My semi-AWOL status is likely to continue; Marc and I have had so much fun playing Guitar Hero II that we got the midnight release of Guitar Hero III last night. On the way home, Marc remarked that the game has really crossed the gender line in popularity, and I noted that it couldn’t hurt that the female characters in the game are remarkably objectification-free. The designers took the daring step of creating the female characters in the exact same way they created male characters, which is to model them off real people/types you see in the rock world. The singer seems modeled on Ani Di Franco. There’s Pandora, who’s the Bauhaus-style Goth chick, Judy Nails, the punk chick that looks like a cross between Kathleen Hanna and Jane Wiedlin, and Casey Lynch, who is clearly modeled on Ruyter Suys of Nashville Pussy:
Suys plays in her bra a lot, but she’s no passive sex object. In fact, she’s scary aggressive and the animators really captured her fuck-you attitude in Guitar Hero II. And all three women have normal-looking bodies, even. The game is really welcoming to women in that it doesn’t make you feel that you have to compromise Teh Rawk with Teh Twittery Sex Object to be a female guitar hero. And I knew that the new game was being designed by a new team (since the old one is busy doing Rock Band), and there was some fear that they wouldn’t carry on this casually non-sexist sensibility to the new one.
The verdict: So far, a mixed bag. The new designers wisely decided to slavishly follow the old game’s aesthetic, so most of the changes are minor, which is a good thing. However, they gave into this strange urge to tweak Judy Nails (made her more goth, as if that made her cooler, which is something that makes exactly no sense) and worse, the threateningly fuck-you, aggressive, half-naked hellbeast Casey Lynch has been cleaned up, with straight blonde hair and her character descriptions says something about her realizing she needed to be a bit more polished and feminine to really win them over. Now she looks less Ruyter Suys and more some groupie hanging out at a Poison concert. *SIGH*
I was pleased, however, to see that they did decide to inject some racial diversity into the character options. From the initial offerings of characters you can play, you have a chance to play a character modeled on Jimi Hendrix and a Japanese woman who apes the aesthetic of Shonen Knife. That tickled me, so I made her the guitarist for my band Pussy Oversoul.* My delight was softened, however, by the unnecessary racist joke in her character description that says something about how she put down her violin at age 3 to pick up the ax. Seriously, it’s like one step forward, two steps back sometimes.
All that said, if you want real analysis of these issues and video games, Mighty Ponygirl has a great blog. And reviving a question she asked on her blog: What song would you like to be able to play in Guitar Hero? I’m dying for Purple Rain.
*Zuzu: I told you I’d name a band that one day.
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I don’t know, I’ve really felt like the new one washed away the non-objectifying style and just disgusted me. Not only is Judy Nails just horrible from a character design standpoint, but to implement a new physics engine entirely to add “boob physics” (wildly non-realistic bouncing that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to video games) to her character is pretty offensive.
I loved Guitar Hero II, and I’ve played it almost daily since I bought it 6 months ago, but I can’t bring myself to buy the new game and support what they’ve done with the new one. It just seems as sexist as every other game out there. It’s too bad, because not only did they include a Sonic Youth song, but it’s a Kim Gordon song!
Like I’ve said, it was interesting to see the Metroid video games become the first major franchise to really touch on this subject–even if they didn’t do a perfect job of it.
No longer was it Mario or Link saving the princesses; very early in the NES era (1986) Samus Aran revealed her “true identity” if you beat the games fast enough–although she hid behind thick armor and an ambiguous name, she was perhaps one of the initial video game represenatives of “girl power.”
But there’s something a little disheartening about how “the faster you are the less clothes she wears,” down to a leotard for the “best ending” as opposed to keeping the whole suit on or removing the helmet.
I also noticed a certain progression of characters in the Final Fantasy series; in the first SNES one, FF4 (2 in the USA,) you could infer any number of stereotypes from Rosa and Rydia being physically much weaker, but magically stronger, than any of the male characters, but in FF3/6 Terra and Celes were at least as strong as any of the male characters and were arguably the lead heroes (there was no designated “main character” per se like with Cecil in FF4.)
Even more can be drawn from the interactions between characters and the villains (which largely are drawn from older lore, or in Metroid’s case from the Alien movie, i.e. Ridley [Scott]/Ripley.)
Well, the game play is fun and I like the new songs, but yeah, the new designers are demonstrating that they’re the same sexist munches that dominate the industry. Dancing girls? During a Rage Against the Machine song? Makes no sense. I like the game, I plan to be addicted, but I miss the easy non-sexism of the second one.
I have high hopes for Rock Band—it’s even got a New Pornographers song. I wish they’d branch out more into funk, though, and have more music by non-white artists.
Well, the good news is that if you’re playing the game, you’re not paying attention to the dancy jigglies because you’re too busy watching the notes come at you.
The bad news is that developers have a long history of taking a model that ain’t broke (the huge cross-gender success of guitar hero) and trying to “fix it” so that the coveted 18-30 male group gets their daily allowance of softcore.
Speaking as a games designer, I can’t offer any crumbs of comfort. It’s true that some things have improved. I recall when it was conventional wisdom in the industry that woman leads didn’t sell games. That was turned on its head when the Tomb Raider franchise launched. I was working for Eidos at the time and recall how marketing supremo Larry Sparkes played the sex angle hard. Lara Croft was all teeth and tits and she sold and sold and sold… However, I can see how someone might argue that this was not a step forward.
It’s been a marketing-led business for the twelve or thirteen years I’ve been in the industry, but the impetus toward objectified women isn’t entirely at the behest of marketing. It is still, at the end of the day, a largely male-dominated development environment. I don’t believe more than 5% of the dev workers I’ve collaborated with have been women. And of those only two have been in the design discipline, two in code and a couple of producers; the vast majority of the rest have worked in Art.
Most of the designers I’ve worked with have been well-educated and fairly liberal guys. There’s little overt evidence of sexism amongst them. They are widely-read, smart and seem to have down-to-earth relationships. Yet they, like myself, are all focussed on delivering to a demographic that is assumed to be largely male and young. So no one challenges the assumption that women should look highly sexualised. If you did challenge it you are liable to be met with a lot of weak blather about ’strong’ heroines, which in reality is about creating characters who are men with breasts. The truth is that we designers, on the whole, don’t ‘do’ femininity very well.
So I hold my hands up and plead ‘guilty’. My recent Dungeons & Dragons game for the Sony PSP is packed with fantasy women. I didn’t even consider it should be any other way and I imagine that if I’d briefed the artists different I’d probably have met resistance.
I’m really not sure how to alter the environment. I’m up for suggestions, but it seems to me that you may have to change the developer demographic, and that’s no easy task.
Yeah, I can’t believe that I forgot about that fact that not only are there halfnaked background dancers, but they’re Axe-bodyspray-branded halfnaked background dancers. Add that to Judy Nails’ absolutely ridiculous vamping animations. Even if you’re not paying attention to background, it’s bad enough to have anyone else in the room seeing you play that.
Rock Band seems great so far, and the fact that a New Pornographers song is in it is absolutely great, but I’m pretty sure that Coheed and Cambria song in it is all about threatening to kill your girlfriend, and I really don’t want to have to sing something like that to get through the game.
Still totally planning on buying that one, though. At least the create-a-character means wayyy more diversity, even if the actual songs themselves are all by white artists and overwhelmingly male.
What’s funny about the daily allotment of softcore is that it’s really insulting to men, because the boobiesboobiesboobies stuff implies that because you play video games, you have little to no opportunities to see a real woman naked.
Also, not just Kim Gordon—that’s the Sonic Youth song they did with Chuck D. Fucking love that album—that used to be my Mario Karting album. You got to love sneaking the line, “Are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?” onto a game that’s going to be played by a bunch of kids.
>>What’s funny about the daily allotment of softcore is that it’s really insulting to men, because the boobiesboobiesboobies stuff implies that because you play video games, you have little to no opportunities to see a real woman naked.
Many male nerds actually do fit into this category. But also don’t overlook the new and growing ‘unreal women fetishism’ aspect.
It’s also not a great way to sell your game. As I discovered a few months back, games that market for softcore tend to have lower rankings and don’t necessarily sell any better.
Add to that television, magazines, billboards… I think that what’s actually entailed is that there is no time at which it’s ever okay to not be looking at a half-naked woman. ‘lessin’ yer one-a-dem ho-mo-sexuals.
Oh, oh, oh! OOOOHHH! I just had an idea! Forget this feminism business, because we’re all going to be fuckin’ rich: Bikini Study Bible. Eh? Eh?
“My delight was softened, however, by the unnecessary racist joke in her character description that says something about how she put down her violin at age 3 to pick up the ax.”
Can you explain the racism here? (I’m not trying to be provocative; I really don’t get it.)
BTW, your posts about video games make me feel like an old fucking fart. The last one I ever played was Frogger.
There’s the whole stereotype of the overly serious, overly ambitious Asian girls. The idea being that even a hard rocking Japanese girl is a closet classical music geek.
PhysioProf: It’s an American stereotype. Our prejudice dictates that all Asians are perfectionistic and work-obsessed; the idea that all young Asian women learn to play the violin (something that takes a lot of time and skill) is an extension of that. Thinking back to my school days, I’m sure I’ve never met this violin-playing Asian girl, so it’s obvious to me that she’s a racial type.
Ironically, I do remember this great rock guitarist I saw at a High School music camp. He played a song called, “Don’t Sit Next To Me Just Because I’m Asian,” which I thought was very funny. Apparently the rest of the predominately white camp was too shocked to appreciate the humor.
Speaking of sexism and video games, has anyone else seen this uber-creepy video from the new Super Smash Bros. for the Wii? Snake thinks he can “catch” Samus, and, er….
http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/movies/movie071002b.html?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=290&width=420
It really screws around with my empoering vision of Samus when they’re making rape jokes about her.
Empowering, that is.
Or a joke about Japanese conformism.
realityfighter:
I’ve never met a Violin-playing Asian girl either, and I was a music major. I knew lots of Korean pianists, though.
Heavenly Sword (PS3) is a great game (albeit way too short) has a female heroine, although I can certainly see how it could be argued that she’s more of the “man with boobs” type of character. Final Fantasy X-2 had three female leads that I didn’t find overtly sexualized, at least not in terms of characterization. The dead girl that was possessing Yuna was a pretty classic shrinking-violet victim type, but Yuna herself was not. I don’t recall the physical models being particularly heavy on the T&A, either.
Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone from making manga rape-porn out of it.
I’m not entirely sure why I capitalized “violin” in my previous comment.
Brain-fart.
The violin-thing strikes me as a reference to Midori. Which suggests that not only are all hard-rocking Japanese girls secret closet classical music geeks, but also that they are all, at heart, exactly the same closet classical music geek. That (obviously) is a little problematic. Though but yes, the Guitar Hero games are an alarming amount of fun.
>>Many male nerds actually do fit into this category. But also don’t overlook the new and growing ‘unreal women fetishism’ aspect.
Yes, it is also common among them to put duct tape on their glasses and laugh in a manner that is half-snort and always have shirts with pocket protectors. Very common, yes.
OR every modern evolution of a game to be more racist or boobies oriented is done by a money-grubbing company like Electronic Arts who is trying to pierce the “mainstream” and attract that all-important frat boy casual gamer market. (Games like The Sims and Guitar Hero prove that the best way to really pierce the mainstream for money is to provide an enjoyable, yet accessible game with proper race and gender representation).
Many nerds do in fact turn away from “boobiesboobiesboobies” games because their game playing experiences don’t need to include an insult to both their intelligence and humanity. Male nerds, even the misogynist ones, don’t like the assumption that they are subhuman dorks who must pray to the pixel gods for a flash of prerendered nipple because lord knows the world of dating or the vast mysteries of the internet are far too complex for their little minds.
Sorry for the rant, but it just seems amazing to me that in 2007 on a medium that is majority geek that we are still bound to 1980s frat-boy beliefs about the “geek”.
Another song I’d like to hear: “Words and Guitars” by Sleater-Kinney.
And good point, Cerebus. Even misogynists can see it’s an insult to their intelligence.
Hey, there’s also The Iris Gaming Network and it’s ‘zine Cerise.
I was in the open beta for Hellgate: London this past week, and I was super excited that they have actual facial choices so you can look like a non-white person. You can also choose your body size, so you’re not limited to tiny women with big boobs. That’s a nice touch.
“It really screws around with my empoering vision of Samus when they’re making rape jokes about her. ”
Your definetly projecting something that isn’t into what Snake and the operater are talking about.
It’s a fighting game catching an opponet opens up several attack. Snake has a sleeper hold.
http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/characters/snake.html
Entomologista quite a number of MMOs such as City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa among others let you chose skin tones that are available to human and not human. Boob size, chest size height all are variable.
They have been doing it for years.
“but I’m pretty sure that Coheed and Cambria song in it is all about threatening to kill your girlfriend, and I really don’t want to have to sing something like that to get through the game.”
You don’t have to sing at all if you don’t want to. You can do the drums or guitar to pass the song.
Also I suspect if they get a T rating they will edit some of the songs like they did in Guitar Hero 3 for “Devil went down to Georgia”.
Btw look for the cheat code if you don’t want to do the hassle of finding someone to do offline coop carrear mode to get the coop songs in quickplay.
Having just purchased a PS2 (yeah, I know, I’m a late adopter - it’s to do with money - a PS2 costs about $200 here, a PS3 is about $1000, and that’s without the games) I’m finding my preference is to look for a particular game design company. My current recommendation is anything by Squaresoft/Square Enix (the mob responsible for the Final Fantasy series), particularly their RPGs, because they actually bother with things like plot and characterisation as well as gameplay.
I will admit to a bit of disappointment about their female clothing model (they work on what appears to be the standard manga/anime trope that unclothed female flesh is invulnerable) but it’s easy enough to ignore that (and besides, they give us girls lots of pretty boys and men to look at as well).
The Kingdom Hearts games are pretty good too - I’ll admit to having got KH2 because I learned that some of the characters from Final Fantasy VII (my current major fandom) were in there, but I kept playing it because the rest of the characters (even though most of them were created by Disney and are therefore a bit saccharine) are actually very good. The plot is interesting, the characterisation is great, and the gameplay is easy enough to learn.
I’d certainly recommend Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus to anyone who’s looking for a good introduction to first person shooter games - again, it has plot mixed in with the battles, and it’s pretty much unique (in my somewhat limited experience) in that it doesn’t fall down into a heap of level grinding in the midgame. Again, the female clothing model could use some work (they have a character who is ostensibly a female scientist wearing an outfit which makes her look as though her principle source of scientific funding is selling blowjobs, and putting a lab coat over the top doesn’t help it any either), but it’s still an interesting game for all that.
Yeah, you can choose skin tone, but not non-white features. You can change the size of things, but what you end up with is just a larger or smaller scale athletic hourglass. Tabula Rasa broke at least some of that up by letting you choose non-white facial features, though they had only one non-white hairstyle available, and again the set of sliders they give you doesn’t let you run to fat or significantly different body mass distribution. It’s athletic hourglasses as far as the eye can see.
Fun concept fouled by bad gameplay. I set it aside when I realized song completion on the top two levels would require using the standard controller. Something is wrong when it’s more difficult to learn a song on expert level than playing a real guitar.
“Having just purchased a PS2″
Consider getting a wii. Lots of rpgs action adventure sim games are coming out and several already out are quite good.
Nintendo has been pretty much good at making games appealing for all ages and genders.
There are still some trends that in video game like in real life are just results of culture and biology.
I don’t expect a lot of non white characters in a game set in Japan in the feudal era. Nor that women wouldn’t have certain roles.
If you want to play something MMO-ish that you can make racially diverse characters in, Guild Wars and its expansions are fabulous for that. They don’t fall into the usual trap of, “They can give them darker skin, that’s all that needs to be done, rite?”
One is set explicitly in a North African-type setting, so it had an awesome range of options for making non-white characters … I finished making one, zoned into the first general area … and was totally depressed at the Sea of Whitey. Branch out, people!
” It’s athletic hourglasses as far as the eye can see. ”
Well it’s a military game. Gotta expect the characters going out to fit to be trim.
As for non white facial features look in city of heroes/city of villians. Lots of hairstyles and beard styles.
Hair is one of the hardest things to do in a game believe it or not. It’s often more hard to get right then the rest of the character model.
There have been numerous studies done that men in MMOs prefer female characters.
Japan isn’t any better and often worse at represnting women. There are a number of games that would disgust a lot of straight men due to how women are treated.
There were a number of Japanese games that had to be edited before they came to the states due to how black people were represented. For instance huge lips were trimmed down and several characters had their skin tone changed since they matched old racist cartoons.
“I’ll admit to having got KH2 because I learned that some of the characters from Final Fantasy VII (my current major fandom) were in there,”
I never played any KH but the original FF7 was great (if overhyped and cumbersome at times.)
Anyone struggling with niceguyism should pay close attention to the Don Corneo scene where the fat bastard and his henchmen talk about how “nice” they’re going to be to the characters.
*Zuzu: I told you I’d name a band that one day.
HA!
Jeez, that goes back to Mouse Words, doesn’t it?
Also I suspect if they get a T rating they will edit some of the songs like they did in Guitar Hero 3 for “Devil went down to Georgia”.
Good Lord, what was there to edit in that song?
What song would you like to be able to play in Guitar Hero? I’m dying for Purple Rain.
Something by L’arc. Which of course would never fly. English only for these games. Really been digging their new single. Daybreak’s Bell is a fucking earworm.
Talk about games makes me bitter as of late. Most of my favorite genres don’t get supported anymore, and I hate most FPS with a passion. So I play indie games as of late, on my computer.
Nelly Cootalot is probably the most gaming fun I’ve had in months. Although the flash version of Portal was outstanding, and I’m sure if I had the hardware for it, Portal would be my favorite.
although fuck if I still don’t love Beyond Good and Evil, Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari Damacy.
I’m not sure what my point was here.
tootiredoftheright, Japan’s media by and large makes quite a big deal of racial minstrelism. TV there can be pretty repulsive at times. It’s not just the black people (tho’ it’s the worst), but just about everyone else as well. You’d find stereotypical images of italians, for instance. I’ve been inclined to take the activity as purposeful, and done to maintain the xenophobia of the citizenry.
It’s worst when you see the anime version of the manga PlanetES (which is truly great-and international in focus) really get so low…They wipe out the american black character, and put up these stock silly foreigner characters. *sigh*
Good Lord, what was there to edit in that song? ”
Son of a bitch. They didn’t change it to Son of a gun either they just nulled the word bitch.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/10/19/hear-gh3s-fiddle-free-version-of-the-devil-went-down-to-georgi/
That is the unedited version since they do have the guitar hero versions on cd soundtrack.
rock you like a hurricane also had the word bitch removed. Several other songs from Guitar Hero 1 and 2 were also censored in order to get a T rating.
“TV there can be pretty repulsive at times.”
Other times it just shows how backward America is. Violence is accepted on American tv while sexual themes aren’t.
As for sterotypes well if you meet Japanese a lot of them are quite pleasant and only in the rural parts will you get a reaction due to your appearance. It’s mostly the elderly and the ignorant who have the rasict prejudices.
Now they did have the blackface performer stick for a few years become fairly big. England went through the same thing during the 1960s. In both countries most the people watching the musicians doing it would have no idea why Americans would be uneasy seeing it. I seriously doubt most of the performers knew about the history of blackface either.
Folks mentioned MMORPGs. Yes, the likelihood of meeting a guy pretending to be playing a woman in an MMO is very VERY high.
The character editors in some of these games are very interesting. The City of Heroes editor allows a lot of customisation of the shape, including waist and breast size. There’s no flat-chestedness in the game (an attempt to discourage players with an unhealthy interest in pre-pubescent girls, perhaps?) and the breasts range between a handful and unfeasible.
Cryptic clearly have a sophisticated animation and skinning system to be able to do this level of customisation. Altering character proportions is not an easy technical task and takes a lot of resources to pull off. Animations need to be scaled and there are some sticky issues with texturing that have to be addressed.
It’s one of the interesting memory management choices that developer has made on City of Heroes. It’s not a decision I would automatically make when designing a game. It’s cheaper on resources and memory not to shoot for body customisation. Often it’s enough to simply allow the player to retexture/re-skin a standard-proportioned body. It’s interesting that games like The Sims and D&D Online have gone for standard bodies with sophisticated facial customisation. That definitely represents a saving for the developer.
Folks might like to check out the character editor in Oblivion. There, you have standard bodies with facial customisation. However, their face editor is fascinating because it is very difficult to create an airbrushed beauty with it. Everyone, without exception, looks lumpen and ordinary in that game.
I was required by Hasbro to meet quotas of minorities when commissioning the character portraits for my D&D game.
As for the Japanese, I’m married to one. I’ve discovered that we white folks all look the same to them!
The BBC didn’t stop making the Black and White Minstrel Show until the late-70s. Predictably, the Daily Mail was incensed at this, though as the term ‘PC’ had yet to be coined they couldn’t claim it was political correctness gone mad. Interestingly, the stage minstrels still toured Britain until the late ’80s.
Not a shining moment in my country’s history, that.
Or it could simply be that men like that stuff. Just like men like the pulchritude in James Bond movies.
I only mention this because as a game designer I work in an office packed with young game players–the core demographic–and few of them seem to be lacking a sex life. I doubt many of them feel insulted by boobiesboobiesboobies. I believe most of them just like boobs.
“an attempt to discourage players with an unhealthy interest in pre-pubescent girls, perhaps?)”
I would say so considering some of the people who got banned for public sex chats or private ones.
You got the school girl outfits populaized by anime for instance along with the knee high socks and other fashions. There are enough perverts in real life that we don’t need them invading MMOs in great numbers thinking that they are anonymous.
The game developers had to remove some of the skin tones because there were was a group of people using the skin tones to make it look like there characters were nude.
A lot of people asking a/s/l should be banned in a mmo or any internet chat room. I mean these perverts ask this right off the bat before saying anything else to you, in the hope a young kid will answer then they pile on more intimate questions.
”
Animations need to be scaled and there are some sticky issues with texturing that have to be addressed. ”
There are often character animation bugs when using certain costume bits. Some take months to fix because they only got one or two people working on the costumes, animations.
They wanted an incredibly amount of options up front and add more each expansion if they can to represent the superhero and villian genre in all it’s glory from Sentai shows to old Golden Age comics.
Heck you got several styles of hammer pants although they are actually called Chinese or Japanese to chose from.
You even got do-rags if you want your character to look like a gangbanger.
” I doubt many of them feel insulted by boobiesboobiesboobies. I believe most of them just like boobs. ”
Well it is nice to get some titaliation every once in awhile. Women have chick flicks, romance novels. Men have T&A in movies and games.
Now do you think a store display in a regular game store in America or comic book or just a regular department store could have a display like the one in this link for a video game?
http://www.akibablog.net/archives/2007/10/hitozuma-harem-071021.html
I think not. These type of unrated games are quite popular in the pc market in Japan. Japan stores you can have an entire devoted to pornography and not be considered an adult store or be put in a red light district. Have to be carefull browsing though. Some of that stuff can give you the dry heaves. Never blindly navigate through Japanese sites. You never know when you would click onto a link leading to cocophilea images. Japan is at once most sexually liberated places in existance and yet sexually scary due to conservatisim .
It’s also a nation with plenty of hardcore sexist attitudes. They are pretty much 20-30 years behind the West in this regard.
One genre of Japanese game you might want to look at is the dating game. These are often narrative roleplay games in which the object is to date the woman of your dreams. The player is presented with a number of girl archetypes (the girl-next-door, the frilly airhead, the tomboy, the naughty nurse) and a tree of options leads you along the narrative to a conclusion–usually pairing, marriage or, sometimes, bed. In many ways it’s a sophisticated version of those throwaway personality tests I’ve seen in women’s magazines, where your score tells you the kind of man you will end up with. The games purport to describe your ideal partner.
Many of these dating games are superficially quite romantic, though they are rife with sexist assumptions. The underlying objective of the game is to validate the player. And of course there are the porno versions, and I’ve seen at least two lesbian wrestling variants. (One of them, Ring Out, was translated by a friend of mine.)
It’s a genre we haven’t seen much of in the West yet. I keep expecting some publisher to discover them and make a few pennies localising them in America and Europe, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe there are some genres that simply don’t travel.
I have no idea what the Pandagon attitudes are to T&A. I wonder, because Amanda seemed to suggest it demeaned the target audience (the actual word she used was ‘insulted’). But speaking as part of that audience I don’t feel particularly demeaned. Indeed, I confess to quite enjoying T&A in moderation. So I’d like to ask where Amanda stands on this?
“It’s a genre we haven’t seen much of in the West yet. I keep expecting some publisher to discover them and make a few pennies localising them in America and Europe, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
http://www.g-collections.com/ There are a few others. They have been in business for years. I know a site that has reviews of quite a few of the games and I have played one or two so if you want I could tell you more. Due to how stores and the American public views video games as being for kids hence faux outrage over Grand Theft Auto these titles don’t have a lot of sales.
It’s somehow not possible for certain possible to accept that video games rated M are meant for people over 17 years and that 99% of the kids who manage to get thier hands on m-rated the person buying it was the parent who after being told what M-rating was refused to beleive the store clerk and what the box said. Comics and graphic novels are viewed the same way in the states. Europe and Japan you would see tons of adults reading graphic novels on the subway and trains but in not the states.
Yes, I’ve encountered these. Sorry, I should have made myself clearer. What I meant to say was this genre hasn’t broken through into the mainstream yet. Localised dating games remain a niche market.
Ah, ‘cartoons are for kids’. Here in the UK the comics retail biz had a lot of trouble because these attitudes permeated Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. HM C&E operate almost independantly of regular British laws on censorship. They can impound shipments of comics on the basis of obscure Victorian law and even declare that offending items have ‘infected’ the non-infringing portions of a shipment, so permitting them to inflict punitive disposal charges against the importer.
I do my best to try and read comic books in public, to change attitudes towards them.
“Localised dating games remain a niche market.”
A part of me wants it to remain that way. Whenever something becomes mainstream in the states a horde of imitators comes out and for the most part is just blargh. Also due it to being niche they often bring more of the better titles over. If it became better known the moralists would raise holy hell. I would rather they stay away from a source of porn they know little if anything about.
There are some western attempts at dating sim games. Sprung, Miami Nights for the DS. Quite a few cell phone games. Axe even had their mojomaster game which uses a lot of mechanics found in flash dating sim games.
WRT ESRB ratings:
A “T” rating might not just be for content, it could also be for the perceived difficulty and themes of a game. So for example, the (horrible) game Eternal Sonata doesn’t have strong language, in fact, it’s scripted like an after-school special. There’s no blood: enemies go “poof” when you kill them, but the themes–existentialism, mortality, etc — might be considered too difficult for young children. Use of the word “bitch” aside, they might have decided that the guitar mechanic and maybe even the size of the controller might be too much for little kids. As for the difference between “M” and “AO” I suspect that this is just reflecting our culture’s stupid hangups about sex and violence.
WRT Character Design:
The upcoming game Mass Effect for the 360 looks extremely promising. You can select the gender, race, and features of your character, and they have (heterosexual) relationship scripting for both male and female. There’s a lesbian relationship potential as well, but since there’s no male homosexual model then I suspect that’s just the daily alotment of softcore — but we’ve got some high hopes for the game overall.
I believe most of them just like boobs.
Most people like boobs. But we’re talking here about objects that are where breasts are on normal women but don’t look much like actual breasts outside of placement. They might as well be square in shape for their relationship to boobs in the real world. In fact, I would actually argue that when you see representations of a body part that portray that body part in outlandish way, that indicates a hostility towards the original body part. Phallic symbols, for instance, indicate a certain anxious resentment of the fact that penises in the real world are usually soft and small and vulnerable.
I think that guys who are deeply drawn to pictures of mythologically large&firm tits have a certain feeling about women’s bodies, but I wouldn’t characterize it with a word as banal as “like”.
I have no idea what the Pandagon attitudes are to T&A. I wonder, because Amanda seemed to suggest it demeaned the target audience (the actual word she used was ‘insulted’). But speaking as part of that audience I don’t feel particularly demeaned. Indeed, I confess to quite enjoying T&A in moderation. So I’d like to ask where Amanda stands on this?
It’s insulting to think that you can’t get through a single video game without constant reassurance that women are the sex class. If you don’t see that, well *shrug*. The dancing girls in Guitar Hero III make me angry; they are so clearly tacked on as an afterthought. They’re dancing around during songs by bands who would never in a million years have dancing hootchie girls, like Sonic Youth or Rage Against the Machine. In fact, dancing hootchie girls basically went the way of hair metal. Otherwise, the set design of the shows is amazing, so you get the sense that the hootchie girls were tacked on after the fact because someone, somewhere thinks large parts of their target audience will drop the game if they aren’t fed non-stop female objectification. They got some great bands to contribute songs to this; the slap in the face of the hootchie girl thing is really uncool. But god forbid the small segment of the audience that needs to have non-stop reminders that men run the world and women’s job is to show up, shut up, and shake their ass have a moment’s pause from absorbing that message.
Just a quick questions.. why was the japanese characters comment racists? the comment about not playing the violin and then choosing guitar instead..? I don’t get it.
I barely noticed any of these issues but then I’m a noob to Guitar Hero World and am still too busy struggling with getting my musically disinclined fingers to play the chords to notice any added jiggles.
And a song I’d love to hear: ‘Where Is My Mind” by the Pixies. Or any Pixies song. (Though “Vamos” would be one of those super bonus level songs, what with the five minute atonal guitar solo.
frog queen — it’s a stereotype that all asian kids play the violin. Imagine if they said of the black guitarist and they said “he had to stop eating fried chicken because it made his fingers greasy and he had a hard time plucking the strings.”
It’s just unnecessary.
Quite a few bands/groups still use dancing girls. Rob Zombie has huge Alice Cooper type stage performances for example that have girls dance in them.
“about sex and violence.”
It’s often more about sex in the states. Most AO rated games were for nudity, sexual content. A few gambling a few violence. In fact our M rated Manhunt 2 is still too violent for the British, Aussies and a few other rating boards so it is still banned in those countries. This after the game had a scence removed in which the player character removes someone’s testes with a pair of pliers. AO games are pretty much a ban in all but name. 99% of stores won’t stock them making it a death sentence.
Japan does censor games for violence however. Decapitation is a big no no and the AO rating equilvant the Z is still considered bad for sales. No advertising and the game you have to ask a store clerk to get. Quite a few xbox 360 titles are rated Z in Japan. Resident Evil 4 would have recieved a Z if they had kept in the heads being blown off. The title was rated M in the states. Personally I prefer keeping the sexual content rather then the violence. It just shows how screwed up conservatives are that they are more concerned about a game where the character has sex with a prostitute then killing said prostitutes.
The wiimote version of Manhunt 2 is considered the version to get because the wiimote motions needed to iniate the executions are considered more immersive then just pressing buttons.
Oh I suppose. When you put it like that….dumb stereotype tho. I dunno any asian people who play the violin, how do people come up with these things?
Yes, exactly. Rob Zombie does. Because he’s like a living cartoon. Again, they managed to get genuinely cool bands to contribute songs, and they also have covers of songs like “Holiday In Cambodia” that mock the idea of women-as-objects—the song has a swipe at Asian fetishists who think of Asian women as docile objects to be purchased.
I’ll admit, I get a dark glee off singing that lyric or “Are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?” while hootchie girls dance around, because someone in the design and marketing process is that dense. Yes, there are plenty of bands now that engage in base sexism, but there are better bands that don’t. The past games let the better, cooler mentality set the bar, and now they’ve lowered the bar and why? To sell more games? I think it was a misfire; they aren’t going to lose anyone who pouts that the game isn’t sexist enough, but they might lose parents who liked the previous game because they were inclusive but balk at this one because they don’t want to send the message to their kids that guys play in the band and girls wiggle on the sides with their tits out and their mouths shut.
It sucks, too, because I’m liking this game better than the last one in the larger sense—the songs are better and they let the art designer have free reign and some of the sets (the truck show, Burning Man, the prison, hell) are really inspired. Which just makes the hootchie girls stick out even more. The look pasted on, a real afterthought, and the sets would have been better without them. And come on, the song that introduces them is by Rage Against The Machine, a band that’s largely dedicated to bring progressivism to Teh Rawk. It’s the 21st century; the men-have-guitars-women-have-cunts mentality is very last century.
“The upcoming game Mass Effect for the 360 looks extremely promising”
The relationship possibilites have been in a few other games such as Jade Empire.
Male homosexual pairings in games won’t come to the mainstream for quite a while. The @$@@ storm could put gaming under a comics code type deal and no publisher, game studio nor game player should want that. It’s going to have to be in yaoi dating games imported or localized from Japan.
As for Mass Effect one of the confirmed pairings involving an alien species takes place with a single gender species that looks female. It’s not yet clear how they reproduce from what has been said but since they can mate with males or females from another species I suspect it will be revealed that they are like lesbian lizards or lesbian snakes who are all female. The species of female only reptiles engage in pseudo male female moutings that causes ovalation and fertilization. They know to do this from instinct. A usefull throwback to their common ancestor hood with species that had two genders.
“I’m liking this game better than the last one in the larger sense—the songs are better ”
Frequent as I do several video game message boards there are a lot of complaints and several people hate the song list. Two steps forward one step back you could say as in all good to great sequals. They wanted crowd animations and make the characters more vibrant. Well the dancing girls are a misfire as to how they were implented.
Some songs/venues I could see it being very acceptable even desirable.
I really love the song list—the last one suffered from too many grunge anthems. This one is far more punk rock and has a lot of songs that use really cool effects that make it just fun to play. I find myself wanting to replay a lot more songs than I did on the last. Even the Pearl Jam song is fun.
Does anyone know if any of Nashville Pussy’s material is in stores?
Fair point. I won’t debate that these depictions of physique are outlandish. But I’m curious as to why are they seem to be so powerful and effective with a certain audience.
Maybe. But is this the whole story? Phallic symbols are also charged images. I find that I respond positively to some phallic imagery. I hesitate to say ‘aroused’, because I generally don’t get a hard-on for these things. But they are exciting. I was an illustrator in a previous career and I’m more likely to use a thrusting image as a means of conveying dynamism in a picture than in any conscious resentment of my flaccid member.
I hesitate to bring up “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.
Sure, it’s likely there are men who regard real bodies with disappointment, even hostility, starting with their own. Hypersexualised images of huge boobs is certainly all about objectification. They are reified versions of an ideal. But exagerrated sexuality is as old as antiquity and we currently live in a society where almost every part of the body is fetishised. Glamour and fashion models look very little like men and women in the real world, but pictures of them are powerful and they sell. Why is that? Could it be a reason that is not entirely about teh patriarchy?
Well, I certainly don’t feel that. But I’ll concede that may be due to a lack of self-awareness.
In this particular game, it’s really out of place, which gives it that glint of “must reassure male players that women are beneath them”, especially considering how they had to clean up Casey Lynch to make her less threatening. And if you don’t see how it’s about assuring men that they’re more important than women, consider this: If you were playing a game where women were central and half-naked men hung around gazing at them adoringly and occasionally stroking their 14-inch dicks in excitement at how awesome the women are, you’d probably feel, “Huh, apparently this game is not for me.” Which is how women feel about everything. Which puts you into the second class.
The original game didn’t make me feel like a second class player in this game. This new one has hints that my fantasies of power at the ax are not validated, all because I’m the dreaded female. Again, I like the game. But now I have to do extra work men don’t have to do to enjoy the fantasy. I have to pretend not to see the fake titties in every other shot reminding me a) I’m not good enough and b) the designers/marketers fear female power.
No question that it’s inapposite.
I’d be interested to know the process by which they decided to ‘de-threaten’ a character. Was that the result of a focus group test? It smells like a marketing decision, and having worked in this biz for so long I have come to view marketing with much the same generous regard as Douglas Adams and Bill Hicks did.
Fair point, well taken.
I’m not sure whether the designer or marketers fear female power per se or whether it’s a bunch of mall rats they decided to focus test. These decisions tend not to come out of thin air, but are in response to some kind of feedback, whether it’s customers or retailers.
Not that I’m excusing it or anything. Just saying that someone, somewhere, complained about it, is all.
By the way, Amanda. How do I get this image out of my head? Do you have a mind eraser?
That’s funny. I wouldn’t expect any white characters in a game set in Japan in the feudal era. I’d expect them to be Japanese. Or are we defining white by the brown paper bag test?
Lee: Consider yourself lucky that it’s only in your head, instead of confronting you in the real world every time you turn on the television or pick up a magazine.
Mighty Ponygirl, I agree with yur post about the “asians play violin” stereotype. Ever heard of Charlie Daniels? He plays violin.
I’m guessing that marketing has a lot to do with it. I can totally see how some teenage frat boys/mall rats would disparage Casey Lynch in the original game and might suggest that part of the fun of being a rock star is boobs, and voila! The changes are made. I’ve definitely read a lot about marketing that demonstrates the notion that women and girls’ desires can be safely ignored (unless you’re marketing solely to them) holds firm. They probably didn’t even focus group test women and girls. The assumption that men basically dictate the tastes of women in “general” entertainment holds firm, despite the contrary evidence that shows that women have a lot more power at home than they used to. And that blind spot creates this situation where marketers have no idea that some of their products sell because women love them, because they don’t even ask. For instance, if, say, a 30-year-old-ish couple buys a game, the marketers assume straightaway that the man’s opinion was the only one that really matters and then tailor the game to what they think men want (based on the opinions of a bunch of college kids taking $30 to bullshit about the game during a focus group). It may not even register on their radars that the guy may have been equally divided between two games and the woman’s opinion was the deciding factor or that she drove the purchase decision or any variation of the above, and if they wanted to grab that audience, they’d try to be more inclusive to women.
Anyone here ever play Second Life? The possibilities of how you want your avatar to look are endless….as is the weird-ass sexism of the whole place. There are a *ton* of men playing female avatars on Second Life.
One of the things that grinds my gears the most about the men-playing-women thing on SL is how many of the “slaves” (i.e., people who are “collared” submissives) are actually men playing women. Gor is very big in SL. I try to explain to people why Gor is so extremely offensive, but in a lot of cases, my explanations are just met with bafflement as to why I would get so uptight about it. I mean, what could be objectionable about a philosophy (and an entire community that takes this philosophy’s tenets very seriously!) that says the natural order of things is that all women are slaves, and all “real” women realize this and actually want it to be so? Ugh. Most people just don’t know what Gor is, but I can’t help but think that if there was a community of people in SL that liked to depict pre-Civil War Southern plantations, with lots of white people pretending to be black slaves and furthermore enjoying their slavery, there would be an outcry that would probably put SL out of business.
Nevertheless, SL is not all Gor. Gor is only in sections of SL. It’s also a really interesting social phenomenon and a new creative outlet, and I think it’s the wave of the future as far as the online experience is concerned. I just wish it didn’t look so much like the real world in places. :/
http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/18/gor/index.html
Okay, I didn’t bother to read all of the comments, but I do want to say that my opinion of Guitar Hero III is the exact fucking opposite. In fact, I am hugely pissed and can barely bring myself to look at the damn thing.
My delight was softened, however, by the unnecessary racist joke in her character description that says something about how she put down her violin at age 3 to pick up the ax.
Another sad example of too much sex and violins in video gaming . . .
Something is wrong when it’s more difficult to learn a song on expert level than playing a real guitar.
I just heard yesterday a local radio station interviewing a guitaist from, I think, Queens of the Stone Age, who was complaining that he couldn’t manage to play his own song in the game.
We don’t pay them that much. They are usually lucky to get travel expenses with their soda pop and potato chips.
At least a focus group is based on some kind of marketing doctrine. I have experienced the situation where decisions were made on character designs–my character designs–based on the opinion of a producer’s secretary. I’m not sure that was really an advance.
I’m not too enthusiatic about any of the current Guitar Hero games, because they don’t have any progressive rock songs. Tell me when they include songs such as “Echoes”, the Abbey Road medley or “Brother Where You Bound” and in all likelihood I will get hooked.
BTW, Mighty Ponygirl, many of the classic songs from the Hard Rock and Southern Rock genre have the word “bitch” mentioned at least once in their songs, some radio stations, such as WMFX in Columbia will edit out bitch, while others will keep it in.
“Another sad example of too much sex and violins in video gaming . . .”
This is the funniest thing I’ve read today.
Well done.
Cara, I do believe we agree that the game upped the sexism. I think Casey Lynch just hurt more on a fundamental level because her model is a fucking Hero De Ax. NP is not the band for everyone, but god DAMN they rock. Turning her into a preening sex object was a deep betrayal.
I’m not too enthusiatic about any of the current Guitar Hero games, because they don’t have any progressive rock songs.
If you mean progressive as in politics, look again. What has mollified my irritation at the overt and tacked on sexism is that you can see the game beneath that stuff, with the songs they picked. You have “Kool Thing” by Sonic Youth, a song about the link between the struggle against racism and the struggle against sexism. You have “Holiday In Cambodia”, an angry yelp against Western commodification of developing nations. You have the anti-war song “Bulls On Parade”. You have the interesting and progressive song “Cult of Personality”. Interesting political music exploded post-70s, and the game song choice gets that. All the more reason to treat the reactionary elements as tacked on.
her character descriptions says something about her realizing she needed to be a bit more polished and feminine to really win them over.
Urge to kill… rising….
Well, that’s not too alarming, because he already has a very well trained-up procedure for playing that song… it’s going to be really difficult to do something else with precision. It’s like typing on a dvorak keyboard when you’re used to qwerty. If you learn to type on a dvorak keyboard to begin with, it’s no harder than learning to type on qwerty. But, if you already know qwerty, typing on dvorak is going to be nearly impossible.
Of course, if other reports are right that it’s harder to learn the guitar hero version than to learn the real guitar version to start with, then that’s pretty messed up.
Pretty obvious that I’m about the only one not born in the Baby Boomer generation who knows what progressive rock is. I’m not talking about politics when I mention progressive rock, I’m talking about the 1970s subgenre of rock music. Yes, they do have some pro-woman songs on there from what I’ve been hearing (and seeing). But that is not what I am talking about.
How many songs from the subgenre do you see on there? I looked at the entire list and there is only one song from the prog rock subgenre. That song is YYZ by Rush.
Yes it is horrible that they didn’t cater to your statistically insignificant whims.
I can’t believe that there is no love for power ballads about pottery either.
Hope I’m not missing any awesome joke here, but if the 40 million copies sold of Dark Side of the Moon means that liking prog rock is statistically insignificant, I’d really love to know what significant looks like.
One thing that’s super-strange about the addition of the unnecessary sexist stuff in GHIII is the way you play the game (especially on the higher difficulty levels): you CAN’T look at the background stuff, because you’d fail your song if you did! The digital avatars are nice and all, but the game wouldn’t be ALL THAT DIFFERENT if it had NO background images at all. So why the need to add dancing women and a leg guitar? Not only is it offensive, but it doesn’t even really tweak the demographic that its designed to tweak (irritating digital boob-obsessed guys), because they probably can’t spend all that much time looking at them anyway!
It’s *very* silly for me to post comment on a thread that died almost four months ago, but my employer just redid the Employee Lounge, setting up three new LCD flatscreen TVs with PS3s, Wiis, and XBox 360 with GHIII, and I’m very, very hooked. Remembering this thread, I came back to take a look. I was going to just pass through, but after reading the whole thread, I’m gonna piss into the wind for a little bit:
- Being new to the franchise, I don’t have anything to compare the GHIII models to (though I can’t stand the Kiss guy myself - really doesn’t look right when playing Holiday In Cambodia - BTW, do they edit out the N-word in that song for the game?). However, as others have noted, any anachronistic mysogyny/catering to frat boys is ameliorated somewhat by the fact that you don’t have time to look at any of it while playing; gotta outdo that Queens Of The Stone Age guy, after all.
- Great that they have a Hendrix character. Now they can work on getting some Hendrix songs. (Unless they did for GH or GHII, in which case, withdrawn, Your Honor).
- The mention of “Echoes” reminded me of a good “prog rock” song for GH: One Of These Days (I’m Going To…etc.)* BTW, Amanda, though I will continue to respect your musical knowledge, watching you completely misinterpret what “progressive rock” meant was a “feet of clay” moment for me.
- Song I *really* want on GH: Big Sky/Baddest Of The Bad by Reverend Horton Heat. As *one* song. Apparently, there’s a HH song on GHII, but this is the one that would blow the doors off.
* I know the rest of the title, you know the rest of the title. It just seems impolite to write it on a feminist site. I mean, yes, it’s not *explicitly* about a woman, but given that it was written by Roger Waters, would you really bet against it?