Women in Video Game News: Not a Hot Month

A few days ago I posted on Super Whatnot about my intentions to start reading comics because of the DC Universe re-launch. I made a passing comment about how women are underrepresented in the industry and that there are some complications with how they are represented in the medium itself on too many occasions.

Video games are no different.

Typically I wouldn't go out of my way to post about simple gaming news, but there have been a pair of stories that have really irked me in the last few weeks and that I feel like I would like to address here.

1. BioWare's Liara (Mass Effect) figure reveal
2. Dead Island's code place holder for a player character

Sadness rant after the jump.


Now, BioWare did something good in the last couple of months, adding FemShep to the cover and legitimizing what many players consider the actual Commander Shepard for their games. While this was certainly a good step, they tainted the whole thing a little by letting the community design FemShep. Apparently they didn't want to go with the default that already existed (and I don't blame them) and I don't have problems with the fact that she ended up a ginger (in fact I am red with pride), but the problem is that they made her all young and sexy.

There's no problem with a sexy FemShep, I mean, look at MaleShep (rawr?), but she is an experienced space commander that has a lot of history. The female version of Shepard apparently started her career at 12, because she looks to be in her late twenties. MaleShep looks to be in his thirties.

Now I don't want to dismiss this issue with a well, that's how women are portrayed in video games, because it isn't okay. But, maybe it just didn't surprise me? And maybe I was just happy it was a ginger and maybe happier that she wasn't going to look like a ghoul as the previous default did. However, I am moving on to something that is really fucking disgusting.

Yeah. So BioWare released this model as a test to the Mass Effect community so they could get some feedback. Apparently they are working on a figure of Liara and they wanted to see what everyone thought of this design.

So first thing's first. This is not how Liara is portrayed in the game. She is sexualized, as are a lot of the characters, but she is also an archaeologist, academic, crime lord, and biotics expert. SHE IS MORE THAN A PAIR OF EXAGGERATEDLY GIANT TITS AND AN ASS.

I can't stress that enough. So the very fact that they produced this figure and thought it was good enough for production, speaks to a certain mindset at BioWare about how they think of their female characters. I understand this is a certain style of anime (which I can't comment on the relative okayness of because I know nothing about it), but Mass Effect is not in that style, so why would you produce a figure of a female character in that style if not to make her into a sexual object? Fuck.

Don't be that way BioWare. You're the most progressive major game designer when it comes to homosexuality, I don't know what screw has stripped for you to think that this is an acceptable way to represent and worse sell one of your characters.

They aren't releasing this figure, though. They are just looking for feedback. And indeed the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. So good on you internet, for once keeping things classy, however, my problem is that this was released for feedback at all.

The Mary Sue has a great article about how BioWare is croudsourcing their representations of women.

If you’re willing to let the public decide how your characters will be interpreted by others, this would imply that you yourself are not completely invested in how your characters are interpreted.

They're right about the whole thing. But what I find suspicious beyond the croudsourcing thing, is the shirking of responsibility. Maybe BioWare sees that this figure is offensive but they also wonder how well it would sell. There is after all a market for these things. Maybe they thought, let's see what the reaction to this is. If everyone is disgusted, that's okay, it was just a test design. If people respond positively, the mouth breathing market for instance, then cha-ching. If people had turned out to want this, then BioWare could wash its hands of the responsibility of the sexism. "Well, that's what the community wanted." The entire situation seems very cynical to me.

Dead Island. I was actually looking forward to this game. Despite the horribly depressing trailer, which made M sad without even seeing the trailer, just hearing the music, it looks like a cool open-world zombie game with decent RPG elements. And it has multiplayer.

It came out a few days ago, and while people that bought the hard copy had no problems, people that bought it on Steam, actually got a developers copy. Things are unfinished, untested, and simply not the release version.

This would typically be funny, as I'm used to such things because I buy Bethesda games, but this mistake had a much larger consequence than amusing YouTube videos.

There is a playable character in the game and these characters have different attributes that can be added to customize gameplay (as it is an RPG), and one of those abilities allows her to do extra damage to male zombies. There is a similar perk in Fallout games called Black Widow. And in the Dead Island official release it's called Gender Wars, but in the test copy, that was used by developers in the process of creating the game, the attribute is labeled FeministWhore.

Clarifying statement: The publisher and developer have come out and adamantly apologized for the whole thing. Saying that it was an inside joke of a developer or development team, and that of course this does not reflect the companies' beliefs, and that the perpetrating parties have been sacked, and that they are deeply, seriously guys we mean super duper deeply, sorry about the incident.

And I fucking believe them. I believe it was someone's funny idea to name the attribute that, and that there was other people that saw this and did not admonish the developer for it. That isn't the game maker or publisher's fault. It's a huge PR nightmare, but I don't think the development team as a whole thinks that this is appropriate.

What it does show though, is the general attitude towards women in the industry, and worse, the denial of such.

Someone coded that attribute that way, and other people were okay with it staying that way for a period of time. This person wasn't disciplined until this label entered the public sphere.

This is indicative of an attitude towards women in and around the gaming culture. Yes, it was a joke, and jokes are jokes. But, we're denying something if we pretend that it was only a joke and not something that represents the acceptance of prejudice, the pervasive sexist attitude that exists in the gaming industry (see just above for example).

I haven't read a lot of press about this incident. Indeed when I googled the "Dead Island" I didn't see any stories that were about the fuck up. Worse, many people in comments sections of the articles I have read, largely dismiss it as just a joke, and that people are all worked up about it because we are all too oversensitive.

But no. This attitude about women exists, and simply writing this off as an inside joke that got made public is an act of hurtful denial. Inside jokes exist because of agreed upon norms. That's what makes them inside. The inside in this case, with a development team somewhere, is pretty fucking ugly. Not only are women a) irritating for their ideological backlash against years of male oppression and b) held to an archaic sexual standard that punishes women for making personal decisions about their sexual life.

So yeah. This matters. It's not just a joke. And I wonder how my experience of the game will change. If it happens at all.

Seeing women only as sexual objects is something that immature teenage boys do. Resenting women because they aren't just sexual objects is something that pigs do. Pretending that neither happens anymore is something that we can't allow ourselves to do.