Tracey John's Interviews with Women in Games

Tracey John, a writer over at the MTV Multiplayer blog, is working on a series of interviews with women in the game industry. Yesterday was Morgan Webb. Today is me. I get a little, uh, worked up near the end, I'm afraid. I gotta watch the cursing.

The interviews go a long way, I think, towards dispelling the myth that one woman speaks for all women in the industry. We're a pretty diverse bunch, it turns out.

Jade Raymond is for Real

Recently there surfaced an appalling comic about Jade Raymond that I will not link to. And there have been equally appalling forum threads saying, essentially, that she deserved it. I won't link to those either.

Jade Raymond is for real. She is fucking smart. She earned her job. And frankly, Ubisoft should be grateful to have her, and they don't deserve her. Because they unfairly pushed her image as part of the marketing of Assassin's Creed. I'm sure that they are as horrified as anyone at the backlash. But they also are guilty of exploiting a genetic accident that made Jade a beautiful woman in the games industry.

It is dangerous to be a beautiful woman in the games industry. Oh, it's difficult to be a woman, period. But if you also happen to be attractive, you are doubly cursed. On the one hand, yes, when you're at a conference where you are among a handful of women, you are remembered, and that is advantageous. But for every break you may get for being female and attractive you get a chorus of voices telling you that you don't deserve it because, well, you are attractive, and obviously you can't possibly have gotten where you are without seducing men along the way. And I am devastated to say that sometimes joining in those voices are other women.

And then on the other hand you have groups that want to use you because you are beautiful - whether its the marketing machine, PR, the press - it's all a form of exploitation, honestly. And while men like Cliffy B and Will Wright are also pimped out to move product, they don't suffer from quite the same sexually tinged commentary that comes with being the female spokesperson for a product.

It's disgusting. And distressing. And depressing.

The punishment for being a beautiful woman in this industry is to be called vile names, "incompetent slut" being the mildest of insults. I suspect that most women in the business have experienced some form of this irrational hatred.

So what to do about it? I go back and forth between being so white-hot with fury that my hands shake and my breath comes in gasps, to thinking, fine, don't give those reprehensible troglodytes the satisfaction of having made me - made us - angry.

But it's wrong. Of course it's wrong. And it's all nastily tied up with sexism, with the nature of celebrity, the cowardly losers on the internet, and exploitative marketing practices that have always sold products by slapping a pretty face - real or digital - on the game boxes. And part of me wants also to speak out against that.

I don't have an answer. I can be suspicious of Ubisoft's motives, but after all, they are just trying to sell product, just like everyone else. And I can also be disappointed that the press chooses to focus on Jade Raymond and feature her face prominently on pictorials not because they are interested in promoting women in games, but because they want to sell magazines or adspace on websites. What I don't understand is why the supposed fans of games react so vilely to the notion that a woman - a very pretty woman - has helped to create what may be one of the biggest games of the year.

Are they so small that they are threatened by this? Do they really think that a woman could have gotten to the kind of position that Jade achieved simply on her clear skin tone and nice figure? Do they really think that the executives behind the games they supposedly love are so moronic to allow that to happen?

And yes, I do call out Ubisoft on this, on some level. They are behind the Frag Dolls, an enterprise that I still don't find completely benign. And I think they over-promoted Jade's involvement in the game, pushing her to be the spokesperson and the frontwoman. All those pictorial spreads. The magazine cover. Who even knows what Patrice Desilets looks like? And he is the creative director on the game. Household names in gaming are very, very rare, and usually reserved for someone with the stature of Miyamoto or Will Wright - legendary icons with decades of experience. Can you name the producer of Halo 3? And yet that is another important game this season. This in no way discounts what Jade has done, but rather puts it into perspective -- isn't Ubisoft just a little disingenuous in trying to make her the face of their top game of the year?

But on the other hand, I'm eviscerated by the notion that we can't celebrate women's achievements in the game industry without encountering this sort of resistance, fueled also in part by a rabid fanbase that was as quick to idolize Jade's image as it was to tear her apart. And naturally as someone working on something she believed in she would want to stand up and be proud of her accomplishments. The price of fame is a pound of flesh.

This is a rant without much of an arc or, I'm sorry to say, any sort of conclusion. I think we're still working on that - I hope I am still helping to work on that. And that's all I wanted to say. Jade Raymond is for real. She is totally real. And her ascendant career is not going to be touched by gibbering idiots on message boards, because she is way bigger, and better, than they are.

"Portal is for Lesbians"

Bonne Rueberg has a fascinating take on the game Portal:

3) We’re dealing with a reshaping of a highly masculine genre, the FPS. If that itself weren’t “queering” enough, there’s the whole holes issue. We’ve talked before about how the guns in first-person shooters act as phallic avatars–that is, as penises. But in a world of women, this gun doesn’t shoot bullets. It shoots orifices. Openings. Fine, vaginas. Vaginas you, a female character, have to enter/exit to solve puzzles. I don’t say this often, and almost never with so much support and enthusiasm, but that is so gay.

I love the idea of FPS-subversion, but personally I think one shouldn't get too Freudian in symbolism... that's a tangled mess right there!

Tipping in Favor of Girl Power

This week, several things cropped up on the radar which collectively suggest some sort of tipping point. Or, I suppose, more likely that the point has tipped and we are starting to see the effects.

The first announcements were released in conjunction with the event, Casual Connect. Sony Online announced the relaunch of Station.com, a portal for the casual experience of games, including access to trials of Sony's MMOs. Nickelodean announced plans to spend $100 million over the next two years on casual games and virtual worlds. Oh, and did I mention that casual games are still dominated by female players?

Gamasutra didn't pick it up, but this week also saw the news that Barbie Girls, a virtual world aimed at, you might guess, preteen girls, experienced astonishingly explosive growth, reaching 3 million users in sixty days.

And you thought WoW was popular.

Then in recent game announcements, Ubisoft released details on a new series of games specifically for girls. The Imagine series include aspirational games based on professions, like fashion designer, veternarian, and figure skater. There's also a virtual baby doll with Imagine Babyz. Throw in Imagine Equestrienne and I'm so there.

Speaking of things equine, Atari is coming out with a horse-riding simulation game, My Horse and Me. The language in the official PR is carefully gender-neutral, speaking very coolly of the "Horse-enthusiast community", but you cannot convince me that in North America, at least, this game is not targeted specifically at horse-crazy girls between the ages of seven and fourteen. Which is to say, nearly all girls.

You may also have read that the PS3 has finally sold 1 million units in Japan eight months after launch. It took the Wii six weeks to reach the same milestone. Why? In part because flocks of non gamers (many of them women) bought a console, some, I've no doubt, for the first time in their lives.

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When Feminine is an Advantage

There's a refreshingly friendly, balanced view of working as a woman in a mostly-male environment (in this case, the games industry) by Michelle Clay over at WomenGamers.com. Overall her points are very reasonable and mirror, I'm sure, a lot of similar experiences that women have had. There's just one teensy flaw: she seems to be encouraging more women to join the industry because there's a slight advantage to being the minority - although these points are somewhat played for humor in the article. And yet, if women did as the writer suggests, wouldn't their immigration annihilate the condition of their minority status and instead lead to a more equal distribution of men and women?

And isn't that, ultimately, what we want - including, I think, the writer of the article?

Wanting to be the only women in a group of male colleagues is a double-edged sword. If that's what you base your work happiness on, what will happen when another woman joins the team? Jealousy, and insecurity, because suddenly that which you valued is gone. I don't suggest that Michelle is advocating this; I think she's genuinely simply trying to persuade more women not to be frightened off by the male-ness of the industry. Still, I think there are some women who are drawn to the industry precisely because of its maleness.

Then there is the backlash - the feeling among some of your unkind male colleagues that you only exist there because you are a woman; and thus you are reduced to your femininity. Moreover, you become the focal point for any discussion of "what women want" - suddenly you are an expert, because you are female, and often you get put into the position of speaking for all womankind.

And what if you do have standards of behavior and language that are different? Do you feel compelled to suppress them because you want to fit in? I'm curious, this is a real question I have. I tend to have an "off" sense of humor anyway, as do many nerds and geeks, in my experience, and we used to make jokes about "sexual harrassment" and we could do so, because we all trusted one another. Michelle seems to have a graceful way to also upend gender stereotypes. But not all wpeople are comfortable in those situations; should we adopt similar standards to other business cultures? Or is it okay to keep acting on a case-by-case basis? Personally, I've been more pertrubed by offhand homophobic comments than ones that I felt were sexist, and I tended to speak up in those cases to make sure people knew, without being accusatory or unpleasant, that I didn't want to go along with their jokes.

I geniuinely miss my mostly male colleagues at Ziff Davis, at 1UP.com, and especially at Gamevideos.com. We bonded, after all - sharing hotel rooms and late nights and awful and wonderful experiences. And yet there is something refreshing about being in a more gender-balanced environment; and my currently team is almost all women. It's definitely a different sort of energy.

My only complaint: the women's bathroom gets a lot more crowded!

Other women who work in male-dominated places, what's been your experience?

Pink - It's Not Just for Games

I was reading my news this morning when I came across Pink Magazine off the Forbes site.

What. the. fuck.

First of all, the generic name "Pink" says absolutely nothing about the content of the magazine except that it's targetted oh-so-subtly at women. But what sort of women? Girls? Is it fashion? Is it about the many shades of our gender's favorite color? Carly Fiorina is so fucking happy right now - finally, something that she can relate to. If only Patricia Dunn had this before she made her little boo boo!

Secondly, it irritates me that Forbes is now implicitly saying that women have a "special" place to go to that is not Forbes.com. Forbes.com publishes sexist articles describing what terrible spouses educated "career women" make for the executive male. Forbes.com is clearly not for women.

Except that it was, once. I used to enjoy all the career features, particularly, which could appeal both to men and women. We all have issues with finding fulfullment in work, with dealing with difficult bosses. Once in a while there was a feature like "100 Most Powerful Women" or a feature that described more specifically the challenges of being female in the workplace, which I imagine was just as valuable for men to read as for women. After all, we're all in this together, right? We all need to learn how to get along.

Look at this random article I picked up off Pink: When and Why to Sell Your Company. A good idea for a feature, I thought - I would like to have my own company one day, and this is something I will need to consider. Reading the one-page article I learned that I would want to sell my company if 1) I wanted to spend more time with my kids 2) If I wanted to spend time traveling with my kids and 3) If I'm really not cut out for the harsh business of running a company and I want to move into a more nurturing role serving clients and making them happy. How much more fulfilling all of these are for a woman! There's nothing in here about moving on to start a new company, about when the market is ripe to sell a company; it's a pure fluff piece that celebrates the ultra-feminine.

Now look at the "Art of the Business Lunch." Apparently women are naturally good at this - we're born hostesses! And we love to serve! I love number 8: When dining with a male, avoid misunderstandings by taking a colleague. What the fuck - now we need chaperones for business lunches? If an exec you arrange a business lunch with thinks "something else" is going on, then either you failed to communicate, he's a pig, or your skirt is too short.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for a publication that serves women in business; and I think something that did that seriously would be successful. But I also think Forbes could have done that ably, if they wanted to. "Pink" is a joke and frankly, it makes me wonder if Forbes isn't deliberately trying to sabotage women in the workplace. "Pink" is the ghetto Forbes thinks women belong in.

Women and Games Are So Hot Right Now

Wow, everyone suddenly wants to know about women who game. It's interesting that every few months there is a flurry of press about women who game. Last week's burst of interest was stimulated in part by the upcoming release of the Desperate Housewives game, a title aimed primarily at women, and the BBC article, All women gamers please stand up. This past week I've answered a lot of questions over email, in person, and over the phone about women, games, and the "casual" game market.

Of course, we women gamers do play year round. Here are some places I recently discovered where women talk about videogames:

New Game Plus is a thoughtful, and unabashedly feminist, blog about games, although Ariel discusses other issues and passions too. It's a breath of fresh air.

The Feminist Gamers Livejournal is lively and their topics range far and wide. Lots of interesting stuff to read here.

Guilded Lilies mixes mods and mags, how can you resist that?

Wonderland is funny, brash, and lately, a bit WoW-obsessed. I can relate.

Shrub.com blog is Andrea Rubenstein's home on the net, where she has been mixing her personality with politics and entertainment for - oh, almost since the internet started I think! Never a dull read.

Acid for Blood is a personal gaming blog that mostly chronicles experiences (recently, Guild Wars and WoW), but she often uses the anecdote as a lens to examine larger issues.

There are so many more - which ones do you like to read?

From the PR Wire This Morning

Some interesting developments off the wires this morning.

Cartoon Network Announces MMO - in partnership with Korean MMO developer Grigon. Grigon's most well-known work is a game called Seal Online. The game will be aimed at kids and will incorporate Cartoon Network characters. Hm, okay. Well, if Toontown can do it, why not?

Absolute Poker Launches Poker Site for Women - called AP Lady. Don't click anything on the site, it'll trigger a download. What makes it different from regular poker? Well, apparently women aren't good at poker and this special site "is exploring partnerships with other relevant women's groups that will help to achieve the site's mission of helping women who want to get better at poker." Okay.

Women in Games International Conference Hosted By Microsoft - was announced today. The conference will happen on September 16th at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. Bonnie Ross, Director of Product Development for Microsoft Game Studios, will give the keynote address. The main topic addressed by the panels will be quality of life issues. I'm not sure I'll be able to attend, as it's a bit close to Tokyo Game Show, but I hope so.

Sound Like a Man!

Eurogamer has an article about some voice changer software just released from Audio4Fun. From the article:

According to research conducted by the company, "The number of female online game players is not small" ... However, most women have a common concern about the long-lasting existence of "male chauvinism" in the world of online games. In considering this point, Voice Changer Software proves very helpful to solve the problem."

This raises several questions for me, not the least of which is that if you hear someone who's obviously using voice-changing software doesn't that immediately identify said person as a woman-who's-trying-not-to-be-revealed-as-a-woman and therefore open her up just as easily to online harassment? I suppose that would depend on the quality of the voice-bending algorithms (I can't program so anything magical accomplished through software is for me automatically the result of an algorithm), but I still wonder how big of a market there is for a product like this. Granted, this is a PC application, but let's assume for a moment that any online audio-only communication was capable of disguising the gender of your voice, how many of you lady-gamers would find it useful? Obviously I've never had to be on the business-end of the kind of kunckle-dragger bullshit many of my female friends have had to deal with, but I know from playing many an online Live game that all a girl has to do is say "Sniper on the roof" to start getting all sorts of "special" attention paid to her. So, women of gaming, are applications like this useful to you? Would you never use them but are glad they're out there? If one actually turned your voice into a convincing male alternate does this, as Audio4Fun's marketing literature suggests, allow you to "prove that playing online games is not a pastime for men only, and that their talent can make male partners goggle?"

"Goggle" ... ?

Joss Whedon at Equality Now

Equality Now--a top-flight internation women's charity--honored Joss Whedon recently and he gave a short speech that is characteristically Whedon-esque in both its brief route to the point and witty enough to be profound. Anyone creating female characters in media (yes, game developers, I'm squinting at you and pointing accusingly) should be strapped to a chair with their eyelids taped open and forced to watch this several times over.

Instead of just linking the YouTube video, I'm linking directly to the Shakespear's Sister entry as the more people reading that blog, the better the world will be.

Play First, Look Later

This article (thanks GameSpot) about two major girl-gaming clans boycotting the "Miss WSVG Contest" on the grounds that its requirements basically require you have a vagina and have heard of this "video game" thing that seems to be so popular these days.

Although the boycott won't create huge waves, I think this is a really good move on the part of the Frag Dolls and the PMS Clan. So far I've had a somewhat mixed reaction to girl-oriented clans. On one hand, I appreciate women aggregating together and creating teams with a unique perspective. However, I've also found it a bit unfortunate that both the media and many of the clans themselves have (intentionally or unintentionally) made them famous for being an attractive novelty rather than a skilled group of gamers.

Regardless, I think this is a great move in the opposite direction. The more seriously these groups take themselves, the sooner we can escape from the disingenuous treatment of women by much of the gaming media, as satirized in Richard Cobbett's recent article, Writing a 'Girls in Games' Article. Yeah, it's a huge gap to be filled, but I'm glad that some groups are willing to at least try to change perceptions.

The Heroine Question

With finals over and a break between quarters last week, I slept, at last, but more importantly I got in some deeply satisfying game time. Satisfying in, you know, that way. Amongst the games conquered were Shadow of the Colossus, Indigo Prophecy, and Thief: Deadly Shadows.

I guess the Euros call IndigoProphecy "Fahrenheit." Here they apparently thought there'd be too much confusion with that whole 451 book. For those that don't know, books are what people used to read before there were blogs.

SoC shows that the save-the-princess metaphor never gets old as long as there's a mystifying and unique setting in which to place it. I readily admit to being an unapologetic worshipper of all things Ico-related, so in an effort to avoid any further fanboy-gushing over this title, I'll just leave the technicalities of my enjoyment aside. After the final bits of the game washed away in a graceful arc of an awe-inspiring denouement, I sat in silent contemplation for some time attempting to wrestle with a sudden fixation on the game's characters and my attachment to them.

You know what I mean. You want to and do feel for some characters in some games. You bond with them and identify with their struggles. It's just a sign of good storytelling. So I found myself wondering, what if I were Wanda trying to resurrect my prince? Would I have felt the same pull? That same, indefatigable determination to succeed at all costs? I didn't just want to see various colossi, explore and conquer them--I wanted to save Wanda. I can't really recall ever identifying with a female lead in a game in quite the same way. The potential of gaming as the only true interactive media to pull us into the hero's world is unparalleled. I dare say it's even more powerful than *gasp* D&D. I can't really say whether or not I could identify with a female lead in the same way I could with a male as I'm not at all certain the opportunity has really presented itself. Lara Croft (or Tits McGee to her friends) doesn't count. Neither do certain members of the Raccoon City Police or foolhardy young blondes who find themselves in Silent Hill. I'm talkin' about a chick who has to save her helpless man; who has to go on an epic quest of unfathomable hardship in order to bring him back from the brink. I've had some girls tell me they have no problem identifying with a hero, regardless of his virtual gender, but that it's ruined once he falls off the wagon into his male stereotype of macho-loner-womanizer or brooding-emotionally-unavailable-loner, or when the women he's involved with or trying to save dissolves into a helpless mess of fear. So what have I overlooked? Are there heroines like I've mentioned out there or are we just as stuck as movies and television in the male-hero, woman-victim paradigm?

Reaction to Nothing

A freelancer for a product I work on wrote this quickie fluff article that slapped me in the face this morning. Am I over-reacting? His tone just made something inside me rankle.

Okay, calm down; it's obviously not serious, it's just meant to be funny and light-hearted. But it falls too short on satire.

And frankly, the picture gives me a real physical reaction (a different one, I am certain, than the one it gives the young men it's designed to titillate.) It makes me not want to go to the front page of our own website. You see? The same image that makes men nearly unconsciously click on stuff makes many women avoid it. And you wonder why women don't read gaming magazines?

And what we want are boobies. Big ones. The larger, the better. Preferably attached to a female whose IQ numbers in the double digits.

The thing is, I don't know what he's complaining about. His needs are fully satisfied right now. Boobs are everywhere. Any female character in a mainstream video game is pretty much guarranteed to have balloons stuck to her chest, unless she's supposed to be "nerdy" or "smart", I guess. And they're not in any danger of going away.

So this article is a whole lot of nothing. A chance to show some cleavage and get hits. A cheap shot. Not badly written, at that, for which I have to give Scott credit; but it's not anything new. It's the same old story we've been hearing for years from game developers resistant to change. They have a formula, they know it works, and they don't want to change it.

Me, though, I'm ready for some changes. The problem isn't that there's big boobs right now - the problem is that there's nothing but big boobs when it comes to depicting women. You want to feature boobs on the cover? Fine. But I want something else. And that's what I'm trying to make, I guess. Something else.

So thank you Scott. I came to bury you, not to praise you. But your article had the effect of reinforcing my convictions. I want alternatives. I want new perspectives. I want ... jesus. I just want to move on.

Top Ten Girlfriend-Friendly Games

By 1-Up.

Hahahahaha.

Oh wait, are you serious?

Maybe you could have had an actual girlfriend help you out with your list, Shivam. I mean seriously. Centipede? Ms. Pac-Man? Bejeweled, for Chrissake? You're really reaching there, buddy.

Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls

Excerpt from a Gamespot interview with Sheri Graner Ray:

SGR: Men play female characters. I don't have the exact numbers, but a huge percentage of males play female characters. The number of females playing male characters is so small as to be not worth counting. And they'll tell you, "I don't play a male character because it's not comfortable."

GS: And yet if you're in a stand-alone game, you often don't have a choice--often you are a male character.

SGR: Right. Or you don't play. On my women's mailing list, you'll find them all the time that say, "I didn't play Fable because there wasn't a female character to play." So it's one of those barriers. It's one of those doors that stops them from ever playing the game.

Now, if I get the chance, I ALWAYS play female, and usually one that looks like me (given the option): petite, dark-haired, light on the muscle. In D&D, I try to play a version of myself as much as possible... which usually ends up being a Bard/Rogue type character with a high Persuade but negligible combat skills.

But I also played Fable, and loved it - and had three wives in three cities, including the dark Lady Grey. I played Prince of Persia and loved it. I suppose you could say, perhaps, that there is a difference between the action/adventure and the rpg. The rpg really asks you to put yourself in the character's shoes. But then, Final Fantasy 7 and 8 have a large female cult following. I don't think it's a problem to experience a story from someone else's point of view.

I read books with male narrators and male protagonists. I watch movies with male heroes, told from a male point of view. The important things are character, story, and emotional depth, and those can belong to anyone, any sex or any color.

I think the problem is just that there isn't enough diversity. What if all books we had on shelves were written by John Updike or Phillip Roth? I love their writing, but I'd be bored out of my mind sifting through so many pages of self-reflective upper-middle class male-ness. It's good to have a Richard Wright in there, a Virginia Woolf, a Zora Neale Hurston. I'd like that for videogames, too, obviously.

But what Graner Ray says is interesting. Is it really true that women vastly prefer to play women, while men are more fluid in their gender-identity? I've wanted to conduct a study on this for years, but I lack the social science research skills. Maybe someone out there wants to help out.

Girls Belong in Games

Girls in Games is a nonprofit organization started by discussions on the IGDA Women-in-Development List, staffed by volunteer teachers and mentors. Their aim is to provide real experience in game development to young women or women from other fields to help them find jobs in the industry - a sort of a experience incubatorm if you will. Sande Chen and Michelle Sorger, affiliated with Girls in Games, will be speaking at GDC this year. I'll be interviewing them next week, so stay tuned for more details.

In the meantime, if you want to check them out or volunteer some services, visit the website!

Women are not Girls

Let's get that cleared up right away. While we may refer to ourselves playfully as "girls" and "gamergirls", we're not girls. We don't play girl games. Girl games are for children.

Is this an obvious point? Apparently not to many folks to write to me about what women and girls want in games. Well, they want different things.

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Gaming Moms and Kids

Halley Suitt of Halley's Comment has a new blog about gaming with her son. She's of course a techie lady (and a contributing writer to Misbehaving.net), and a gamer, but she also discusses non-gamerly and more momlike issues, like setting time limits on videogame play. Many of her posts ask for advice on which games might be fun or appropriate for the kid. I wonder if Parenting has videogame reviews. They should. (Thanks, Robert).

Speaking of games for kids, Playskool is releasing a console for 3-7 year olds, equipped with an Eyetoy-like motion capture camera that will let kids play games by jumping around. Looks pretty cool, although at $100+ the console isn't exactly a bargain toy. (Thanks, David!)

We Got the Cash; Why Aren't We Buying?

Madison at Tekkalogue caught Clarinda Merripen in Boston a couple weeks ago talking about women's control of the consumer dollar, including 66% of all home computer sales. So why aren't game companies taking advantage of that? She cites marketing that alienates women and unfriendly retail spaces as some of the reasons women don't want to play games.

How about high-profile "sexy" games like Merripen's own Playboy the Mansion? You don't think that contributes to the sexist image of videogames? Content is, after all, as important as marketing. You can wrap anything in a pretty box, caveat emptor, but once that box is open you're judged on what's inside.

Not that there isn't room for Playboy Bunnies somewhere in gameland. It's just unfortunate for the industry image that the most potentially objectionable games get the most press, alarming socially conscious groups across the country. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say. Just because there are porn movies and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies doesn't mean the film industry can't make an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Besides, I like me some good porn Van Damme action once in a while.

But we've all heard these arguments before. Women don't like crappy content filled with nothing but boobs and guns. Check. We don't like being pandered to or excluded in advertising. Check. We don't want to be treated like freaks at the Best Buy. Check. We ALL KNOW THIS. Why is this even still an issue? It ain't no mystery. The bigger question now is, why aren't marketers/game developers doing something about it? Is there something systemically wrong with the industry that prevents this very normal, not-that-hard-to-grasp feedback from reaching the people in charge? Is there some natural resistance on the part of game devlopers themselves? Are artists somehow genetically incapable of designing breasts smaller than D cup? Is all this talk of "what do women really want" merely lip service?

I think at this point we need to ask ourselves, do they really even want us to play?

Cuz that's a whole 'nother problem.

Is Samus a Feminist?

According to this GameSpot editorial, "men are inherently incapable of doing an adequate job of properly presenting female characters in games". Although they are aparently capable of writing editorials denouncing the improper portrayal of women in videogames.

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It's time for androgyny, it's just Vaan!

Read Gender Inclusive Game Design by Sheri Graner Ray today (review forthcoming; short version: worth it), and one particular chapter awakened my inner hamster and got my wheels spinning. The question burning itself into my grey matter is this: Is there a point at which a game avatar becomes sufficiently cartoony or otherwise unreal that they effectively lose their gender? Is Mario emasculated? Is Pacman actually a man? And what's up with the male lead from Final Fantasy XII?

Are there game characters that you don't think of as being gendered while playing, but, arguably do belong to one or the other?

Are there characters that make you feel particularly aware (perhaps uncomfortably so) of their gender?

I'm particularly interested in what the gamer girls feel about these questions, but I guess our resident gamer guys can answer too.

WSJ reports that women DO play games

"Where the Girls Are" article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday suggests that the game industry is waking up to the commercial possibilities of paying attention to the growing female market.

Some numbers provided by the Entertainment Software Association in the article are interesting:

26% of electronic game-players are women over 18.
21% are boys 6-17,
12% are girls 6-17,
38% are men over 18.

The article also notes that "For the holidays this year, Codemasters says it will run its most aggressive U.S. ad campaign ever, placing print ads in magazines including CosmoGirl, YM, Teen People and Working Mother. The multimillion-dollar campaign also features TV spots set to start airing next month on the WB network, during "7th Heaven," "Smallville" and other shows popular with young women and girls."

There are also a few paragraphs on There, the open-ended virtual space that is designed to attract more women. iVillage ("the internet for women") has a special deal with There, Inc. whereby it will be able to provide ads and services in a special iVillage zone.

I wonder if all this mainstream feminizing of gamespaces will alienate the original women who colonized them. Current female gamers may be disgusted by the fact that they can now get astrology and love advice in their gaming. Will we see an increasing divide between the female old guard "OG" - original gamer - and the fluffy newbie lured in by Cosmo quizzes and virtual fashion design aspirations?

[Thanks to Wayne and Mike Spriggs for the article!]

Games, Gender, and Meaning

There's this BBS where I co-moderate the Games conference with a game developer by the name of Mike Sellers. Recently, he had this to say in a discussion on game design:

Over in the discussion in the Books conference on J.R.R. Tolkien, someone posted a sermon given about The Lord of the Rings. It's worth a read on its own. Here's an excerpt that struck me game-wise, though:

On the third evening we went, I sat down next to a mom and calmly turned to her and said, "Three times, one week." She looked at me and laughed and said, "Oh, that's nothing. Try eight times in two." I looked over at her son.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Seven." He responded.

"How many times have you seen this movie?"

He grew sullen. "Only seven. They wouldn't let me see it the first time they went."

Then I leaned still further to chat with the daughter.

"How old are you and which character do you like in the movie?" I asked, pretty sure of her response.

"I'm 14 and I like Frodo," she giggled.

"So do I. But why do you like this story?" I continued.

"Because they gave Frodo something important to do," she said wistfully.

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The Price of (a virtual) Man

From Declan's Politech list this morning: A link to a blog that described and linked to an economic analysis of EverQuest avatar sales, which determined that "ability seems more important than sex in determining the value of a body. Nonetheless, among comparable avatars, females do sell at a significant price discount."

OTOH, this may simply reflect the mostly-male EverQuest demographic's preference for avatars of their own gender. Are there any studies out there on the different demographics/social tendencies of the various big MMORPGs?

Boyfriend Plug-In

Today, I mentioned to a friend that I was playing Morrowind, an RPG on the PC. "Oh, that's hardcore." Why? "Because it's so complex."

I step back a bit from the gameplay, and I realize, yes! It is quite complex. There's plants I can harvest to make potions, and devices I can use to remove or amplify specific potion effects. There's magic and negociations and factions and small hamlets and large cities packed with people with requests. The game keeps drawing me back in because I want to explore further.

After talking to my friend, I browsed the 'net a little, to get a sense of the range of the game. And I saw that Morrowind supports user-generated plug-ins. Browsing the Morrowind Mod Library I found this option from Emma:

Boyfriend (8kb)
Description: Life as an Morrowind-adventurer can sometimes be kind of lonesome. Therefore, I'm proud to present Indiana James, the devoted boyfriend of your female PC Character. He is a redguard warrior, who loves a good fight, and he is always happy to accompany you on your adventures. You will soon find out that he is not only a good fighter and a nice company. He is also able to heal himself, to repair his own armor and to provide you with some useful stuff along the road. If you're short of money, he might be able to lend you some. But don't be greedy - that would most certainly affect his feelings for you. You'll find Indiana James outside his nice little cottage close to Vivec (turn left after crossing the bridge from Foreign Quarters). As the true love of your life, he of course wants you share his home, and between your adventures, he loves to cook you a good meal or to quote some poetry.

Emma is equal opportunity, as it turns out - there's a girlfriend plug-in as well.

Single player games sometimes feel like a dying breed - so much industry attention is focused on multiplayer. I enjoy playing games alone sometimes, because I can experiment more and explore a story. But that doesn't mean I want to be alone in the world. I love this idea that we could create plug-ins of ourselves and then upload them to our friends. Or celebrities? Personality plug-ins for Morrowind - early traces of exchangable artificial companions.

Star-crossed Romance

A while ago I found a treasure trove of newsgroups run by young women and teenagers who wrote romantic/erotic fan fiction about boy bands starring themselves and their friends. It was fun to watch the fiction flex to include newcomers and their requests ("Oh, I want to be Ashley's best friend! And I have red hair, and green eyes, and my favorite color is blue. Can you write me in?") This was, I thought, a different kind of MUD, and almost 100% female in population.

I started searching for similar phenomena and can across this delightful fan fic starring Lance Bass of *NSync and the notorious Eminem. The set up is delicious, and there are extremely amusing touches which lend an air of playfulness to the story. I love that whenever Eminem gets pissed off he runs himself a bubble bath, or that Chris and Joey are portrayed as the only non-gay members of *NSync (well, duh).

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