we have moved away from now. I don’t know that it’s necessarily because we’re trying to appeal more to the female market, or whether we’re just growing up as an industry. In a role-playing game now you wouldn’t want to have a halfnaked barbarian girl be your reward for some victory or whatever. We try to keep really blatant sexism out of it. I think that’s come because we’re more grown up as an industry, but it may be because Stormfront in particular is very sensitive to gender issues. We always have been, from when the company started.

Still, we always try to make the player characters in games, the protagonists, feel heroic and be of heroic proportions. In other words, if I’m playing a game and I as a woman decide to play a male character, I don’t necessarily want to see a weedy, weak-looking guy. I want to play a big barbarian. And if I’m playing a female character, I want to play a very attractive, strong, dynamic-looking woman. I think no matter what gender a player character is, you want their representation on-screen to be heroic, to be superhuman. I don’t mean like Superman, but more idealized than a real human would be.

In game stories these days, stereotypes are being broken down a lot more. There aren’t just weak women and strong men. There are also strong women and weak men. There are evil women, there are evil men. It’s a lot more even. There are a lot more women in gaming now, more women players. So it may just be an evolution of the culture that we’re reflecting as well. I’ve read some figures that seem to indicate women players tend to dislike complex interfaces, and so it may be part of the broader movement towards making simpler interfaces that’s brought in a larger female audience."

- Sarah Stocker, Swords and Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games (2002)

I think Sarah Stocker gets to the heart of what "escapism" is with these paragraphs. She describes exactly why we can (or should) accept exaggerated portrayals in games, in much the same way we do with comic book characters. I've heard female gamers on Youtube make the same comments about how characters of both sexes are exaggerated but it's refreshing to read these views from a woman actually working within the games industry.

I've been incredibly critical of the "male power fantasy" argument made by feminist critics in the past -- the idea that women in games are exaggerated because of sexism and objectification but men in games are exaggerated because "men want to look like that" -- and it's interesting to read Stocker's perspective on it. Unlike me, she supports the "power fantasy" argument but also states that it isn't gender-specific.

The theory that stereotypes are being broken down more and more is an interesting one. Remember that the above paragraphs were written in 2002 and, after a quick look at the games released in 2001 on Wikipedia, I can see why Sarah Stocker would make that claim. To be fair, I don't know when Stocker's piece for the book was written -- it could've been long before 2002, depending on how long it took for the book to be published -- but in 2001, we had prominent games such as:

• Max Payne - Female antagonist.
• Jak & Daxter - Male and female antagonist, featured a female mechanic as a supporting character.
• Half-Life: Decay - The PS2 version of Half-Life, featuring an extra co-op mode where both playable characters were female.
• Grand Theft Auto 3 - Female antagonist, "heroic" female criminals (such as Asuka, who provides the player with missions).
• Onimusha: Warlords - Playable male and female characters, evil male and female characters, male and female damsels in distress.
• Virtua Fighter 4 - Introduced female character Vanessa Lewis, with an unconventional muscular design.
• Ico - Certainly broke stereotypes about protagonists and damsels in distress, making the player care about the characters involved.
• Serious Sam - Parodied traditional stereotypes about big, strong, "manly" male heroes.
• Alien Vs Predator 2 - Heroic male and female marines, female secondary antagonist in the marine storyline and, as in all Alien games, the Alien Queen is an antagonist.
• Fatal Frame/Project Zero - Female hero, female antagonist, male damsel in distress.
• Final Fantasy X - Several female protagonists, a female antagonist (Yunalesca), practically everyone is a damsel in distress at some point.

I'd also add Metal Gear Solid 2 to the list, since I think Olga, Fortune and Emma Emmerich are all strong female characters in their own way but that's more of a judgment call; they all die by the end of the game and I'm sure people would take issue with Olga being sexualised at the start of of the game (even though, y'know, the end of the game features the player controlling a naked Raiden). Oh, and there's also Oni, which has a female protagonist but I've never played it (so maybe she's portrayed horribly. Let me know in the comments if you've played Oni). I just thought I'd bring it up because that game looks awesome and I'm tempted to try it out ...

Anyway, what we should take away from all of this -- as well as the depression that comes from knowing we might never see a gaming year as good as 2001 again in our lifetimes -- is that Sarah Stocker's comments about stereotypes being broken is understandable because of the games on offer in 2001. I'm sure that people could just as easily point to Dead Or Alive 3 as an example of the opposite but that particular series skew the statistics regardless of the year we're looking at. As an example, if we look at the games released ten years later, in 2011, a Dead Or Alive game appears on the list again. It's fair to say that DOA is a series that is never going to break any stereotypes.

I'm not going to pretend that I've played as many games on the 2011 list as I have on the 2001 list but, from what I can see, I don't see as many stereotypes being broken. When it comes to gender issues, L.A. Noire, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Batman: Arkham City seem to be reasonably by-the-numbers when it comes to stereotypical portrayals when it came to male heroes and villains -- sometimes remarkably, in the case of Arkham City -- but Dragon Age II and Uncharted 3 both featured female antagonists. The thing is, all of these games featured strong female characters (except perhaps L.A. Noire, from what I can recall), so that's certainly a quality that has stuck since Stocker's remarks in 2002.

However, when it comes to male portrayals, am I the only one who feels like things feel stagnant? The portrayals of female characters in Arkham City are very different from those in Final Fantasy XIII-2, which are just as different from those in Dragon Age II. With the exception of Nathan Drake -- a favourite protagonist of mine for being a character that doesn't take himself too seriously, which is a rare quality in the days where the "Stubble McBadass" archetype looms over the games industry (to use a term from Michelle Clough) -- I feel like stereotypes for men have become more entrenched rather than broken down. 2011 was also the year when we saw Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 released, just to hammer the point home. The women are varied, the men are similar.

I don't want it to seem like I'm cherry-picking my examples here and this is by no means a comprehensive list or study; like I said, I haven't played as many games from 2011 and I'm sure that if we looked at the 2001 list, we could see plenty of examples of male protagonists that are incredibly similar to the ones picked from 2011. Unfortunately, it does feel like stereotypes are the order of the day for male characters. Why? Possibly due to a lack of a push for varied male characters as there has been for female ones or maybe it's for the same reasons that Beverly Cambron focused on the "'dude!' elements" and Ken Levine appealed to frathouse gamers; they're the characters that sell games. I find it hard to believe that having a few more male characters in the vein of Ico and a few less in the vein of gravelly-voiced Cole McGrath of Infamous would be the worst thing in the world. Although considering the difference in how those games performed, sales-wise, I may be wrong ...

As an example of how male stereotypes are still alive and well in the games industry, let's take a look at a series that is ongoing right now; The Wolf Among Us from Telltale Games, developer of The Walking Dead. Similar to TWD, The Wolf Among Us is released in different "episodes" and, as of the latest episode, there's only one female villain but every single adult male human character is a scumbag in one way or another. Whereas the women are level-headed, independent, strong-willed and often victimised, the men are pimps, thugs, torturers, murderers, perverts, thieves and stalkers. Again, it feels like stereotypes have been broken down for women -- who are often portrayed as just trying to make a living -- while the men are just brutish or slimy, fighting each other rather than getting things done. The women are mature, the men are neanderthals.

One final thing about that Sarah Stocker quote. This last part:

"I’ve read some figures that seem to indicate women players tend to dislike complex interfaces, and so it may be part of the broader movement towards making simpler interfaces that’s brought in a larger female audience."

I only included this due to the long-standing rumour that Anita Sarkeesian felt "a lot of female did not get into [Mirror's Edge] due to its difficult control scheme". I certainly don't believe that difficult controls will prevent any gamer, male or female, from playing a game -- and I'm not the only one -- and I think it's insulting towards female gamers to suggest that it is. However, I've pasted Sarah Stocker's quote about interfaces anyway, just because I thought it was relevant. I should also point out that it's not clear whether Anita did or didn't say that line about the controls in Mirror's Edge; due to the fact that she doesn't allow people to film her talks about gaming (only the talks about harassment), we have to rely on second-hand information and then wait for Anita's inevitable "don't believe everything you read online" tweet.

Sarah Stocker is formerly of Stormfront Studios and, as far as I can tell, currently works as a senior producer for Sony Computer Entertainment America.

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Even though I haven't written anything for a month, I still read everyone's comments. I've had some very interesting ones lately, even though I haven't responded to them, so thank you for commenting. It's much appreciated. Feel free to do the same below or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com

Good Female Characters

Even though I spend a lot of my time agonising over the treatment and portrayal of male characters in video games, they're not the only ones who get the short end of the stick. There are lots of very strong, interesting and intelligent female characters in games. Lots of them. However, they're often dismissed because of the way they look, the way they're dressed or simply because they're not in a game made by Valve.

By now, I'm sure you know that Aliens: Colonial Marines wasn't well-received. Well, last week on Gamespot, writer Carolyn Petit posted an article of hers, "Fear of a Woman Warrior", that, among other things, criticised Aliens: Colonial Marines for adding female multiplayer characters late in development:

"First, there's the ill-fated Aliens: Colonial Marines. A Reddit post, picked up and reported on by Kotaku, indicated that female marines, rather than being part of the game from the earliest stages of development, were a last-minute feature request. Let that sink in for a second. Female marines were a feature request, a special addition, a change made to the game at the last minute. This is difficult for me to wrap my head around. During Colonial Marines' development, people working on the game declared their abiding reverence for the film Aliens. It's hard for me to believe in this reverence, not just because the game ultimately failed to deliver an experience worthy of the Aliens name on any level, but because any reasonable understanding and appreciation of what made Aliens a great film acknowledges the important role of women in it. Women are not hard to come by in the film. In fact, they're pretty damn important. One might even say that they're the equals of their male counterparts. Crazy, I know! The notion of a vision of the Aliens universe without women in it seems like about as major a betrayal of the source material as I can imagine.

And yet, somehow, for years and years, development on Aliens: Colonial Marines progressed, apparently without anyone stopping to say, 'Hey. You know how there are women in Aliens? Remember Vasquez, the tough-as-nails marine? Remember Ferro, the dropship pilot who says, "We're in the pipe, five by five"? Remember how Sigourney Weaver was the star of all the Alien movies? Well, I just had this crazy thought. What if we put some women…in the game?!'

Women should not be an afterthought in an Aliens game."

The funny thing about this is that I already knew female marines were added to Aliens: Colonial Marines late in development and not because of a Reddit post, which was then reported on Kotaku. I knew about it because last July, Gamespot posted news about the fan petition to include female multiplayer characters in Aliens: CM. So how on earth did it take Carolyn this long and another website to learn about it when it was posted on her very own site, eight months ago?

That's besides the point though. For all of the failings of Gearbox Software, the developer of Aliens: Colonial Marines, adding female characters is not one of them. Ideally, yes, they would've had enough intelligence to realise the significance of women in the Alien series and added them early on, but they didn't. When it came to their attention that they'd dropped the ball, however, they went out of their way to add them. And yet even that effort is criticised in articles like this one. Why? They should be praised for listening to the fans and correcting their mistake, not criticised for the original error.

It isn't just the female characters in Aliens: Colonial Marines that suffer. Appearance is one of the major deciding factors for the critics about whether a female character is good or bad. In Carolyn's article, she praises Lara Croft and Samus for being two examples of female characters from highly successful franchises, only to dismiss them for their sex appeal just two paragraphs later. Or at least their sex appeal being used as a reward players/to advertise the game (which I find highly hypocritical, considering Gamespot has adverts for affiliate sites at the foot of the article, advertising features like "The 20 Hottest Daughters From The Sports World" and "Hottest WAG of Each NFL Team". Apparently, criticising female video game characters for their sex appeal is fine but Gamespot'll be damned if it's going to refuse to objectify real women to gain money from referrals!).

Lara Croft is a particularly strong example of this, much like the Aliens: Colonial Marines one. This is a character who, for years, has been held up as a (if not the) prime example of objectification in video games. In some circles, her appearance would be more important than the games she starred in. So when Crystal Dynamic made the effort to revamp her appearance, giving her a more realistic figure, it would presumably be well-received, wouldn't it? Not the case, at least for Tomb Raider. After the game was displayed at E3, she was immediately faced with criticisms such as "she suffers sexual assault" and "she makes orgasm noises when hurt". Neither of which are true, of course; it's the critics seeing what they want to see. It was the same with Aliens: Colonial Marines; if Gearbox Software leave out female marines, they're blamed for leaving out female marines. If they include female marines, they're blamed for not having them in the first place.

What feminist critics of the gaming industry, such as Carolyn Petit, are doing is creating a no-win situation. I don't want to spend too much longer on Carolyn's article but she goes on to write about a man I'm not familiar with called Ryan Creighton:

"In a blog entry posted on Gamasutra last month, Ryan Creighton, a designer on Spellirium, confessed that his game is dominated by white male characters 'for fear of someone calling me out for my non-white or non-male character being stereotypical, offensive, or - at the absolute worst - outright racist or sexist.'

"The world of writing and designing games is tremendously male-dominated; sadly, this absurd fear of creating complex, human women who star in games is not limited to Creighton, but is a widespread problem."

Carolyn criticises Ryan Creighton's decision to leave out non-white and non-male characters, calling it "an absurd fear" but given that she just wrote an entire article about the pitfalls of creating female characters -- criticising some of the examples that fall into them -- how is it absurd in the slightest? At some point, game developers like Ryan Creighton just ask "why bother?" and don't add female characters at all because women like Carolyn Petit have created a no-win situation. And we're going to see a lot more attitudes like Ryan Creighton's in the future if feminist gamers don't start appreciating that the entire industry is bending over backwards to make them feel welcome and all they're doing is throwing it back in the industry's face. They're biting the hand that feeds them, so developers will naturally start doing what's sensible and avoid female characters altogether because they don't want to navigate the minefield of getting female characters "right". As a result, female characters are the ones who are going to suffer, as feminist critics can't appreciate the good qualities of the characters that they're given.

That's enough about the article but certainly not the end of the good female characters. Let's talk about Soul Calibur because there's no shortage of good female characters there. Yet nobody ever praises Talim, Xianghua, Seung Mina, Hilde, Amy, Cassandra and (at a push) Tira because they're too busy criticising the breast sizes of Ivy, Taki and Sophitia. Three great characters, all dismissed by feminist critics because of the way they look. It baffles me that women would do that, since they're judging other women on their looks far, far more harshly than any male gamer ever would. They're the ones seeing them as sex objects to get rid of rather than interesting characters to keep. The same applies to the Dead Or Alive series, albeit to a lesser extent; the women are the poster girls for the series and the men receive far less recognition. However, the makers of Dead Or Alive have also made no effort to hide the titillating aspects of the series, with titles like Dead Or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball under their belts.

Women in fighting games in general tend to be given the "they're objectified, so they're no good" dismissive attitude. I'm going to take a moment to discuss the double-edged sword that comes with a phrase like that; male characters who are judged on their appearance aren't taken seriously. I think being a female character who is dismissed because of her appearance is much worse, however, because there are so many great ones out there who don't receive the recognition they deserve because of their outfit or breast size.

Take Tekken as an example. For Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Namco Bandai offered a swimsuit alternate costume for every character in the game as a pre-order bonus (and later through a free update). They did provide swimsuit costumes for both male and female characters, interestingly -- here's the trailer, if you want some examples -- but what surprised me was the differences between swimsuits for different male characters. Attractive, muscular male characters, like ninety percent of the Tekken cast, are given the skimpy fundoshi outfit (which you can see a real-life version of here, if you don't mind seeing a man's behind). Then there are the characters like Wang, Dr. Bosconovitch, Bob and Ganryu; old or overweight. Unattractive, in other words. They're given old-fashioned beachwear that completely covers their entire body, like the kind seen on this TV Tropes page.

As surprising as it might sound, I was actually mildly offended that they'd do something like that. The Ganryu outfit, in particular, is confusing, since he only wears a sumo mawashi for his regular costume anyway. It was the costume for Bob that irritated me though, in no small part because Tekken Tag 2 added Slim Bob; a thin version of the normally-overweight Bob. He first appeared in Bob's Tekken 6 ending and was added as a playable character in TTT2.

You can customise each character's appearance in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Slim Bob, like most of the other male characters, has an option to be shirtless. Regular Bob doesn't. As mentioned above, Slim Bob has a fundoshi swimsuit costume, like all the other attractive male characters. Regular Bob doesn't. Slim Bob even has an outfit reminiscent of Lee Chaolan's bondage outfit (which I've featured on this blog before), as it has a similar emphasis on his perfectly-sculpted abs:

Call me picky but I can't help feeling that there's something ... unjust about giving a thin version of a fat character some alluring costumes and not giving the fat version the same treatment. So for all the talk from feminist critics that male characters are a lot more varied than female ones, that's true but they also face the barbed treatment of being judged on their looks. Attractive men are given outfits to emphasise their physical attractiveness, unattractive ones are given a sheet to put over their hideousness, essentially. Maybe this is all just a personal gripe I have with Tekken.

Would I like to see more varied female characters in video games? Yes. Does that mean game developers are doing something wrong right now? No. They could just be doing things more right, if that makes sense (although I certainly will say that Gearbox Software messed up by not giving female characters a larger role in Aliens: Colonial Marines from the start). So I recommend feminist video game critics stop judging characters like Soul Calibur's Ivy based on their looks because they're only hurting female characters in general. We could certainly use a few more characters like the wonderful Mitsuko from Bloody Roar but that doesn't mean we need fewer Ivys. If appearance was taken out of the equation, I think feminist critics would be a lot more appreciative of how many great female characters there really are and how judging them on their appearance is actually very petty. Hell, even Nariko from Heavenly Sword has faced criticism for her appearance and the most skin she shows is her midriff. Small-chested, no shots of her rear, no sexual dialogue ... and yet I've still seen her turn up on lists of sexualised female characters, presumably by people who've never played the game. Although if you've read anything I've written on Heavenly Sword before, you'll understand why I don't consider her a great female character.

And that's before we get to the great female characters who don't face this kind of dismissive criticism. Chell from Portal. Jade from Beyond Good And Evil. Jennifer Mui from Mercenaries. Mona Sax from Max Payne. Elena Fisher from Uncharted. Alyx Vance from Half-Life. Zelda. Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield from Resident Evil. Almost every female Final Fantasy character.

A lot of these characters aren't given the recognition they deserve because they're overshadowed by talk of how video games feature nothing but women with big boobs and a tendency to get kidnapped. Not only do I think that does a disservice to the developers who worked so hard on these characters, I think it does a disservice to the characters. If great female characters are truly what you want in games, feminist critics, try to realise it when you have them. Understand that being sexually attractive doesn't negate the other qualities of a character and -- it's been said before but never hurts to hear it again -- male video game characters are sexually appealing too. Not because it's a "male power fantasy", which is an eye-rolling explanation I hear batted around far too often nowadays, but because traits given to our male heroes, whether muscular and square-jawed or androgynous with perfect hair, look appropriate to gamers in the West or Japan, depending on the game.

And if you're looking for more great female characters, Awesome Lady Tropes has you covered.

As always, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

An Open Letter to the Video Game Industry's Feminist Critics

I meant to write this blog much sooner, shortly after my piece on #1ReasonWhy. Unfortunately, I came down with an illness and I've spent most of the last week lying in bed. That's pushed back this blog by a few days and, more annoyingly, one of the sites reporting on #1ReasonWhy has updated the Twitter posts it had embedded in the article. Try as I might, I haven't been able to find the tweet I wanted to write about. It was a #1ReasonWhy about being afraid to read the comments sections on articles about feminism in gaming.

For all the people who are critical of those comments sections, this (informal) open letter is addressed to you.

I can't imagine there are many feminist critics of the video game industry who ask "why are the people who leave those comments so mean?" because gaming sites and high-profile figures have a habit of portraying them in very black-and-white groups; either they support the feminist argument being made, or they're misogynists. By the mainstream gaming sites, the logical arguments about men's issues in games -- the sensible, fair-minded ones -- either don't exist or they're not worthy of discussion and are dismissed along with the misogynists. I have a theory that this has a lot to do with why there are so many misogynist comments beneath feminist articles on gaming sites. I'll go into that towards the end.

On the off-chance that this post brings any new readers, I'd like to give a bit of backstory; this was the year that I decided to start a blog about misandry in video games because this was the first year I noticed such a dismissive attitude towards misandry in video games. Getting annoyed at a polarising game journalist like Jim Sterling is a bit like going to a KKK rally and then complaining that it's a tad on the racist side but earlier this year, he wrote this article in response to criticism of Anita Sarkeesian's upcoming video series, Tropes Vs. Women in Videogames. It highlights all the typical responses that men's rights activists receive when raising concerns about men's issues. Dismissiveness. Insults. Lack of counter-arguments to existing criticisms. The strange belief that these men's issues don't exist unless in response to someone raising issues about women. That one, in particular, is a head-scratcher; the only reason Sterling and the other critics think these issues don't exist without provocation is because they don't take an interest in men's issues. If they did, they'd see the concern, but because they don't, they don't. It's not rocket science.

Sterling wasn't the only one. There was a blog post earlier this year called "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" that focused on how it was impossible -- or ridiculously difficult -- for men to be discriminated against because they have "privilege" (although the article was written specifically to outline how easy straight white men had it without using that term. All it did was provide a rather smarmy definition of what privilege was). This blog post gained plenty of publicity in video game circles even though it didn't have anything to do with video games beyond the "difficulty setting" analogy. As for its content, it doesn't tell men's rights activists anything they're not already used to reading. Like the Sterling example, it doesn't state any counter-arguments or cite examples. It outlines why you, straight white male reader, have it better and it won't take "hold on, what about ..." for an answer.

The reason I'm bringing up these blogs and articles now, months after they were originally posted, is because the #1ReasonWhy movement and all the responses to it over the past two weeks has brought back all the same reactions to men's issues. The dismissiveness, the hostility, the insults and so on. There's also an oddly condescending attitude towards the people who disagree with the movement; a "the guys who don't get it" phrase tends to crop up and "guys who get it" are praised. The "lowest difficulty setting" blog post had a hint of this too.

For anyone with a morbid curiosity, take a look where that link leads to. A highly misandric "poem" by Carol Diehl that suggests men don't know what it's like for other men to be raped by women, have women promoted over them because of their sex or mock the appearance of their genitals. Looking at (video game journalist, Gameranx editor-in-chief) Ian Miles Cheong's tweets, he seems to believe every stereotype about men's rights activists without doing any research into men's issues. Once again, no counter-arguments. I hope my feminist readers are starting to notice a pattern here.

It seems like the critics think the only reason why anyone would disagree with the #1ReasonWhy movement -- or any previous feminist campaigns, such as Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes Vs. Women in Videogames -- is because they don't "get" it or they're misogynists. Again, it seems like an excuse to avoid acknowledging the genuine criticisms. Criticisms like the fact that women aren't the only people who face verbal abuse during online multiplayer games but sexist insults are the only insults acknowledged as a problem, for example. Much like, say, the unrealistic standards of beauty in games, it's an issue that faces both sexes but is treated as one that only affects women. That's before issues that predominately affect men are brought up, such as making up the majority of victims of violence.

I wanted to write about this because last week, Gamespot posted one of their Feedbackula videos -- as far as I can tell, a video series highlighting and examining their members' comments from previous articles, usually about upcoming games -- and the arguments left a lot to be desired, to say the least. Here it is, if you'd like to take a look:

Hosted by Gamespot UK's Johnny Chiodni, it was basically an excuse to mock the opinions of people who disagreed with them. Now, there are certain comments on every article about misogyny in gaming that I wouldn't mind receiving insults but what galls me is that Gamespot would sooner make a video criticising "easy" comments than -- you guessed it -- providing counter-arguments to sensible ones. In fact, for those who chose not to watch the video, at the mere mention of men suffering discrimination in games too, Johnny "humourously" bangs his shoe against his head, bemoaning "why'd you have to ruin it?"

Johnny himself doesn't even seem to have a very good grasp on the issues that affect women, let alone men; when discussing the sexualisation of women, we see a picture of a female Skyrim character wearing heavy armour. Johnny describes this as "titillating" because the armour has breasts. To me, this completely undermines every single other argument about sexualised women in games; what's the point in criticising the skimpy outfits and bouncing breasts in Dead Or Alive if an aesthetic choice to make the female characters visibly female in Skyrim suddenly counts as "titillating"? When that becomes an example of sexualised female characters, absolutely anything can be. I think a commenter on Gamespot called yamilvirginio said it best:

- "Ironic" hipster beard and glasses: Check ✓
- Arrogant and annoying personality: Check ✓
- Putrid stench of white knight anyone can smell from their monitor: Check ✓
- Cherry-picking the most radical comments and reading them in a silly, ironic voice: Check ✓
- Homophobic undertone of the ending message ✓

Yep, everything clears out here. Thank you Gamespot® for enlightening these poor sheep!

The homophobic undertone of the ending message, for anyone who didn't watch the video, was suggesting that anyone who had a problem supporting #1ReasonWhy go join the navy, while the song and video for The Village People's "In The Navy" played in the background. The implication being that if you don't support the women of #1ReasonWhy, you're gay.

The list goes on and on. The #1ReasonWhy site itself is dismissive of men's issues in its FAQ (emphasis by me):

Given the reaction of some of the other figures in the video game journalism industries, I'm actually slightly appreciative of the fact that the owner of 1reasonwhy.net thought to say he/she agreed. I'm no fool; I'm sure it was simply to mollify men's rights activists and to avoid an inundated inbox but frankly, I'm thankful even for that. Other people make no bones about dismissing and insulting people who dare to mention men's rights:

And there's an underlying idea, backed up by things like the Feedbackula video and the idea that guys "don't get it", that critique of movements like #1ReasonWhy isn't allowed.

I'd like to contrast this tweet with everything else in this blog; men complaining that women are complaining about sexism is wrong. Men complaining that men are complaining about sexism describes Jim Sterling's article, Johnny Chiodni's videos, David A Hill Jr's tweet, etc. I went into this quite a lot last time but, again, all these tweets, articles, videos and so forth, all this misandric "men can't be discriminated against" dismissiveness, it all has the unintended effect of making women seem like children. What's being said here is that women have the monopoly on victimhood and how dare those men try to claim otherwise.

Speaking of which, this isn't just men criticising #1ReasonWhy. Someone sent me a link to a PC Gamer article on #1ReasonWhy and directed my attention to one of the comments below. Read it yourself and see what you think:

What we have here is a woman called Iara who refuses to accept her status as a supposed victim and two men (I assume glix is male) who are telling her, "no. You're a victim". The conversation continued beyond these two replies but there wasn't much else of substance.

Let's break this down, bit by bit. First of all, glix's comment that Iara's experiences don't speak for everyone's. That's fair enough but on Twitter, we have thousands upon thousands of examples of people who are claiming that they're providing evidence of institutionalised sexism in the gaming industry. Now what exactly would happen if one of the critics of #1ReasonWhy actually pointed out that the experiences of the women using that hashtag weren't the same as everyone else's?

In fact, I think we might end up with a response much like the one I posted by Kevin VanOrd in my last post:

Maybe this is just my interpretation but it seems to me as if when a woman uses the #1ReasonWhy hashtag on Twitter, it's evidence. When a woman disagrees with the movement, it's subjective; we see the sentence "your experiences don't speak for everyone's".

It's much the same case with Tom Hatfield's comment. Tom has apparently read the "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" blog post, judging from his comment about guys having an "easy mode". That's neither here nor there though. What's important is how Tom's reply unintentionally highlights the hypocrisy of the #1ReasonWhy movement.

Put it this way; if a man objected to a #1ReasonWhy example written by a woman in the same way that Tom did, the backlash would be quite severe. Let's say a woman wrote a #1ReasonWhy where she stated she had been groped at a convention. Then, let's say a man wrote to her and said, "that's not sexism". Presumably, he'd receive lots of hate messages. I can imagine he'd be called a misogynist for not denouncing such an act as sexist and he'd be criticised for daring to tell a woman how to interpret her own experiences.

What we have here is a reversal of the positions on sexism. Iara is stating how she doesn't see the verbal abuse she's suffered as an example of sexism but no sooner has she done so than Tom Hatfield rushes in to say "that's sexism"! He's telling a woman how to interpret what she herself has experienced, just as in the first example. Do me a favour; quickly scroll back up and look at Tarryn van der Byl's tweet (@nxtrms). "Because we can't even complain about sexism in the industry without men complaining that we're complaining". That's a complaint about men thinking they know better than the women giving their experiences but isn't that exactly what Tom is doing here? Although just because Tom supports the "right" position on sexism ("everything is sexist, women are children, they need help") and Iara supports the "wrong" one ("everyone is verbally abused, I can deal with it, I refuse to play my victim card"), Tom doesn't suffer the same criticism that a man in Iara's shoes would.

I have nothing but praise for Iara for having such a wise head on her shoulders and, thankfully, I didn't notice any "she might not even be female!" accusations in the PC Gamer comments section (and it wouldn't really matter if she wasn't; Tom Hatfield didn't seem to think so and his reaction is what's important, rather than Iara's gender). However, just in case there was any doubt about women taking issue with #1ReasonWhy too, the genuinely wonderful InuitInua steps in to remove all doubt:

In my last blog, I came to the same conclusion as InuitInua about the #1ReasonWhy movement being about special treatment rather than equality and she had a few specific topics from tweets she wanted to pick apart too. It deserves a watch.

Now, something that I imagine a lot of feminist video game commenters and critics don't get is that people who support men's issues in games support equality in games. That's important. I've heard people say, "people object to women entering a field that has been male-dominated for years and expecting it to immediately change to suit them". I don't think this is the case at all. None of us object to women being given the floor to air the issues that affect them in games, no matter how few there are or how short a time they've been a part of the industry. If they're here, they deserve their say. It's when women are the only ones who are given the floor that things become a problem.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened to the video game industry. I'd like to go into two completely separate tangents to illustrate this point. Remember what happened to Ryan Perez? He was a writer for Destructoid who, to quote my own blog on the subject:

"... Tweeted that he believed that actress, writer and internet 'celebrity' Felicia Day was 'a glorified booth babe' and asked the question, 'does she actually contribute anything useful to this industry, besides retaining a geek persona?'. After a massive outcry from many, many of Felicia's friends, fans and coworkers, Ryan lost his job."

Now, the reason Ryan lost his job was because his comments were deemed "misogynistic", even though there was nothing sexist against women about them. He disliked Felicia Day and that, apparently, was enough to brand him a woman-hater. The point I want to make about Ryan is that he made those Twitter comments about Felicia Day in his private time and yet still ended up losing his job over them. Meanwhile, Jim Sterling professionally wrote an article expressing very misandric sentiments and presumably got paid by Gamefront to do so. I'd say that's a lot worse that Ryan's not-quite-misogynistic barbs that were directed at Felicia Day.

The second point I wanted to make was about our old friend Anita Sarkeesian, of Feminist Frequency. The latest blog post on her website outlines the talk she gave at this year's TEDxWomen in Washington, DC. Thankfully, she provides a transcript of her speech, which is predominately about the abuse she suffered when launching her Kickstarter project. As I've said before, I don't encourage that kind of abuse -- I looked over the comments again before writing this post and the racist language made me cringe -- but there are a few parts of her speech that I'd like to quote that highlight why people are critical of Anita:

"And whether it’s a cyber mob or just a handful of hateful comments, the end result is maintaining and reinforcing and normalizing a culture of sexism — where men who harass are supported by their peers and rewarded for their sexist attitudes and behaviors and where women are silenced, marginalized and excluded from full participation.

A ‘boys club’ means no girls allowed. And how do they keep women and girls out? Just like this. By creating an environment that is just too toxic and hostile to endure ...

... Everyday I am encouraged by the women who persevere, who continue to engage and who refuse to be silenced."

To me, this seems like a biased view of things, probably the main criticism of Anita. One thing I hope I've achieved with this blog is build a case for a view of gaming culture where not only are men not supported by their peers for sexist attitudes and behaviour -- look at the Sterling article/Feedbackula video/the entire #1ReasonWhy movement and you'll realise the idea of men being rewarded for sexist behaviour is nothing but fantasy -- but sexism against men is overwhelmingly supported. Whether it's insulting men who support men's issues outright, dismissing the issues, ignoring them or portraying certain issues as only affecting women when they actually affect both sexes, there's a lot of examples of men being silenced and marginalised in the gaming industry. That's what I'd describe as a toxic environment. If that's what Anita considers a "boy's club", I'd hate to see what a "girl's club" looks like! Meanwhile, women had tens of thousands of #1ReasonWhy tweets, every high-profile gaming site (and several mainstream ones) supporting the cause and Anita Sarkeesian receiving $150,000 for a video series. Hardly what I'd call being "silenced", in spite of the abuse Anita received.

So finally -- finally -- we come to my theory about misogynist comments in feminist articles on gaming sites. To every feminist reader of this blog who has ever wondered why so many of those comments exist, take a look at all the examples involving men and men's issues above. Where they've been ignored. Dismissed. Insulted. Where the men who make them have been told "grow up", "you don't get it" or "you have it easy". Meanwhile, women's issues are being given "air time" on every website that's reporting on Anita Sarkeesian and #1ReasonWhy.

Why do those misogynistic comments exist? Well with all this anti-male sentiment, how do you think people are going to react? What do you expect? With intelligent, well thought-out criticisms of these movements completely ignored, why would people bother writing them and just say "to heck with it" and throw out some misogynist comments to get a reaction? You can say it's immature but, hey, so is the attitude towards men's issues. The fact that plenty of the writers of this content are male is also pretty telling, in that male writers have carte blanche to say what they like about men in a way that female writers can't. I don't want that to sound like a paranoid cry of "the women forced the men to do it!" but rather an acknowledgement of how feminist critics frame things; a woman in the gaming industry can't very well write a scathing attack on male gamers who don't support, say, Anita Sarkeesian's Kickstarter project in the same way that Jim Sterling can because, if she does, all those misogynist comments will actually be easy to justify. If Jim Sterling writes the same thing, however, the worst insults that'll come his way are "white knight" and "mangina", making the commenters look a bit mental.

I have a second theory but this one needs to be tested. This is where any feminist readers of my blog will come in very handy, especially on the off-chance that any of you are in high-profile positions. Next time you run an article about sexism in video games, give the male point of view as well as the female one. If you intend to criticise Bayonetta for sexual poses, criticise Final Fantasy's trend of flawless teenage male characters at the same time. Don't just throw it in as a single "oh, yeah, men are sexualised too" at the end of the article either. Point out the lack of real-life teenagers who bear any resemblance to, say, Vaan and the unrealistic standard of beauty it promotes.

My theory? Acknowleding sexualisation of both sexes in video games will reduce a huge amount of the hostility towards the article in question. The frustrating thing is that there is no reason for feminists in the gaming industry not to do this, other than to claim victimhood as a specifically female trait. There are tons of sayings that justify supporting both men's and women's issues in games and you'll have heard them all before; "what's good for the goose is good for the gander". "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar". Even the classic "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". You can even quote Jim Sterling (in the name of equality rather than misandry) and say "Start. Fucking. Sharing". So why do feminist critics of the gaming industry make it such an uphill battle for themselves? Why support women's issues and then complain about misogynist comments when you could support the same issues for both sexes and have your approval rating skyrocket?

Obviously, misogynist comments would never completely disappear, even if arguments about men's issues in games were taken seriously. There are always going to be some unsavoury characters in every industry, regardless of how much progress is made. Valve's Christine Phelan said much the same thing in her interview with FMV Magazine. That's certainly a shame but there are things that I think could be done right now to reduce the sexist comments (outlined in the two paragraphs above). If feminist critics are genuinely critical of these misogynist comments and genuinely support equality rather than special treatment, like I said, there's no reason not to support men's issues in interviews/comments/tweets too. Don't "pull a Sarkeesian" by claiming to find misogyny morally wrong but then choosing not to do anything about them just because having more misogynistic comments supports your viewpoint. Again, that just portrays women as children in need of help rather than adults who have the power to change things.

I suppose that's all I have to say. I'd like to finish by linking to a video that a friend of mine posted in the comments of my last blog, by a Youtuber called Billy Clement.

While I don't agree with everything Billy says, there are a few things I like about the video. His comparison to a man in the cosmetics industry is quite entertaining and, most importantly, he reads out a statement from a male developer in the video game industry who'd like to remain anonymous. Assuming it's true, it's quite a damning indictment of "equality" in the gaming industry and wouldn't look out of place on a male version of the #1ReasonWhy movement. One of his final lines sums up the #1ReasonWhy campaign's flaws in their entirety, however, and I'd like to quote it here:

"I'm not arguing against inclusion. Inclusion's good and we all want to see more female gamers. But exclusion is bad and what we really don't want is a games industry to turn into a mirror of television, with weak, stupid, ineffective male characters only appearing to make the superwomen look good."

The part about inclusion and exclusion alone hits the nail on the head; just like I said last time and just like InuitInua says in the video above, it's special treatment -- not equality -- that people are recommending as a solution to the #1ReasonWhy movement's problems. That's exclusion, masquerading as equality.

Well, that's that. Now I suppose I'll just have to wait for my sexuality to be called into question by a "progressive" Gamespot personality.

Please feel free to leave a comment or write to me at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

#1ReasonWhy

This has been an insane few days.

For anyone who isn't a member of Twitter, a few days ago, a man by the name of Luke Crane posted this tweet:

It's a simple enough question, with a simple enough answer (that we'll come to later on). I doubt Luke Crane, or anyone else, could've predicted the response he received to this single tweet. Many, many, many people waded in with their answers, each stating one reason why there were so few lady game creators (hence the hashtag "#1ReasonWhy"). These came from all manner of people from inside and outside the gaming industry.

Obviously, I didn't read them all. I don't even have a Twitter account, since I prefer to read long messages rather than short ones. Thankfully, however, there were plenty of articles on the subject, all showing some of the examples of #1ReasonWhy tweets. The hashtag even earned its own site. All-in-all, there's been an astounding outpouring of support for and from women in the gaming industry.

With it, there's also been an astounding outpouring of hypocrisy, biased arguments and double standards, to the point that its difficult to even know where to begin. Before we go into the tweets themselves, take a look at a couple of the articles that I've been perusing.

This article from Gamespot was where the #1ReasonWhy hashtag first caught my attention. This article, by Carolyn Petit and Laura Parker, does a decent job of explaining what the hashtag is but doesn't really go beyond the "we have to do something!" attitude. They don't reach any conclusions on what to do but overall, the attitude expressed is a step up from the sentiments expressed elsewhere.

Case in point: this article by Nathan Grayson on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. To sum up, it's one big call-to-arms "for men to stop acting like self-centered slobs. It’s time for men to stop turning every step of progress into an agonizing uphill battle". It has a rather disturbing, "you're either with us or against us" attitude, so men who disagree or just don't wish to help are targets of Grayson's ire. In spite of the writer's claim that he is "not trying to propose some damsel-in-distress “let’s handsomely save the day” argument," this may be one of the biggest examples of "White Knighting" I've ever seen online. It's a condescending pep talk that assumes the worst of men and, coincidentally, is a real-life example of what I mentioned in my previous two blog posts; it suggests that men are only valuable based on how useful they are to women. If they're not being useful to women, they're "self-centered slobs".

I haven't got into the actual reasons given by the #1ReasonWhy hashtags yet. Something I should make clear is that there isn't enough time in the world to go through every single tweet, obviously, and there may be some good, legitimate reasons that I haven't seen. However, just browsing through the reports on #1ReasonWhy, I didn't find a single tweet I cared for and most of them highlight exactly why people like myself take issue with the focus on women in gaming. Let's jump right in. What's a reason why there are so few lady game creators?

There's going to be more from Rhianna Pratchett before this blog is over with but this is as good a place as any to start. Creating appropriately-dressed female characters is a rarity, rather than the norm, according to Pratchett. This is a reason why there are so few lady game creators.

The first thought that sprung to mind when reading this was, "isn't that an incentive for women to join the video game industry rather than avoid it?" Presumably, if there's something women want to change in the gaming industry, staying out of it and complaining isn't as effective a method as getting involved and being able to influence things. So it doesn't make sense for the lack of appropriately-dressed female characters to be a reason why women aren't creating video games and, if Pratchett thinks it is, she paints women as a very illogical bunch.

The second thought I had about this was one that I had been thinking about before I ever saw the tweet. When having various debates about gender issues elsewhere online, it felt like the critics of the portrayal of women in video games would cherry pick their examples and use them of evidence of a wider issue. For example, using Ivy from Soul Calibur as an example of sexualised women while ignoring the same series' Talim, Cassandra, Hilde, Amy and Seung Mina. They'll acknowledge the notoriously misogynistic Metroid: Other M without necessarily singing the praises of Samus herself as an example of positive female portrayals in games. And no matter what great strides the industry makes in "appropriately-dressed female characters" -- Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2. Elena Fisher from Uncharted. Jennifer Mui from Mercenaries. Jade from Beyond Good & Evil. Amaterasu from Okami. Lara Croft's latest redesign. Various RPGs from both Japan and the West -- the industry will always, always, always still be stereotyped as one filled with scantily-clad female designs by the same women who should be pleased by the progress.

Next:

You might know Ashly Burch from the "Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'" video series on Gametrailers (and maybe elsewhere; I don't follow them very closely). And after reading this tweet, you'd be forgiven for thinking that she's new to the internet.

Look, I'm not saying that threats of rape and violence isn't a good reason for women to avoid the video game industry. It's a good reason for anyone to avoid the industry of whoever is making those threats. However, like I said, this is the internet and these comments come with the territory. I've been on messageboards where I've suffered both threats before. Well, I can't quite recall a rape threat but I can recall other threats of sexual violence very vividly.

I dealt with this by using the ignore functions of certain forums and avoiding others entirely. It works well. Also, yes, I developed a thicker skin. Which is an argument I hate having to use because I've been given that "helpful" piece of advice before and it's an incredibly irritating thing to read. It implies there's something wrong with you rather than the obnoxious moron throwing you insults. However, keep something in mind here; Ashly Burch is a public figure, thanks to her videos. All public figures receive mindless insults. Did she think she'd escape the insults simply because she's female? More worryingly, does she think that's a good reason that she should?

If anyone wants to crack down on the trolls that make these comments, be my guest. However, you'd have to be a pretty despicable person to only do it for half the gaming population while leaving the other half to suffer the insults and threats.

Wow, talk about stereotypical.

While I'd certainly agree there's not enough investment in AAA games about something other than war -- I'm not sure about the other three. I can think of one AAA western, a few contenders for AAA racing games and absolutely no sports ones, let alone football -- there's some unfortunate implications here. There's a disturbing undertone that paints the majority of the "male-dominated" video game industry as being incredibly stereotypically male. For that matter, it paints the women already in the video game industry with the exact same brush.

I assume Samit Sarkar is talking about this particular press release:

What a Character 2 (400 Microsoft Points) – Kasumi hops into a black bunny swimsuit, Mila masquerades as Bass while Zack transforms into an alien, and Christie turns heads in black leather bondage gear.

First of all, let's get the obvious out the way; we've now completely ignored common, if stereotypical, criticisms of the gaming industry and devolved completely into speculation. Unless we're meant to assume that Sarkar knows the sexual interests of every woman interested in joining the gaming industry, I think he's clutching at straws here. Secondly, it's just like the Rhianna Pratchett example above; joining the industry would give women a better chance to have their voices heard. It's an incentive to join and the costume is hardly going to disappear simply because they choose to remain gamers rather than developers/journalists, is it?

Thirdly, and this is an important point, it's an example of the hypocrisy and lack of research done to support the #1ReasonWhy campaign (if it can be called that). Take a look at this Lee Chaolan costume from Tekken 6:

That's Lee in his "bondage gear" costume. I was searching for the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 version -- I didn't even know it appeared in Tekken 6 -- but the fact that it was featured in two games in the series supports my argument more; two Tekken games where Lee sports a costume that emphasies his abs and yet the one worn by a woman in a game known for its sexualised female characters is the eyebrow-raiser? Sex-negative feminists like to pounce on games that sexualise female characters but the poor research and hypocrisy shown by Sarkar above shows that they really couldn't care less about the men. "Oh, there are other examples of bondage gear in games? Oh, who cares, it's on a man."

This was actually one of the first tweets about the #1ReasonWhy issue I saw and, almost immediately, it made me realise why I disliked the campaign.

In spite of the fact that I criticise a lot of supposedly-feminist arguments here on this blog, I have a lot of love and respect for women. A lot. I think if women want to achieve their goals, they have the intelligence and talent to do so. That goes for the gaming industry as well. Although feminist arguments have always been subjects of my criticism, women themselves never have been. I'll come back to this in a second.

Going back to Rhianna's tweet; "But what if the player is female?" Let's assume she's talking about a stereotypically masculine game, such as Gears Of War. A squad of burly men who curse in every sentence, walking around in heavy sci-fi armour and blasting aliens. It seems like a game that would warrant Rhianna's question. "But what if the player is female?"

My response would have to be, "she'll enjoy the game as much as a male player". If I was a female gamer, I know that I would be tremendously insulted by Pratchett's statement that there's something different about me that needs to be catered to by developers. Simply because of my sex, a new question needs to be asked because there's an assumption that I should be treated differently. That unless something is added or changed to suit me, I'll see a gameplay video and say, "oh, I can't play this. I'm female!"

So although feminist arguments have always been subjects of my criticism, women themselves never have been and I would never hold such a low opinion of women to think that they can't adapt to play any game. This is what struck me about the #1ReasonWhy campaign as a whole; it treats women like children who need to be catered to rather than rational and mature adults who can adapt. These tweets are not asking for equality, for women to be treated the same as the men. These are asking for special treatment. They demand the industry adapt to them rather than they adapt to it.

In the sidebar, I link to a men's rights activist on Youtube called GirlWritesWhat. She once said something that I think describes this situation quite well: "Anti-feminism is the radical notion that women are adults". There is nothing in these tweets to make women seem strong or independent. If these tweets were to be listened to, the women demanding change would, effectively, be children; needing other people to give them change rather than changing things for themselves. And I completely despair at this whole fiasco because of it.

There are honestly so many eyebrow-raising tweets for #1ReasonWhy that I've had to decide against using some of them that I've had saved specifically for this blog. That's irritating but it's probably for the best; this blog post would never end if I took the time out to respond to every single one. There are a few other things I wanted to mention though.

First of all, it's worth reading this interview with Christine Phelan of Valve. I'll quote the relevant portion of the interview:

"It certainly seems as though Phelan’s experiences in the industry have been overwhelmingly positive thus far. And she’s not afraid to express her disgruntlement when FMV – referring to recent allegations that the video game industry is too male-dominated and even sexist – asks whether she has faced any particular challenges or obstacles in her career due to her gender.

“Aaaah, I really hate this question!” she replies. “I think asking it only serves to highlight the fact that I am a minority in my industry, and there are so many more interesting questions that could be asked instead!

“There are a ton of dudes in the games industry, yes – it’s a bit of a pickle jar.  I have never, however, been treated as anything but a team member and an equal by my coworkers and it’s a major disservice to them that folks automatically assume they will treat me differently because I am a woman.  At the end of the day I am the work I produce, not a pair of boobs.  It’s individuals who may or may not be sexist, and those are folks who reside in the broader ‘asshole’ category that applies to all things, not just games.

“I think the only challenge, if it can be called one, is that people assume I am challenged because I am a woman in this industry.  I am a game developer first, and my gender has nothing to do with it.”

I know for a fact people will say "well, it's Valve. They know how to treat people!" which I think does more to undermine Phelan's point than highlight it. I can't help thinking that painting all developers as sexist assholes except "internet-approved" ones is something to be avoided. As Phelan says, it's a disservice to her coworkers. She raises some other good points. "It's individuals who may or may not be sexist, and those are folks who reside in the broader ‘asshole’ category that applies to all things, not just games". For example, is Ashly Burch under the impression that it's only gamers who make impolite comments? Likewise, a bunch of tweets I didn't post mentioned being groped at conventions. Holding up the gaming industry as an example of this rather than specific "assholes" in every industry doesn't do anybody any favours. In fact, it's exactly what Jack Thompson used to do.

When I read the scapegoat reasons people use -- and that's really all the #1ReasonWhy campaign is -- I can't help but shake my head. Not because of the branding of an industry I love as "sexist" but the fact that it comes across as incredibly unprofessional. This might seem like an odd tangent but I'm a fan of The Apprentice (the UK version). A few seasons ago, one of the final five candidates was criticised by an interviewer for his reliance on "blame culture"; he blamed his parents for their lack of support and he blamed his former business partner for their business going under. He was unable to take responsibility for himself. That's what my mind kept going back to when reading some of these tweets; "blame culture" would be a perfect term to describe it.

Remember back at the start of this blog? Luke Crane asked "where are there so few lady creators?" I said this was a simple enough question with a simple enough answer. The simple enough answer is this: "there aren't enough women who are interested in games development enough to get involved in it". That's it. The #1ReasonWhy tweets are looking for reasons why women aren't interested in games development but in spite of the silly stereotyping of an entire sex based on things like outfits, hurtful comments and "but what if the player is female?" but while these people are all looking for scapegoats, the fact is that it's simply an industry that appeals to more men than women. Let's say I enrolled in a games development course and saw a greater number of men than women. Would my logical mind say, "more men than women. Must be sexism," or, "more men than women. Women mustn't have been as interested"?

Luckily, someone brought this point up on Twitter:

This is a Twitter user called Jason Clem talking to Kevin VanOrd, senior editor at Gamespot. First of all, I was glad to finally find out why Gamespot posts so many articles about women in games on their website, but I was a lot more pleased to find that someone called a #1ReasonWhy-er out on the illogical argument. What we see here is the typical treatment of women as children from the feminist, VanOrd, when the sensible, rational critic actually suggests a way to help them out. The whole argument can be summed up like this:

Clem: "Well, maybe more women should get involved and take more prominent roles in the industry then."
VanOrd: "No, no, they can't! The industry needs to be fixed first, those poor dears just can't handle it as it is!"

Looks very different when it's written down like that, doesn't it? Yet that's the message being sent out every time women in the video game industry play the victim card.

Clem himself gave me permission to post this conversation and, according to him, VanOrd blocked him after this short exchange. When looking through the #1ReasonWhy topic I spoke to him in, however, I came across this fantastic post by a fellow member of the AVoiceForMen forums (username "Crow"). Frankly, it blows my "simple enough explanation" out of the water:

"One of the largest issues I tend to come across in these sorts of communal outbursts is the complete and utter disregard for any notion of progression or any understanding of how time works. Yes, you read that right, feminists just don't seem to understand the notion of "time".

Yes, most game development is male-dominated. Why? It's pretty simple: Ten years ago, the individuals who developed games were almost 100% male because they grew up in the '70's and early 80's. They were raised and found their hobby in gaming at a time when it was very, very male dominated. These individuals grew up loving games, and then they put in their time to work their way up the ladder or start their own studios. Simply put: how would we expect anything else?

Now these rants and raves about women in gaming is evidence of the progress of the industry. They show that more women are involved now than ten or twenty years ago. This is progress, and it is easily evidence of greater diversity in gaming.

So what will happen now? give it another ten years and the legions of women who entered gaming as an industry in the last ten years (and even more contemporaneously) will put in their time and get promoted and have a shot at making their own games.

This is the very sort of progress that the feminists are telling everyone doesn't exist.

Time + investment = change. It's simple. It's why media outlets aren't inundated with stories of homophobia, because that movement achieved it's goals wonderfully are is now in a post-achievement era where their injustices are acute and made up of smaller battles (of course not entirely finished, but comparatively). The Gay Rights movement won their battles a decade ago, and we're beginning to see the evidence and payoff for that community now.

A lot of this "gaming is sexist!" crud smells greatly of entitlement. The idea I get from wading through the articles, comments and Twitter hashtags is that women want the power, and they want it now. There's no concern that it takes time and investment, they're sick of being seen as what they are: overwhelmingly a younger, less-industry-advanced group who do not yet have power and control because very, very few women went into gaming as a career from the generation that sits in charge now. Give it ten years and it'll be very different.

Hell, it somewhat upsets me because there's no understanding that gaming has only been a very profitable industry for a short while. The individuals and companies who took the risks and often the awful results were men, and they paved the roads so that the entitled, whiny women of today can feel harassed and discriminated against in an industry that is profitable and popular."

So there we are. If there's a more sensible explanation for the lack of female creators in the video game industry, I've never read it. Crow's post highlights the logical reasons why there are so few female creators and does it without resorting to scapegoats.

There's more to be said on the bombardment of biased comments from the #1ReasonWhy campaign. A lot more. I'll leave it here for now though but before I do, I'd like to give some advice to any women who are in -- or thinking about getting into -- the video game industry.

First of all, just do it. There is no reason for you not to. #NoReasonWhy

Don't wait for things to change to suit you. There's a female comedian here in the UK called Sarah Millican who said something I think is appropriate here: "Don't look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Stomp along there and turn the fucker on yourself". You're a grown woman, not a child. You can change things.

There's a Margaret Thatcher quote I've been trying to work in here somewhere but could never find the right place for it. She famously said, "I owe nothing to women's lib". While searching for a good source for this quote, I actually found a better one:

American attorney, political commentator and Thatcher fan Carol Platt Liebau agrees. "Unfortunately feminism has become associated with a specific set of left-wing policy views centering around government-imposed solutions to perceived gender-based inequities, rather than simply with true female liberation – the opportunity, regardless of gender, to make one’s own choices and use one’s abilities to the fullest."

Whatever your stance on Thatcher's political career, I think both of these statements are appropriate. Thatcher's "I owe nothing to women's lib" made me think about Christine Phelan's view above. She, of course, didn't say that. The closest she said was, "at the end of the day I am the work I produce, not a pair of boobs," and, "I am a game developer first, and my gender has nothing to do with it." For all the begging for change and blaming of the current state of the game industry by the #1ReasonWhy-ers, there are women who have been successful in the industry. Not because things were changed to suit them but because of their own skills. Getting where they were on their own merits is something to be proud of and, believe it or not, exactly what the men in the industry have to do too. If I were female, I know I'd prefer that to the idea that I only got where I was because I had help.

So that's Thatcher's quote in a nutshell. Liebau's practically sums up the entire #1ReasonWhy campaign in a nutshell (but the critics in this case expect the gaming industry, rather than the government, to be the one with the solutions). "The opportunity, regardless of gender, to make one’s own choices and use one’s abilities to the fullest," is what everyone should bear in mind here. Women, you have that opportunity. You can use your abilities to their fullest in the video game industry and by insisting that you can't, that something must change, you're effectively creating your own glass ceiling.

Please feel free to leave a comment or write to me at themalesofgames@gmail.com.