What am I supposed to do about "Gaming While Male"?

I'll be keeping this one short, although I'd like to start updating more regularly again. Practically all work I'm busy with should be completed by the end of the month and I'd like to get back to the more regular updates that I used to produce, pre-college games development course. I feel less involved with gender issues in the games industry and could do with being more active. I have to admit, I feel a twinge of envy when I visit Vicsor's site and see how involved he is with some cool, creative people on Twitter, like devi ever and even Tamara Smith (cowkitty), back when the whole Anita Sarkeesian art theft issue broke. Not being a fan of Twitter, I'll have to make do with updating this blog more frequently.

A couple of weeks ago, Jonathan McIntosh -- producer of Anita Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency video series -- wrote an article for Polygon magazine titled "Playing with privilege: the invisible benefits of gaming while male". I'm not going to link to that particular article because, if you've ever seen a "male privilege checklist" article anywhere online, it's basically the same regurgitated information, only tailored to gaming. It's pointless to argue against McIntosh's points because, just like the ones seen in male privilege checklists, they're written based on assumptions and beliefs rather than evidence. I could provide every counter-argument in the world but it's clear that anyone who writes something like ...

"I can be relatively sure my thoughts about video games won’t be dismissed or attacked based solely on my tone of voice, even if I speak in an aggressive, obnoxious, crude or flippant manner."

... Isn't interested in facts.

I wasn't that interested in writing about this topic at all until I came across McIntosh's article mentioned on NPR. At the top of the page is a picture of Nathan Drake from Uncharted -- which isn't mentioned in the article at all -- with the following caption:

"Nathan Drake (foreground) is the lead protagonist of the Uncharted series of games for the Sony PS3. His character is just one in a long line of games where the dominant figure is a white male action hero."

If you're anything like me, the first thought that crossed my mind was "so?" and I'm still not sure what point Steve Mullis, the writer of that article, is trying to make. Is it a criticism of all games with white men in the leading role? If so, what's wrong with white men as action heroes or being the "dominant figure"? And if someone does think there's something wrong with it, again, so what? The developer does not have any responsibility to cater to a demanding audience -- regardless of the entitled Jason Schreiers and Tomodachi Life same-sex relationship campaigners of the world -- because their personal tastes are irrelevant to the project.

That one screenshot got me thinking about how I felt about "Gaming While Male" and, right off the bat, I'll say that I loathe the term (much like I did when I first read "Interneting While Female" from Anita Sarkeesian). The reason being that it's obviously derived from the term "Driving While Black".

For those of you who don't know "Driving While Black" is a term for the racial profiling of black motorists by police officers, pulling them over based on the colour of their skin alone. Discrimination under the law based on skin colour is obviously a hugely serious issue, which is why I hate terms that trivialise it like "Interneting While Female". Sorry for stating the obvious but black drivers also cannot change their skin colour to avoid the "crime" of "Driving While Black". There's nothing they can do to avoid it, which is why it's such a despicable act of discrimination.

So ... what am I supposed to do about "Gaming While Male"? Just like "Driving While Black", it's not something I can easily change, nor should I have to. Inadvertently, it feels like Jonathan McIntosh has made male gamers out to be victims; in this scenario, male gamers are the driver while McIntosh is the bigoted cop, tapping on the window and ready to give us an earful about a characteristic we can't change.

Now, McIntosh doesn't want to perform an arrest. All he wants is for male gamers to "become aware" of their privilege. Part of the problem with this issue -- once again, apart from McIntosh's arguments being based on feelings rather than facts -- is the same problem with every single "privilege" argument out there; denigrating the "dominant" group for their "privilege" does not help the "unprivileged" group in any way. What does it accomplish, except for some brief catharsis of the "I sure told them!" variety for the person making the argument? If McIntosh and others who make the privilege argument spent half as much time helping the "unprivileged" as they do disparaging the "privileged", equality in gaming could probably be achieved within a week ...

McIntosh touched upon the idea of men being "blissfully unaware" of their privilege or knowing about it but failing to understand it. However, maybe McIntosh would like to read "Why I'll Never Apologise for My White Male Privilege" by Tal Fortgang, published in TIME magazine. It's an excellent piece, with Fortgang facing the idea of "privilege" throughout his ancestry, basically facing proponents of privilege theory on their own terms. If McIntosh reads that piece, maybe he'll consider the idea that not only are men aware of privilege theory and understand it perfectly but just refuse to accept it. And with good reason.

In other news, the BBC recently aired a documentary called "Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes", which I watched in its entirety. If it covered any new ground with regards to gender issues then I would be happy to write about it extensively here but, as it happens, it was all the typical go-to non-issues for gender issues online nowadays; a lack of women on bank notes in the UK, rape jokes in stand-up comedy and, yes, Anita Sarkeesian. She did a few minutes, basically repeating everything from her TEDxWomen talk, her Conference talk, her CNN interview, etc. At this point, it feels like Anita has become a parody of herself. I'm just going to link to a Youtube response by a woman named Vipersword100, who perfectly sums up the issues with Anita's portion of the documentary.

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

"Fewer Tifas or More Sephiroths? Male Sexualization in Games"

I know it's been another month without any activity and, unfortunately, I currently only have time to write another short post. Maybe I'll write a longer one over Easter.

The Game Developers Conference is currently taking place and on Reddit, I came across a link to a Game Developer's Conference talk called, "Fewer Tifas or More Sephiroths? Male Sexualization in Games". The description of it is short, so I'll just copy and paste the entire thing:

"Sexualized female characters are hotly debated in the industry, but their counterparts, sexualized male characters are rarely discussed, and even more rarely written! This talk examines desirable men in video games, how they contrast with current male character trends, and how they can create a more welcoming atmosphere for straight women, gay men and others. Attendees will learn how (and why) to move beyond "male gaze" when writing male characters while avoiding "equal objectification." We'll also discuss non-Western male idealization, traditional media presenting men as fan service, and games that "get it right," to compile a useful toolbox for writers and designers.

Takeaway

Attendees will take away a greater understanding of how to approach writing more desirable male characters, and why. Developers will have greater awareness of how "gaze" affects character construction and design, and writers will leave with practical, sex-positive tips and resources for making male characters appealing to wider audiences."

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll remember that I brought up how I had issues with sexualised male characters when I was a teenager. Regardless of whether you thought my issues were justified or not, you'll notice that the summary of the talk above speaks about male sexualisation in a way that would never be considered acceptable for female ones outside of an internet forum. The summary treats sexualised male characters as a positive in games.

According to the GDC page, there's a video recording of the talk but as far as I can tell, it isn't available online. I could only find two real pieces of information about the talk; the first is a Famitsu article, which features photos of each PowerPoint slide and gives the impression that the speaker, Michelle Clough, is actually very fair-minded about the subject (although if anyone can translate the article better than Bing Translator can, I'd be interested in reading the details about it). The second is directly from Clough's site and gives the exact opposite impression.

I don't want to make any assumptions about Clough's talk because those two sites seem to contrast each other; the photos in Famitsu's article suggests that Clough is sex-positive for both men and women rather than only being in favour of male sexualisation while her own site is very one-sided. Judging from the PowerPoint presentation alone, the talk itself seems to deal more with facts while the GDC summary and Clough's site both deal more with feelings. Come to your own conclusions about what the talk was actually like because at the moment, we just don't know.

As a result, the only aspect of this that can be properly examined is the way it is presented on the GDC site and on Clough's own website. I have plenty of objections to Clough presenting male sexualisation as, "[a way to] create a more welcoming atmosphere for straight women, gay men and others". I can't imagine someone being given the stage at a GDC conference to defend sexualised female characters with "hey, straight guys and lesbians like 'em!". When the world of gaming journalism has cast female gamers as a demographic to be helped and straight male gamers as an entitled, socially-awkward group who harasses anyone who isn't a straight male gamer like them, I can't see that argument convincing anyone. If anything, it would be taken as an example of male gamers being unwelcoming towards female ones, whereas praising the sexualisation of male characters is not treated the same way.

Likewise, I object to Clough's assertion that androgynous male characters are rare. Even in the PowerPoint presentation, she doesn't seem to stray outside of the Final Fantasy series except to show a piece of fanart (I assume) of Nero from Devil May Cry 4. It's not that Clough is wrong -- in fact, she's dead-on -- but if the way she briefly writes about "China, Korea and Japan" on her blog is anything to go by, it sounds as if she has a better grasp on Eastern games than most. I would've thought she would cast her net a bit wider when it came to selecting characters. Plus, I think Clough is a bit too dismissive of "the common Stubble McBadass archetype", as she calls it. It feels a bit too much like she's falling back on the idea that this archetype automatically appeals to straight men (which is not necessarily true) and nobody else (which is not necessarily true either). There's a good chance that young male gamers feel as self-conscious about those character archetypes as I did about bishonen characters in my teens.

I don't want it to sound like I have anything against Michelle Clough because, for all I know, her talk may have been completely fair about the sexualisation of both men and women. If anything, I have nothing but praise for acknowledging the fact that women are not the only sex who can be sexualised, contrary to popular opinion and the silly "male power fantasy" argument. I'd be very interesting in hearing more from her on the subject. It's simply the promotion of the talk that bothers me; with every single discussion about sexualisation in games being about how negatively-portrayed women are, it's difficult not to collectively roll our eyes and scoff when the one time the issue of sexualised men is brought up on a significant stage, it's about how positive it can be.

And not a male opinion in sight. That's part of the problem. Not that Clough shouldn't be allowed to speak but it's a men's issue. I think hearing how male gamers feel about it might be worthwhile.

Overall, I'm just disappointed in the GDC. Like I said, I can't imagine a talk like this ever taking place with the sexes reversed, especially if a male speaker wrote on his website, "I may have wanted an excuse to cram a slideshow full of Lara Croft pictures" and "how we can use sexualised women to greater advantage".

Also, I came across a few links on Reddit a while ago that should put the unproven "male power fantasy" claim to rest (although I know they won't). These articles feature some very interesting facts about how often men and boys suffer from body image issues:

Body image concerns more men than women, research finds - The Guardian

Boys want to look fit to be happy - The Sydney Morning Herald

That second one, in particular, struck a chord with me; it mentions that "by the age of eight children already had definite body ideals, which are influenced by their peers, the media and gender stereotypes". The article goes on to say this is largely due to the influence of sports figures but, given that I was never interested in sports but gaming (particularly Final Fantasy) as a strong influence when I was around the same age, much of the article still managed to resonate with me. I also came across this infographic about eating disorders amongst men (I apologise for not knowing the original creator but if you leave a comment or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com, I'll be sure to credit you).

With these facts in mind, it's pretty clear that "muscular male characters are a male power fantasy" is a myth, existing solely to dismiss the issues of one sex while campaigning for the issues of the other. So regardless of Michelle Clough's love of sexualised male characters, I think the GDC, the gaming press and the industry needs to grow up and start telling the other side of the story.

A Quick Update

I haven't created any new posts in a while so, just so everyone doesn't think I've disappeared off the face of the earth, I thought I'd give an update on what's going on. The short answer is "college work" but the bigger issue is the amount that has been heaped onto the entire games course for the end of February is remarkable. Basically, this happened because a lot of deadlines extended due to everyone being behind on a 2D game project. As great as that sounds, it quickly became an issue when all the students realised that now, assignment deadlines for every class except two are due in the same week. Still, I got to try out the Oculus Rift yesterday, so it's not all bad.

So what have I missed in the time that I haven't been blogging? Actually, before Christmas, I watched Indie Game: The Movie for college and was a lot more interested in it than I thought I'd be. For those of who haven't seen or heard of the film, it's a documentary that follows three indie games during different stages of development: Super Meat Boy, Fez and Braid. Early on in the documentary, Phil Fish (developer of Fez) and Jonathan Blow (developer of Braid) talk candidly about the abuse they received from the online community. I'd recommend the film even without that part but it stood out to me because of how often gaming sites promote the idea that online abuse is something that only affects women. This 2013 article from Polygon goes into online harassment in more detail, including other developers and harassment against women.

Around the same time, there was the harassment of Zoe Quinn over her game, Depression Quest, that she put on Steam Greenlight. Much like with Anita Sarkeesian, I have to say that the abuse she received was horrible. However, what immediately sprung to mind when I saw several articles claiming the usual harassment against female developers was Indie Game: The Movie and comments telling Phil Fish to "kill himself". Judging by the format, the comments also came from 4chan (or one of its similarly-unpleasant sister forums, like 7chan and 420chan); as we know, 4chan isn't known for being a welcoming place. Plus, Depression Quest is largely text-based; it's described as "interactive fiction" more than a game so I would've been surprised if there wasn't a backlash of some sort.

It sounds a lot like I'm defending this behaviour but in actuality, I just want to get two points across; there were circumstances surrounding the abuse unrelated to Quinn's gender and that women are not always the only ones affected. Oh, but actually giving her abusive phone calls? I've had abusive phone calls before, so that really annoys me. Hopefully, Quinn actually reported this and didn't just change her number because it bothers me that people -- even trolls -- would resort to criminal behaviour because they didn't like a game (if that is why it was happening; supposedly, the phone calls were erotic in nature, so I think this goes far beyond your typical internet troll).

What else? Oh yeah, Anita Sarkeesian is receiving a Game Developer's Choice Award!

I wasn't going to go into this too much. I've reached a point where I'm somewhat "over" Anita Sarkeesian, so I was just going to write "click Gamespot's 'Top Comments' button to see how I feel about this" and then more-or-less move on. However, I checked my e-mail and noticed that a reader had sent me a link to this report on another site, GamesIndustry.biz, which is a site where industry professionals (or those studying to get a job in the industry) post comments under their real names. Specifically, the e-mailer directed me to a commenter, whose name I won't write here for his own sake, who had left a comment that has since been edited but had been suspended and was told -- by a producer at BioWare, no less -- "don't expect any of us to be racing to snap you up when you've finished [studying games design]".

Here's his original comment:

"Anonymous rape and death threats on twitter are utterly meaningless and I expect a very high percentage of them are just trolls, if all these women just ignored these trolls then they would stop but they don't, what they do is play the victim "ohh look at me im getting all these death and rape threats over twitter poor me my life is hard!" I have no idea why they do this (I would love to know if they are attention whores or just very naive). Then of course video game sites/SJW blogs pick up on it (because real journalism is to hard) and it turns into a shitstorm which just amplifies the trolling towards that person."

The thing is, it seems like the e-mailer wanted me to defend this person but I have to say, I don't find him particularly sympathetic. Now, I get what he was trying to say. Having said that, there are right ways and wrong ways to discuss it and throwing around terms like "attention whores" is a wrong way. Is saying a game developer won't hire him after he graduates fair? Almost certainly not but hey, at this point in time, who can blame the BioWare producer for writing that?

So I'm not interested in defending this person's post but there are a lot of very reasonable comments on that GamesIndustry.biz article that are being unfairly criticised. There's the typical "too many white guys" comments, dismissing people's arguments based on their sex and colour of their skin (even though there wouldn't actually be much of a discussion without them in that comments section). One critic of Anita's writes "I now have about 20 tweets about me as a woman hater", even though his "edgiest" comments involved referring to Anita as a "troublemaker" and recommending that people report sexism to the authorities instead of complaining about it online. In fact, that same person gave an excellent rebuttal to the "too many white guys" commenters:

"There is an appropriate word to describe people who make sweeping statements and generalisations based on just gender and colour, and I'm guessing he won't like it when he figures out what it might be"

What bothers me the most about all this is the assumption that criticising Anita Sarkeesian's views is comparable to promoting sexism. Obviously, it's no surprise. It isn't the first time that opposing a feminist viewpoint has been treated as unacceptable and it won't be the last. Having said that, these opinions are about as reasonable as it gets without outright agreeing with the opposite viewpoint.

With so many perfectly reasonable comments being so heavily scrutinised, I'm not willing to post in the GamesIndustry.biz comments section. For one thing, I am interested in entering the games industry at some point. Technically, I could join, either with the title "Blogger" or "Studying Game Design". I used to have my real name in the sidebar of this very blog but removed it when I realised that, as passionate as I am about men's rights, my anti-feminist viewpoints may be frowned upon by people who automatically assume that criticism of feminism is the same thing as sexism. Plus, the conversation has stopped over there and I would likely be repeating arguments I've made here.

So I'll say what I'd like to say here, rather than there; I'm sure this won't sway a single person but for anyone who thinks that any of the critics of Anita Sarkeesian or feminism in general in that GamesIndustry.biz thread are against equality, you're incorrect. Those critics are as in favour of equality as you are but are more realistic in how it's being lobbied for and would prefer to see it done properly -- with more inclusivity and fewer faulty arguments -- than a video series that is very easy to pick apart by someone who does not face up to the criticism received.

A big issue that I've had in mind for a while now is the praise Anita receives for "creating a discussion" around gender issues in games. However, I don't see how on earth she can be credited with that when she is so intent on shutting down any criticism against her and her supporters seem all-too-happy. The thing about a discussion is there has to be "back-and-forth". Arguments from both sides. With Anita, there is only "forth". No "back".

The fact is that there are some severely closed-minded attitudes on display in that comments section, many of them not coming from the "attention whores" commenter I quoted above. The thing is, you have Mike Bithell -- developer of Thomas Was Alone -- writing comments that include statements like this:

"Young men looking to get into industry: Leave your phobias and gamer bro bullshit off of sites read by future employers. Ideally, grow out of it. Sooner or later you're going to have to step away from the computer and into an environment filled with human beings. Human beings of beautiful variation and awesome differences. It's not scary, it rocks. And you will be so embarrassed by the silly little opinions you had on feminist theory in your late teens."

This is ignorant of every single criticism against Anita that was posted and the ad hominem attacks -- insisting that all of her critics are teenagers, male, "gamer bros", fearful of variation, computer-obsessives and carrying nothing but "silly little opinions" -- come across as defensive. I think it shows that Bithell doesn't really have an appropriate response to the criticisms against Sarkeesian, so he has to sling insults against the people making them instead. It hasn't occurred to Bithel -- or it has and he's dismissed the idea -- that other people could have formed their opinions of feminism due to greater knowledge and study of the movement and not less.

Edited 16th February 2014: Interestingly, Mike Bithell linked to my blog on Twitter. Here's what he wrote (and two other tweets that I assume are directed at me):

What Mike calls "selective quoting", I call "relevant quoting". People are free to check out Mike's full comment on the website I linked to and at no point did I indicate that the above quote was Mike's full comment. However, that's the part where Mike so clearly displays his unwillingness to accept any information that doesn't fit his set-in-stone worldview. Case in point: "college aged chap" and "teenage pursuit". Not that I particularly care about someone getting my age wrong but I can only assume that Mike is as egotistical as he joked about and scrolled right past the "About Me" to find his own name.

The fact is that up until my late teens, I probably would've called myself a feminist. I didn't have a concept of what "men's rights activism" was and, except for negative portrayals of men in US sitcoms -- hardly something worth campaigning against -- there weren't any "men's issues" that I was aware of. Then I became aware of things such as a lack of domestic violence shelters for men in the UK. I visited Refuge's website -- Refuge is the name of a series of women's shelters in the UK -- and saw constant references to abusers as "he" and victims as "she", which I thought not only undermined male victims but also female victims in same-sex relationships. I became a frequenter of Glenn Sacks' site (Mike, he's not a teenager) and, in recent years, Karen Straughan -- GirlWritesWhat on Youtube -- has been my favoured source for news about men's rights activism (again, Mike, not a teenager. Or male. Or straight. Or a "gamer bro").

I find the thing that Mike, for all his fun jabs at this blog on Twitter, is capable of but actually unwilling to understand is that people who disagree with Anita Sarkeesian can still be supportive of equality. Better portrayals in games, less online abuse, equal marketing budgets regardless of the sex of the protagonist, etc, etc. I've even agreed with Anita on occasion. I suppose only glancing at a few paragraphs doesn't communicate that very well. However, I, and other gamers like me, have our own issues with game content and the industry that is ignored and belittled when we try to bring it up.We care about accuracy in our arguments and fair treatment for gamers regardless of race, sex, sexuality, religious beliefs and disability. The problem is that this sometimes involves saying phrases like, "you know, men have exaggerated body types in games too". This isn't saying that women don't have exaggerated body types and it doesn't do anything to diminish the argument that they are but, when this is brought up, we're accused of "derailing" the issue.

In other words, wanting both sexes to receive equal treatment goes against the grain of "women are victims, men are not". Yet that's all we're interested in; equal treatment. This blog's been in existence for a year and a half now and there's a plethora of posts that say the exact same thing, on a variety of different issues (and if you would like to see the logical arguments I've written against Anita's views, they can be found here, here, here and here). However, to quote one of Mike Bithell's own tweets, "I'm not sure idiots like this really care though :)"

End of Edit.

The short version of this is "Anita Sarkeesian receives an award that some people think she didn't deserve. Their reasonable viewpoints are met with dismissiveness based on their race and sex, as well as belittling insults and accusations of bigotry".

I've written about ten more paragraphs on that than I would like to and what was intended to be a short, not-too-serious blog post has turned into a lengthy one that has made me incredibly irritable. So I'll try to finish on the light-hearted note that I had originally planned; Anita herself retweeted something from a fan of hers yesterday:

"So what's the big deal?" you ask. Well let's just say that this isn't the first time that Feminist Frequency has been used in an assignment for a class:

 (Screencapped, rather than copied & pasted, just in case of programs and websites that check to see if assignments have been copied online. It's mine but I just don't want to have to go over it with my tutor.)

Yep, I used Anita's misrepresentation and failure to cite sources as an example of the difference between primary and secondary research. Better yet, for that particular assignment, I got a Distinction grade. So a big thank you to Vicsor, for uncovering all the stolen videos in the first place and an even bigger thank you to Anita Sarkeesian! Without you, I don't think I'd have been able to come up with a gaming-related example.

Feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com. I still visit frequently, even if I haven't been able to post as often.

Game Revolution Asks the Right Questions

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. This was meant to be posted a few days ago but I was suddenly hit with an influx of work. Actually, I still have a half-finished blog post featuring quotes that I found while writing assignments but that one's taking some effort to get back into, since I'd basically be rehashing some stuff I did for college only a month ago.

This one will be short but it's also something I find very interesting; there's a huge gap between the number of male enemies we slaughter in games compared to female enemies, which I've written about before. Specifically, this was about the number of generic, cannon fodder mooks that players slaughter in their hundreds without giving it a moment's thought, rather than named villains and villainesses. The majority of these enemies are male, or at least are male in appearance.

Thankfully, it seems like a gaming journalist has been thinking along the same lines as me; a few days ago, Nicholas Tan of Game Revolution uploaded an article he wrote titled "Can Women Be Video Game Enemies En Masse?"

I don't want to nitpick too much because I think it's a good article. It's the kind of article that needs to be seen more on mainstream gaming sites, something that is thought-provoking and acknowledges that equality for women in gaming isn't all about stomping out online abuse and reducing breast size. You also have to acknowledge that men are unfairly portrayed too and equality works both ways; unless you take the hit and have women killed as often as men (give or take; I'm not asking for a 50/50 split. That would be ridiculous), things will be unequal.

Even so, while the article gives a good overview and I hope will be enough to start a discussion, it isn't as in-depth as I would like. It would've been nice to see some more examples from games, since the only one focused on is Fallout: New Vegas (as an example of a game that gets it right). There are screenshots of Final Fight and Final Fantasy VIII but the author doesn't elaborate on either one. The picture of FFVIII's Edea raises questions, since she isn't specifically a female enemy to be killed "en masse", in the same way that Roxy and Poison from Final Fight are. Not that FFVIII isn't guilty of a lack of female enemies but I think Nicholas Tan could've provided context about why it was included.

Having said that, the author hits the nail on the head with two statements about why we don't see more female enemies in games. After writing about how enemies are more likely to be male in games designed to be realistic, Tan says the following:

"Now since most video games are not meant to be absolutely realistic, it's unnecessary that they need to follow this rule. I've blasted the heads off numerous female raiders in Fallout: New Vegas. But it's a rule that carries over, if but subconsciously, from video game developers who are predominantly men."

Apart from the "predominately men" part -- I haven't seen anything to suggest that either sex would be more or less willing to female enemies -- but the lack of female enemies in unrealistic games is due to real-world gender norms. Think of it this way; developers can introduce any number of fantastical elements into a fictional world, such as magic and monsters, but they can only do so much when it comes to subverting gender roles. If they do, it will only be to elevate the role of women and reduce the role of men; for those of you who have played the Shivering Isles expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, think about the gender roles of the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers. Both are armies where the highest ranks are made up of women while males don't rise above being grunts.

So that's one of the reasons why we don't see women making up the majority of enemies in games and the second quote I'd like to use from Tan's article shows why we probably won't:

"Then of course, could you imagine a game where a male protagonist goes around murdering women and exclusively women and not just demons like harpies and hagravens? Even if the gameplay is groundbreaking and the story is told with an attention to context, it will become easy prey for the mainstream press. I mean, talk about making yourself a target and bad marketing. At best, the game would be considered a joke and be turned into an infamous meme. (Perhaps such a game would need a female protagonist killing a whole lot of other women to work.)"

Not much to say about that, other than it's correct. There's no chance of a game featuring a male protagonist massacring an all-female army being released and not becoming a target for the gaming press (or the mainstream, as Tan points out). Back when Resident Evil 5 received its first trailer, it faced controversy for featuring a white protagonist -- Chris Redfield -- gunning down black enemies, as the game is set in Africa. With gender issues being a major topic on gaming news sites, is there any way a game like the one described could exist and face a similar controversy? Is there any way it could not become the gaming community's whipping boy (or girl, if you prefer)?

As good as the rest of the Nicholas Tan article is, it ends on a silly note:

"That said, a video game where women are the primary antagonists would be an interesting experiment, so long as it's handled well (say, a devilish male scientist creates a virus that targets women because he thought it was THIS BIG but she said it was only this big)."

It's a reference to penis size, in case you don't get the joke.

I realise I'm overanalysing this but there are four things wrong with that idea:

1) It paints the male scientist as the bad guy. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, since games with all-male enemies have had female antagonists (such as Final Fantasy VIII again) but I think Tan could've used a better example.

2) I don't see how that could be considered "handled well". Surely, the best way to handle a game with women as the primary enemies would be to avoid referencing it at all. We don't acknowledge men as the primary enemies being "the norm", so why reference the female enemies as being out of the ordinary?

3) It doesn't put the female enemies in control of their own actions. Having a virus that makes them evil is a lot different than the women choosing to be evil (or at least members of the evil army, whether it's because they were intimidated into joining, they signed up because they needed money, etc.). There's already criticism from feminist circles about female characters lacking "agency"; being active participants in the game's story, rather than passive ones. So if the game is going for true equality, the women have to choose to be the bad guys.

4) The male scientist lashed out at women because a woman said he had a small penis? Really? That's like Lara Croft's quest beginning because a guy said she was fat.

I don't want it to sound like I'm criticising Nicholas Tan or the article here. Instead, let's pretend we're playing "Fantasy Video Game Storyline Writer" and coming up with our own ideas for how predominately female enemies would work instead. That's more along the lines of what I'm criticising rather than the article itself.

Like I said, I've overanalysing but there are more sensible reasons to have a character gunning down hundreds upon hundreds of men rather than hundreds upon hundreds of women. That could just be part of the fictional universe's mythology rather than for any reason for it occurring in storyline.

So if you haven't read the article, go and read it and feel free to praise Nicholas Tan for writing about a subject we don't often hear about on gaming sites. I hope it receives more exposure and makes a few more mainstream gamers think outside the box.

The Good & Bad of Remember Me

This blog post will contain spoilers for Remember Me.

Remember Me has been available to download for free on PlayStation Plus for a while and, as luck would have it, I had a code for a free month-long trial of Plus that had to be used before 2014. I was interested in downloading the game partly because I think it would give me something to write about on this blog. It's a series that has been at the centre of a controversy about female protagonists, after all, so it seems like a game I should write about. I barely knew anything about it, so what if it was a game as misandric as Heavenly Sword? Or at the very least, what if the sites reporting on the lower marketing budget for games starring female protagonists were only giving half the story and there were other reasons behind the lower budget for the game?

The only thing I found out was how undeserving Remember Me was to be involved in such a controversy; it's actually a very good game and it's disappointing that the lower marketing budget articles overshadowed it to an extent. The main thing I took away from it -- and the big reason why I couldn't title this blog "The Sexism of Remember Me", like I tend to when I examine games for sexism -- is because it gets a lot more right than it does wrong. I sincerely hope that more games starring female protagonists take their cues from Remember Me.

In a lot of ways, Remember Me borrows from a lot of other popular series. The combat is straight out of the Batman: Arkham series (albeit with more user-friendly controls and a cool combo-construction system), navigating around the city is exactly like Uncharted and the ending is kind of predictable and anticlimactic too. There are even quick-time events, although thankfully they were very rare. One for each boss fight. The same goes for the main character, Nilin. In my opinion, she was only marginally better than the majority of generic, quippy action heroes we see starring in every other game these days. She was at her best when she showed some real emotions rather than typical one-liners, which didn't seem as prevalent as they are with some other modern protagonists.

It's not like the game handles any of these things badly. The combat's pretty good. The climbing is pretty good. The story's pretty good. Although she isn't exceptional, Nilin is a bit more likeable than some other protagonists I could mention. So it does it well but doesn't leap to any new heights on any of those fronts.

However, maybe the fact that Remember Me doesn't try to reinvent the wheel is part of the reason it works so well. It might not be breaking any new ground but from a gender issues standpoint, it sends the message of "yes, we have a female protagonist. No, it's not a big deal", because it offers as entertaining an experience as the other games next ot it on the shelf.

It does a good job of removing the issue of gender in several ways; there are evil male characters and evil female ones. Sympathetic men and sympathetic women. The only time Nilin's gender is referenced is when she receives a few sleazy comments from a guy in the slums at the start of the game. Thankfully, that's just a one-off occurrence. Nilin is never thought of as any more or less capable because she's a woman and the game's enemies don't treat her differently than they would any other terrorist (or "Errorist", as memory-hunters like Nilin are referred to in the game).

If I have one criticism of the game, it's that it falls back into the old pattern of having all-male generic enemies but a mix of male and female Errorists (in the short prison-break scene we see them in, that is). I may be wrong about that; it's possible that some of the Leapers -- mutated humans with deformed faces, kind of like the Splicers from Bioshock -- were female but it was difficult to tell. If pushed for an answer, I'd say the Leapers were all male too.

There were some named female villains in the game. Three of them, in fact. However, because Nilin is able to alter memories, she is able to enter the memories of two of the women and change significant events in their life in such a way to convince them to become good. It's a trend that none of the people Nilin does this to are full-blown villains. Instead, they're misunderstood and sympathetic individuals (to an extent) who we're led to believe are villains before entering their memories. Nilin alters the memories of two men and two women but, when she's done, there are still plenty of male villains but only one female one. Thankfully, the number of sympathetic characters is more evenly split between the sexes.

Other than that, there isn't much to say about gender issues in Remember Me, which is actually a good thing; no news is good news, isn't it? If anything, it's just a shame that this was the game at the centre of the marketing budget controversy and not something less deserving of success. Although, in spite of poor sales -- only 300,000 worldwide according to VG Chartz -- maybe it's similar to Dragon's Crown; perhaps the controversy helped the game's sales, in spite of how low they are.

One thing I wish had happened following Remember Me's release is I wish I had seen discussion about the game outside of boards and threads specifically devoted to it. I'd have liked to have seen it mention in gaming articles too, particularly ones about good female characters. I've probably heard the phrase, "there are hardly any good female protagonists" twenty times more than I have, "Nilin from Remember Me is a pretty good female protagonist" since Remember Me's release.

I have some other thoughts on the game, since this blog will be pretty short otherwise; the real areas where it excels are the music and the environments. If I take anything away from Remember Me, it's going to be how unbelievable the environment artists made the city of Neo-Paris look. Honest-to-God, it is astounding. It's the kind of futuristic sci-fi environment I've always wanted to see in a game but never did until now. I loved the little details added to make it seem like a "real" futuristic world, with advertisements for toys, books, television shows and the evil Memorize corporation making Neo-Paris feel like a place with a history. The only other game I can think of that used fictionial brands to build its world so effectively is The World Ends With You on Nintendo DS.

I'll be interested in seeing if anyone else has played Remember Me and what they thought of it. I'm very pleased I tried it out and I'd recommend it to other people. Hopefully I'll be able to get around to playing Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge too, to cross those two off the list of games praised for their female protagonists that I still need to experience.

I've been attempting to bring this up in a couple of blogs now, including one that I have half-written (so it may come up again in the future) but if you haven't already done so, go over to Vicsor's Opinion and read his blog post entitled "A Diverse Cast of Characters". It delves into the Remember Me marketing budget controversy -- which now seems to have been removed from Penny-Arcade for some reason, which is why I didn't link to it here -- the actual sales figures and what it's like to be on "the side of the fence" that wants more varied protagonists but disagrees with the arguments made by the more critical and dogmatic supporters of female protagonists.

Feel free to leave comments below or contact me at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

Mighty No. 9's Feminist Community Manager Controversy

A sudden upswing in work to do over the holidays means this will probably be the last blog post until January. I do my best to update this blog three times a month but that's going to be tricky this month. I also have a completely different blog post half-written but just finding out about this story today made me switch topics. This one's a lot more interesting.

There's a funded project on Kickstarter by the name of Mighty No. 9, which is being developed by a company called Comcept and billed as a spiritual successor to the Mega Man series. You can see why too; not only are the character designs and gameplay practically identical but it has Keiji Inafune -- director behind Onimusha, Dead Rising and Mega Man itself -- heading up the project.

Recently, Comcept appointed a new community manager called Dina Abou Karam. Her job seems to be to listen to fan feedback and forward it to higher-ups at Comcept. She's also posts blogs and updates on the game, manages the forums and basically acts as a go-between for the fans and developer.

The trouble is that Dina being appointed raised a whole host of questions amongst the many, many backers of Mighty No. 9. Firstly, Dina presented a piece of fan art of a gender-flipped version of Beck -- the male protagonist of MN9 -- and stated:

"As someone who cares about gender representation in games, please make Call [the game's female character] a playable character, or even better, make Beck a female bot alltogether [sic]! It shouldn't and won't affect gameplay! I started on some Mighty No. 9 Fan Art myself as a way to promote this Kickstarter/express my wish:"

Other than that, Dina tweeted that she was "never a Mega Man player" but she supported MN9 because her friends and boyfriend were working on the game. Here's some screenshots of some of the entire situation:

Left-click for larger view.

The tweets were later deleted.

So what's the big deal? Well one of the reasons that fans of Mighty No. 9 and the Mega Man series are so frustrated by these developments is because they've been waiting a long time for a new iteration of the Mega Man series (and yes, this counts, albeit in a different form). There hasn't been a new Mega Man game since 2008 and none on a console since 2004. The fans have had to put up with cancellations of games like Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe. A Western port of the iOS game Rockman X-over was cancelled because of negative feedback.

This video -- "Mighty Number Nope: The Dina Disaster" by a Youtuber called InternetAristocrat -- gives a more detailed account of why fans would be frustrated than I can and provides screenshots from the backers-only MN9 forum. It goes into detail about the social justice causes Dina is interested in according to her tweets and mentions that she stated her favourite Mega Man game is Mega Man X ... after saying that she wasn't a Mega Man player.

Basically, it's understandable that the fans would be angry that a non-MM fan made suggestions that Comcept change the game to suit a personal ideology -- and be hired following it -- when that's not what the backers agreed to when they donated. They have a right to be angry over someone being hired who has been forceful when expressing her political viewpoints in association with the game (and the video by InternetAristocrat shows that Dina herself stated that she was hired because her boyfriend worked for Comcept). It's not what they paid for. Nor is it the person they want speaking on behalf of the backers/the Western audience. Here are some of the responses when Dina was announced as community manager:

Left-click for larger view.

I should point out before I go any further that yesterday, Comcept released a statement saying that none of Dina's views actually effect the game in any way. Their statement can be viewed on Gameranx -- more on that site later -- but here's the important part:

"Will the community manager be skewing things the way they would personally like to see the game? Will the community manager ignore views that don’t match with their own personal ideals? Will the community manager lose the community’s desires due to unfamiliarity with the type of game we are making? Will the community manager be creating their own robots and levels and programming, or changing the game in any way, from what the core creative team wants?! A lot of these or similar questions have been raised.

The good news is that the answer, in all cases, is no."

So all of the comments in this blog are outdated by now, when people weren't sure just how much influence Dina had, but I haven't seen any other updates on the subject since. Not sure what the response has been to Comcept's explanation.

I've never played a Mega Man game but personally, I think the backers who want a refund are completely justified, even with Comcept's clarification (and as clarifications go, it hits all the right notes).

There's a good reason why companies keep their business and personal lives separate -- in fact, in InternetAristocrat's video, it's stated that Dina deleted her tweets about never being a Mega Man player for that exact reason -- and the backers donated to this project in good faith. I don't want to sound overdramatic but Dina is an unknown quantity in this situation. It's fine to have feminists on development teams -- in fact, it'd be pretty hard to avoid and ridiculous not to -- and it's even fine to have people on a development team who are not fans of previous games in the series. Lord knows that having developers who are fans of the series doesn't always work; look at the Ninja Theory's DmC. However, that's not what the backers paid for. The Kickstarter page itself says the following [emphasis theirs]:

"Every aspect of development—art, level design, music, programming, etc.—is being handled by veteran Japanese game creators with extensive experience in the genre, and with Mega Man in particular, all the way up to and including the project’s leader, Keiji Inafune himself!"

Moreover, this is specifically someone who was hired following a suggestion of her own, game-altering ideas based on a personal, political agenda and who got her foot in the door due to her boyfriend putting in a good word for her in spite of being unfamiliar with the series. There's no real reason for her to be a part of Comcept any more than any of the other thousands (I assume) of bilingual Mighty No. 9 fans out there.

My issue with this entire controversy is Dina's initial suggestion of, "even better, make Beck a female bot alltogether! It shouldn't and won't affect gameplay!" It's odd how if you said this about making Lara Croft or Samus male, all you would get is funny looks. Unusually, I've actually heard this suggestion before, about Link from the Legend Of Zelda series. I also heard the exact same thing when Peter Capaldi was announced as the next incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who. So why is it that when pushed for a reason why this should happen, the only response I ever see is "why not"?

If the only reason why you should change a character's gender is "why not" or "because we can", then there's a problem. You could apply that to any characteristic and make the same claim. "Why shouldn't the character be from Paraguay?!" Again, you could also say the same thing about gender-flipping female characters or making every non-white character Caucasian.

The reason "why not" is because these are established characters -- or at least characters with an appearance more-or-less figured out in the artist's mindset prior to drawing them on a page -- and even in the case of a character who can change his appearance, such as the Doctor, doesn't it do more to establish new strong female characters rather piggybacking on the success of a one who has been male for half a century? What would that bring to the table except for tokenism?

Look, there are actually some quite plausible reasons for switching a character's traits during development, such as if the writer adds something to the mythology that would make it awkward for the character to be [insert race/sex/sexuality here]. Or perhaps it conflicts with something that was already there and needs to be changed to suit it. However, regardless of the reasons why, I would think we could all agree that two fans who "care about gender representation" are not a good enough reason to alter the character designer and game director's creative visions.

Having said all of that, hopefully Comcept's clarification puts a few minds at ease. It's probably the best thing they could've done and maybe it will do the trick.

Anyway, one of the wonderful things about this entire controversy is that even though the typical parties have come out of the woodwork to express their frustration with the "misogyny" towards Dina -- do me a favour and take a look at the comments pictured above. See any hatred of women? -- mainstream gamers don't seem to share that viewpoint. If you visited the Gameranx article above, you might've noticed that Ian Miles Cheong (yes, that one) disabled comments. It's hard not to believe he didn't do that because of the backlash against his previous article on the subject, the blatantly clickbait-titled "Be Respectful and Considerate - Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter Explodes With Misogynist Rage". Some of the comments are very satisfying to read, calling out Cheong for casually, and unprofessionally, making the Mighty No. 9 backers out to be misogynists.

Left-click for larger view.

And my personal favourite:

When a game journalist -- even one as biased as Cheong -- actually starts throwing around the term "misogyny" simply because people object to having the rug pulled out from under them on a product they paid for, game journalism really has hit its lowest point. I live in the UK and tracts like Cheong's are quite reminiscent of the snidely aggressive articles we see in the pages of tabloids like the Daily Mail.

In other words ... it's just a typical day on a gaming news site. Feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com