As part of my videogame analysis and criticism course, this week’s readings focused on violence, racism, and sex in video games.  Two of the readings, which focus on violence and sex, were mostly from the mouths of game developers; they can be found here. Although these three issues are clearly contentious and controversial in gaming – from all perspectives, including that of the player, creator, and parent of the player – none of the readings, and indeed almost none of the readings I’ve done in this field, actually relate to how these games view women.  Predominantly, I’m finding, as sexual objects, often devoid of the personality found in their male counterparts in the same game.

I found the What They Play piece paricularly disturbing considering that  it addressed sex inside of videogame worlds and narratives, and focused directly on the act rather than the participants as if it were some sort of Roman arena game and the participants unworthy of notice by the spectators as being “people.” Is the sexual act – both as an “unchanging” thing from game to game and the detail in which it is rendered – really the only thing worthy of exploration in a piece like this? I do not think so.

Mass Effect contained a sex scene which generated enormous amounts of controversy. However, as I did not play Mass Effect long enough to develop a sexual relationship, I cannot comment on it directly – but I can comment on what I have experienced. To do this, I look to three games that have captured my attention in recent months, and the suggestions that they make about sexual relationships, those games being The Witcher, Risen, and Champions Online. (Note: Champions Online doesn’t seem to actually have sex acts inside of it, but I am interested in it as far as it portrays physical characteristics of women.)

To begin: The Witcher. A dark, brooding, and often difficult action-RPG game from the eastern side of Europe, The Witcher follows the path of Geralt, a monster hunter, in his quest to figure out what in the hell is going on with the world. While a rather great game on its own that I enjoyed immensely, its treatment of women as sexual objects is nothing less than childish. So childish, in fact, that when Geralt conquers a woman – often by way of showering her in gifts and complements without actually developing any sort of real relationship – a trading-card-style piece of artwork is shown of the woman in an often comprimising position. By comprimising, I mean draped in nothing but a sheet with a black cat centered directly over her crotch. By childish, well -

Although the actual sexual act is shown in blurry, hasty camera shots that reveal no actual details about the act, the process of getting to the act is perhaps more disturbing than anything the act itself could be. Encountering a woman in The Witcher is tantamount to initiating a mini-game; the first question tends to be, “Is she one of the NPC women that will fuck me?” followed by (assuming that the answer was ‘yes’), “How can I get her to fuck me?” The second question is relevant because each woman seemed to have a particular path that must be followed to convince them to engage in coitus; as mentioned above, some women seek gifts, like flowers or chocolate. Some require a topical, conversational relationship and can be rhetorically convinced to disrobe and engorge. Others require Geralt to undertake a quest of sorts, and reward him with fleshy trophies and a trading card.   (Here is a link to a video with all of the sex cards.)

My language concerning the first question asked when encountering a woman is important and intentional: “Is she one of the NPC women that will fuck me?” I feel the most crass language is necessary here, as the object here isn’t even getting to potentially see a naked lady: rather, it’s a mission to collect a trophy. In a game genre dominated by item-collection, little more can be expected when the player is given a trading card for a sexual conquest.

In a similar vein as The Witcher, the recent Pirahna Bites’ game Risen treats women similarly, although doesn’t objectify them quite as literally. For example, as written about by Alec Meer on Rock, Paper, Shotgun , the first woman – and the first NPC the player encounters – is dressed in a bikini top and a long skirt. To quote Meer, “At this earliest of stages, I don’t have the foggiest what the game’s general attitude to women is – but the first example Risen gives of it is not a positive one[,]” and I found that upon finding myself in this situation that I absolutely agreed.

of which lacked women altogether with one notable exception), and found that women exist in quantity only in the whorehouse. Whether it was out of curiosity or chauvenism, I solicitied one of the prostitutes, paying her owner fifty gold pieces.

Almost thankfully, the game neglected to provide me with even a cutscene, instead blacking the screen out and having my character deliver stereotypical lines about how he had places to be. Incidentally, she said I was the best that she’d ever had, and gave me a magical scroll as thanks. At least she didn’t give me a trading card.

The Witcher and Risen, in addition to being similar thematically and in terms of genre, are also direct narratives from the game writers to the player. This sort of relationship forces a certain responsibility on behalf of the game-maker to understand the messages that they are sending: similar to a novelist and a film maker, the views of the artist are often expressed by their characters, whether consciously or not. It’s pretty easy to play through The Witcher and Risen and have eye-roll (or disgust) moments and move on, chalking it up to male chauvinism and sexism at the developer level. They’re both pretty clearly games targeted at 20-something men, and should probably be viewed as such.

(This is one of the screenshots used to display the graphical improvements to the Witcher Enhanced Edition, and is the most common image found when searching on Google for it.  Interesting choice of subject matter.)

However, some games – like Champions Online – are perhaps even more subversive in their views on women than even games like The Witcher and Risen. In Champions Online, as with many other online and role-playing games, the player is allowed to customize the physical appearance of their character. This allows for a veil to be placed in front of the eyes of the player, shielding them from what might be sexist ideas that the game-makers may have: surely, if the player can create their own character, then if it is a false, media-driven idealized image of a woman, then it is the fault of the player.

But what if the player cannot help but create this “idealized woman”? I should probably explain what I mean by “idealized”; the purpose of Champions Online is to create a superhero-type character that can aspire to physical and mental perfection, flawless in physique and in mind. Unfortunately, the “idealized” woman of Cryptic’s otherwise pretty-decent MMORPG happens to be the “idealized” woman of American media; tall, long-legged, large-breasted, seductively-hipped.

(full-size for maximim here, full-size for minimum here)

Alright, so this speaks to what Cryptic views as the “ideal” woman – but what does that have to do with an excellent and staggeringly-flexible character-creation tool? Problematically, for all of the options allowed in character creation, small, reasonable breasts are simply not an option. Literally, not an option – see the screenshots below. Damningly, when creating a new character and enterting the “Custom Body” menu, the “Breasts” slide bar begins fully maxed-out. Further, it appears to be difficult (if not impossible) to create a more masculine-looking woman. One of the variants allowed in character generation is the posturing of the character; average, heroic, huge and beast for the men, and average, heroic, vixen and beast for the women. My favorite posture for male characters it that of the beast; hunched over, ready to lunge, ready to kill – but the beast posture for women is rather a girl leaning forward on one leg, which looks nowhere near as badass or aggressive.

The other stances are also troublingly sexual; even average, which for the males means standing with both feet firmly planted and not favoring either side (you know, standing normally and at-ease) .. but for females means flaring the fingers ever-so-slightly and ever-so-coyly, with one leg bent forward at the knee. In terms of posturing, hip and breast size, it is impossible to create a non-over-sexualized female character.

In The Witcher and in Risen, the player could choose not to progress down avenues of fucking women NPCs, and is actually fully-capable of treating women with respect and dignity in the course of their adventures. However, in Champions Online, the player is explicitly barred from playing anything but a

full-hipped, skinny-but-long-legged, fully-breasted woman that carries an appearance of lustful detachment.

Although the quests are generic and boring and lacking and character and, thus, tend to avoid putting women into any sort of constricting role in the confines oftheir narrative, the female figures of Champions Online have nevertheless managed to be more chauvenist and objectified than any of those found in The Witcher and Risen. Many, many more games provide examples similar to these three in the ways in which women are viewed as sexual objects first and characters second, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find another that managed to do this with its character creation system alone.

Unfortunately, I believe that the reason topics like this aren’t really addressed, either in the form of assigned readings for a class or from the mouths of interviewers and game developers, is because the way that women are viewed just isn’t thought about. Even though there are more female gamers out there now than there ever have been, it’s still very much a male-dominated pastime. I fear that as a result of this, game developers write their female characters exclusively for men. Not that this justifies anything – far from it – but I believe that it explains a lot.

And that’s part of remedying the situation – it isn’t enough to say, “This is happening.” It isn’t remedying anything by saying, “Men make games for men.” If gaming writers are slowly beginning to feel comfortable confronting sex and racism in the context of a game, then they can become comfortable with those most-dreaded of frameworks: feminism. It really strikes me that the best way to shift the perceptions of women inside of a game is to be able to identify bad perceptions where they lie, and point others in that direction. Once people know what to ask for, I’d like to think game developers would be willing to give it to us. Or maybe just me, but hopefully not.

I don’t know, though.  I’ll close with a quote from one of the developers of The Witcher from an interview with 1up:

“In the game, you can pick up girls. I’m going to show you where to find one, and you can go to bed with her.” Um… OK. We hit the village and quickly find a milkmaid willing to chat. After being impressed with a bouquet of flowers, the maid leads Geralt off the screen to do the deed. In return, I am rewarded a playing card and a painting of the milkmaid topless and pouring a ladle of milk over her bare breasts. “Through the whole game, when you pick up a girl and go to bed with her, you receive a card like this,” says Iwanicki. We observe an awkward silence.”

-Michal Iwanicki

Below, some of the other male/female pose comparisons of the Champions Online character creator.  Note: all poses we made using the default costume, face, and body options.  Note the muscle definition of each, and keep in mind: these are supposed to be superheroes.

Heroic Pose:

Vixen and Huge Pose:

And, finally and most damningly, the choices for average:

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume that we’ll be using a traditional 10-point scoring system with one decimal placement; ie, a score can range from 0.1 to 10.0, with any variation in between. Personally, I feel that no single aspect of the game should receive more consideration than another; the score is meant to represent the game as a whole, and therefore it should represent this. This means that the gameplay and mechanics of a game should not be able to outweigh graphical considerations and replay value, or any other scoring variable present. Working from this, I propose the following:

1: Five categories for any given game: Visual Representation, Gameplay and Level of Immersion, Mechanics and Technical Considerations, Quality of Narrative, and Connectivity. A breakdown of each will follow.

2: Each of the given categories are worth a maximum of 2.0 points (or whatever title you wish to give the metric).

3. (This is only an idea) Each of the point values ought to be justified in a short sentence, followed by a possible caveat. Ie, “Visual Representation Score: [World of Warcraft's] art direction is fantastic, but low-polygon models make it appear dated.”

Category Explanation (Using World of Warcraft as a source)

1: Visual Representation: This includes not merely how advanced and high-tech the graphics of a given game are, but also the artistic direction and merits of them. To use the example from above, World of Warcraft had some of the best art direction I’ve ever seen; at any given moment, the color choices and shapes create a near-flawless harmony between player avatars and the environments they inhabit. However, the low polygon count of any given object in-game, combined with the frequent terribly-mismatched armor and weapons, make it painfully clear that we’re still playing a game and not watching a cartoon. Score: 1.6/2.0

2: Gameplay and Level of Immersion: This is likely to be the most contentious category among critics, as it will likely be the most subjective. This is where the “fun” aspect of a game comes into play – how great does it feel to chop that orcs head off, and how rewarding was beating that final boss? Level of Immersion relates to how integrated you, as a player or writer, feel within the game. Do the sounds create an ambiance that actually makes you scared to open that next door? Do the monsters you encounter feel like living, breathing creatures with purpose, or merely mindless automatons that exist solely to die at your hands? Example: The gameplay in WoW is fast and frenetic and, at times, incredibly demanding of the player due to the staggering variety of possible actions. Unfortunately, it falls to the same issue of most MMO-style games; click a monster to target, press button 4 to use a special attack, and then press button 5 when you dodge to use a stronger special attack. As with most MMO’s, the level of immersion extends only so far as the player is willing to suspend his disbelief; monsters stand stationary or trod along paths, oblivious until an encounter with a player occurs. Even then, most monsters simply stand and swing their weapons, never moving, repositioning, or engaging in anything that might actually make the player believe the monster actually cared about winning the fight. Score: 1.4/2.0

3: Mechanics and Technical Considerations: This is where a writer examines how well the game actually works. Do certain abilities feel grossly underpowered and useless? Do the control inputs lag at critical times? Example: WoW’s combat system has been tuned to the degree of high-caliber military applications, with each ability seemingly weighed in both combination and opposition with all others in the game. While some abilities are very strong, like the warrior’s Execute, it is keenly balanced by only being useable at certain key times. The controls and interface, once customized, are brilliant – information is presented clearly and effectively and work very well with the traditional mouse and keyboard setup. However, the lack of collision detection means that players can run through each other and monsters, and sometimes the character models have overhangs and weapons that stick into their legs. Score: 1.8/2.0

4: Quality of Narrative: How is the writing in the game? If the game is story-based, how believable and compelling is the story? Are the characters well-rounded and interesting, or dull and typical? If there is not a written or even clearly-stated story, how is the extra-literal narrative (Portal is a great example of a game with phenomenal Quality of Narrative without ever actually stating what’s going on) as portrayed by environments and actions? This category can take into consideration other categories, as narrative is a composite of all things represented. Example: Aside from the sarcastic, name-dropping and geek-culture loving jokes found throughout, World of Warcraft isn’t terribly compelling on its own: the main goal is the acquisition of items and gold. Although the various NPCs and enemy monsters generally have a token story behind them, it clearly wasn’t the focus of WoW. However, through clever graphical tricks and relying on the community to create storylines of their own, WoW managed to create a Quality of Narrative a bit ahead of other games released in a similar time window. Score: 1.3/2.0

5: Connectivity: This category relates to how Internet-connected any given game is, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be multiplayer or downloadable content. This is also one of the more flexible categories; obviously, it isn’t fair to attach a hardline weight to multiplayer when a game contains absolutely no connectivity with other players. Therefore, it must be judged on what it does have; is the multiplayer matchmaking system (for FPS, strategy and so on) robust and customizable? Are there indie maps hosted, for free, by the game publisher? Does the game allow for a formalized friend and enemy system? Example: World of Warcraft shines strongest in this department, as do most online games – the nature of playing in an online-only world ensures that one cannot play WoW without doing so without other players. Content patches, which introduce new areas of play, class changes, and other game tweaks, are frequent and, aside from formal expansions, are entirely free. Unfortunately, the patching system – which relies on a bit torrent network – it notoriously finicky, giving some players very high download times and others excessively slow ones. Game servers, in addition to having rather long periods of downtime for patches, servers are also restarted once each day in about hour-long cycles. Obviously, it sucks to be you if your playtime regularly falls during these restarts – which occur very early in the morning. Score: 1.8/2.0

Which gives us a score of 7.9 out of 10 – which seems substantially lower than what I would have given World of Warcraft had I, without categorizing individual aspects of a game, given it initially. This speaks to another question that I’m undecided on: should there be extra points that I can give to WoW in this example? How would having a 0.5 “flex” score work during the review process? It would allow great games that fall just a bit short in several areas to make up a bit of the points if they really are greater than the sum of their parts – and it would allow to reduce the score of a bad game with great individual parts. I’d also like to further explore breaking down the five categories; maybe break some of them down into four 0.5-part segments, a couple of them into two 1.0 segments, and so on. This strikes me as a bit more professional and analytical way to do so – it also seems that it might get the closest at generating an effective composite score. Of course, this system would likely be terribly impractical – especially if justification for each of the segment scores were given.

The thing with game scores is that they tend to merely provide validation of opinion to reader’s; although they might be more inclined to read a review of a game that receives a 9.8 as opposed to 7.8, the most attention is almost always drawn to a game’s score /after/ a reader has played the game. The furor that came from the Edge review of Killzone 2 came almost exclusively from players that had already played the game. I’m curious about an aspect of those verbally-violent readers; were they so upset because Edge was defaming their /game/, or their /opinion of the game/? It strikes me that if a reader adores a game, and reads a review that gives the game a very high score, then the reader will think to himself: I was right – it really was a great game. But should the opposite happen – and the game receive a low or mediocre score – will the reader think to himself, “This author is saying I was wrong!”? I think the verdict is always gonna be out on that one.

Some final thoughts: although this system is by no means as refined as I want for it to be, I believe that it will provide a good starting point. I’m still not sure whether or not games NEED to be scored, as I fear that it unduly influences both how a reader sees a review and a game, and I’m not sure I want that sort of leverage. Just the same, I will be scoring each game I play for 40oz, but posting it intentionally separately from the original article. Those scores can be found here: 40oz Game Scores

Any given sentence contains within its confines a host of meanings; that of the topical definition of the sum of words, that of an intended idea implied both in and around the meanings established through topical definition and, often, as a consequence of this composite, a potentially unintended meaning.  I personally hold that any given writer or speaker is responsible for the overall understanding of his words, whether intended or not.  Generally, this holds up well enough in the day-to-day life of reading and hearing and understanding through transitions between media types do not prove difficult.  With this in mind, I’ve chosen to look at a presumably unintended implication of a particular computer game: Command and Conquer: Generals.

In C&C:G, the player chooses from one of three different armies, each having different units and structures, and each with the intent of killing the hell out of whomever deigns to oppose them.  This is pretty standard stuff as far as contemporary real-time strategy games go – since Starcraft, most major RTS releases have had, at minimum, three different factions/races that the player can choose from.  What separates C&C:G from most other RTS games, however, is that it decided to incorporate real-world factions, and all of the weight that each culture brings.

Those three factions are the People’s Republic of China, the United States of America, and the GLA – the Global Liberation Army.  As stated, each army has different units, although there are clear similarities amongst the three.  For example, all three of the factions have a basic, rifle-armed soldier that is responsible for doing a great deal of the grunt work that their factions require of them.  I am not particularly interested in the similarities of the three gun-toting grunt soldiers, but rather their differences – and even then, I’m interested only in the perceived and implied cultural differences among them as established by Electronic Arts, the game’s developers.

What I found to be the most interesting undertone in C&C:G are the voices of individual units.  Similar again to Starcraft, each unit has a different set of speeches that issue forth depending on what you order them to do, or even if one merely selects the unit.  The Ranger – the USA’s grunt soldier – says things like, “Always prepared,” “Ready for action,” and “We’ll lead the way.”  These are pretty standard tropes for American troops to fall back on, boyscout-like in presentation and always spoken from a position of military dominance.  Things get more interesting when one looks to the Chinese, however, whom say things like “We are the red guard,” “Defenders of peace,” and “China, do not forget me!”

The Chinese voice responses from units mostly revolve around China as a collective, communistic entity; the “we” invoked by the Chinese is entirely dissimilar to that of the American “we,” suggesting for the Chinese that they are part of a far larger organization that supersedes even the military conflict and harkening to the Red Army as a whole (and a key component of China), whereas the American “we” is simply “we” in the context of that particular military unit – the soldiers that are immediately present.  These strings can be found throughout the unit voices for both armies, China continually emphasizing Communistic and collective ideas and the USA considering its military force to be the sole consideration.

More or less, the two ideas presented here are clear and aren’t particularly controversial – at least, when one extrapolates China and Communism a few decades into the future.  What I do find to be particularly controversial, however, is the treatment of the third faction, the Global Liberation Army.

The GLA aren’t merely another player in a global war, but rather a similar extrapolation to that of China – only with various Muslim/terrorist groups found throughout the Middle East.  I do not use ‘Muslim groups,’ or even ‘terrorist,’ lightly, as every image and voice presented by EA for the GLA are inarguably Islamic stereotypes and extrapolations of current images.  Even the name of the basic grunt troop for the GLA – “Rebel” – is suggestive of something more sinister than anything either of the other two armies can provide.  As with the China/USA paradigm, things grow more interesting when adding another faction.

Almost every member of the GLA is suicidal and fanatical, with such choice phrases as “No cost is too great!” and “The higher order shall reign.”  The former hardly needs explanation; it’s a pretty clear image of a suicidal soldier fully-prepared to die for his cause.  Not to say that the Americans and the Chinese aren’t willing to do the same, but neither of these factions actually voice it with the conviction – or even voice it at all – of the GLA.  “The higher order shall reign” is also an almost-damning statement; although it doesn’t quite directly state it, when taken with consideration of the rest of the highlights of the GLA faction, it’s almost the same as saying, “Allah is the one true God” or even, “Islam will dominate everything!”  A final GLA quote, “Our courage will be seen by all!” is even further different from anything the other two factions say; whereas the USA and the Chinese are focused on securing military objectives, defeating their enemies, and winning battles with their voice-overs, the GLA seems to, inexplicably, be terribly concerned with how their actions are perceived by “all.”  “All” is another tricky term; do they mean the people of the world as a whole?  Their brethren soldiers and the enemy?  Just one of them?  Regardless, it shifts the focus from the intent of their actions and their goals and into the realm of public opinion.

This is particularly troubling because, while China and the United States arguably have a national identity, at least militarily, that is effectively portrayed by C&C:G, EA decided to instead use stereotype and fear to paint the portrait of a generic, Islamic nation.  Although in the course of the game it is stated that the GLA arises from no clear nationality and is made of a variety of groups, it nonetheless combines Wahabism with terrorism with absolutely no remorse, or even second thought.  Why is it that this region of the world – culturally, philosophically, and politically – can be represented through such gross and inaccurate stereotypes while the far West and East are not?  EA doesn’t say, and I would be remiss to put words in their collective mouths.

None of these ideas would be particularly relevant had the factions been based on fictional groups of people.  There’s a certain power in creating almost-entirely fictional warring cultures, as it allows statements like those above to be made without actually suggesting anything about real-world counterparts; creative and poetic license can go a long way.  But when groups are so clearly based from real-world groups, doesn’t that mean that anything said about them in the confines of the game are more or less also being said about them in real-life?

Not all Muslims – and certainly not all of the soldiers found in that part of the world – are fanatical, suicidal terrorist figures, and yet they are presented as such in C&C:G.  Why is it that the American stereotype attributes – egotism, a sense of entitlement, and an absolute belief in their superiority – aren’t displayed in as damning of terms as that of the GLA?  The same for Chinese collectivism; it’s looked down on in the game (especially when taken in consideration with the structures the Chinese have, like Propaganda Towers), but it isn’t given anywhere nearly the negative connotation that the GLA are.

Further emphasizing this disparity of tone and, indeed, likeability of the factions, are the units themselves; while I’ll not drag this post out even further by examining them, I’ll leave you with this: the auxiliary foot troop for the Americans is the medic, the auxiliary foot troop for the Chinese is the computer hacker, and the auxiliary foot troop for the GLA is, well, the terrorist – a suicide bomber that kills himself to do an amount of damage to an enemy unit or structure.

Here are some things that I want to explore over the semester:

1: Can narrative be an actual game mechanic? 1a: how, exactly, is a game mechanic defined?  Is this a flexible or rigid definition, or has it even been solidly established yet?

2: How in the world to talk about a game like Achron (http://achrongame.com/), which permits two opposing players to move through a window of time on a real-time basis.  For example, a structure that is capable of creating a new unit does so, and that unit travels backwards in time to before it was created – and it then destroys the building that created it, before it was created.  I have a mental image in my mind of how exactly to /think/ of this, but expressing it in words proves difficult.  Paradoxes are fun .. or something.

3: I take to the literary criticism school of thought that authorial intent is irrelevant, and that the only important detail in a work is what the author /does/ say, not what he tries to say.  This becomes more important as the length of time elapsed between the work published and the author’s death (hah) grows longer; we can never ask Shakespeare exactly how we should interpret the character of Feste in Twelfth Night, for example, and are thus left to contextual evidence and our own interpretations for validity.  Does this apply to video games, particularly when developer commentaries are so prevelant?  Is it at all fair for looking at games based on what they /could/ have done, rather than what they did?  I find the only relevant detail to be how the game exists in it’s current state – so how does that apply to game patches and downloadable content?  Can you judge World of Warcraft at release in the same way that you can in it’s current state?  As, ultimately, the patch is nothing more than the “author” trying to “get at what they really meant to do the first time.”

4: Should a game journalist/critic actually beat each game they examine, and if not, what percentage of a game should they complete before forming a solid opinion?  Book critics certainly have to, and to effectively analyze a poem one might spend hours on fifteen lines of text.  How does this apply to video games?  4a: I’m working with a theory that uses similar concepts to statistical polling; if one reads (samples) 33% of a book, can one draw reasonable conclusions about the book, as one could with populations of people?  Surely, the conclusion of story arcs can merely be guessed at, but is it fair to use that 33% (or whatever other number you like) to draw conclusions about the mechanics, dialogue constructions/political messages and styles as one, I would argue, can do with a book?