What I found most interesting - and perhaps most damning - about not only the articles and their breadth but the selection of the articles themselves - was the entire lack of commentary on sexism and the treatment of women in popular videogame culture. Almost suggesting that how videogames imagine women as a non-issue, their objectification was not only unexamined, but untouched upon.
I find this paricularly disturbing considering that the piece in What They Play addressed sex inside of videogame worlds and narratives, focusing 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.
As I did not play Mass Effect long enough to develop a sexual relationship, and did not play the other games mentioned, I cannot comment on them 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.
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 (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/07/the-risen-report-first-night/), 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.
Things don’t get much better from there, however - almost every woman that I have now encountered in the game has been dressed almost identically, with supermodel/pornstar-esque breast measurements, and an ability to dance like any top-class stripper on the seedier side of Flint. Incidentally, the majority of all of the women I’ve seen in Risen, after playing for about twelve hours, are actually prostitutes. While presumably unintentional, it’s still disturbing; I’ve now concluded the first chapter of the game, explored the three major centers of civilization (two 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.
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.
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 of their 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.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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It pained me not to include at least one reading about sexism (if not outright misogyny) in videogames, but I'm quite thankful that you've addressed it in this particular post. Having played through Mass Effect three times, it bears some unfortunate similarities to The Witcher, i.e., perform a series of set actions and/or dialogue choices and Ashley or Liara will bunk with you. However, I think an argument could also be made that Bioware's approach to sex in videogames is more advanced (however slightly), forcing the player to sustain dialogue engagement over multiple instances, to make some kind of commitment, to pay attention. Of course, it still plays into the commodity model of sex...*sigh*
ReplyDeleteAfter writing this post last night, my room mate and I talked about the exclusion of sexism/misogyny from the readings (and of the readings themselves), and we both came to the conclusion that it wasn't addressed through more or less of an oversight. I'm not trying to level accusations or anything like that, but I felt it was an issue too important not to address on some level. Out of curiosity .. how come none of the readings addressed it, if only superficially?
ReplyDeleteOne of the things my room mate said (which is mirrored both by my own experience and the words of a sociologist friend that studies gender) is that gender has only recently been an issue in /any/ academic/other field, and it is unsurprising that videogame writing lags even further behind in this. What I find to be the /real/ tragedy are comments like those found in Meer's piece on Risen - game players seem to expect misogyny to such a degree that it doesn't surprise them when they see it, and even to the attuned, it rarely warrants more than a lifting of the eyebrow. Would be great to see communities outraged over things like this sort of thing as they did with the "racism" (quotes because I've no personal experience) of Resident Evil 5.