Yeehah, I did it again!

I got to talk about sexism in games and feminist gaming on Ö1 Nachtquartier (“night quarter”) on April 17, right after midnight! Thanks Xaver Forthuber for inviting me!

Very Concentrated When Checking my Headphones. This may also be the Only Photo of me with a Duckface.

We discussed how I got hooked to gaming, how and why I picked “glamgeekgirl” as my nickname, what kinds of sexism women encounter in games, what to do about sexist attacks and many other aspects. We did so in a (I think) very approachable fashion – Ö1 is not exactly a youth station but I value it as a venue for intelligent discourse of various topics.

T-15: I’m Nervous.

It was a call-in show (my first!) and there was a 75-year-old lady who wanted to know why most of the games that she sees in advertisements are war games with male heroes.

There were also some emails with questions. I will post and answer these here a bit later.

View from Adjacent Studio with the Host Xaver opposite me. 5 Minutes into the Show, not Nervous Anymore.  

The show is in German, you can listen to it here. Attention: The file is almost 50 MB big, I already compressed it down to a half!

[You can download the file here]

All photos in this post were taken by Jürgen, who is also hosting the audio file. Thanks!

[Spoiler Alert for Mass Effect 2; only hinting at spoilers for Tomb Raider]

 Is it too late to chime in on the “Tomb Raider rape controversy”?  I’ll readily admit that I haven’t played a single minute of any game in the series, but as a feminist gamer, of course I’ve followed Lara’s story from a distance. I’ve watched a good amount of gameplay videos of the reboot (until the cremation of ********, not to spoil anything vital) and read a fair share of articles and blog posts and interviews and whatnot about it. But anyway … it is never too late to talk about rape and rape culture. I agree with many commenters that the “suggested rape attempt scene” has been a publicity stunt. I think that, apart from that scene, Lara has to endure pain and violent acts that IMO are over the top. Also: The constant moaning and groaning, COME ON! You’d NEVER subject a male character to all this! As explained by the game’s executive producer Ron Rosenberg, this all happens for a very specific reason:

“When people play Lara, they don’t really project themselves into the character. They’re more like ‘I want to protect her.’ There’s this sort of dynamic of ‘I’m going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.’”

(That would also never happen to a male character.) I also agree with Mary Hamilton in her Guardian article that

the use of rape “is a lazy shorthand that allows a writer to paint a bad guy as particularly bad, and a woman as particularly vulnerable (the genders are rarely reversed), without dealing with the consequences or meaning of such an act for any of the parties involved.”

There are just so many aspects of this affair that make me so angry I don’t even care whether it’s actually a good game. Let’s assume games are an art form and we want to discuss all sorts of topics from our daily lives in this medium. So let’s face it: rape, sexual assault and molestation are part of the daily lives of countless women and girls on this planet. And I do think that we have got to try to deal with this topic in video games. If it’s supposed to be a mature medium for grown-ups, we gotta figure out how.

Let’s start with the how not to:

• Don’t make fun of it and don’t let anyone make fun of it.
• Don’t touch the subject if you know you’ll wriggle out of the ensuing discussion.
• Don’t use rape as shorthand for “Men are evil, women are weak.”
• Don’t glorify sexual violence.
• Don’t use rape only to instill sympathy or a protective instinct in the player.
• Don’t put a suggested rape scene into for your video game unless you try to work out the consequences for the character and are willing to deal with them.
• IF the genders are reversed, don’t turn it into a joke or parody. A man being raped isn’t the slightest bit more funny than a woman being raped.

Let’s also discuss what’s “suggested” about the “suggested rape attempt”:

I’ve read dozens of opinion pieces, comments, tweets along the lines of “See, nothing happened!?!” I’ll argue two points here: First: Compared to how the other opponents try to shoot you from afar, being touched in the side, having words that you don’t understand whispered into your ear and being choked (to death, if you fail the quicktime event) is not only by itself a multiple violation of personal boundaries, but also (that’s the second point): If you’re in that position, do you know where and when your attacker would stop? What his intentions really are? Try to think outside the clear rules of a game like Tomb Raider: Does he want to kill you, rape you, or problably “only” rob you? Especially if you have been assaulted before, you might jump to conclusions because “that’s what happened the last time”, even if may “only” be a light touch.

You have to assess the situation within seconds and react appropriately – and unfortunately (?), in reality, there’s no quicktime event, no reload, and killing someone is generally looked down upon. Also, in most instances, unlike Lara, you don’t just wipe off the dirt and get on with the killing your life. Depending on what exactly happened, you will need time to heal, physically but especially emotionally. You have to re-establish your boundaries, your self-confidence, your trust in other human beings. This may take therapy, or many hour-long talks with friends and family, or just lots of time. Speaking up against the offender or reporting him may help you deal with what happened, too. In the game, we never learn what Lara thinks about the incident – whether she felt threatened sexually, or not. But, either way, the only choice she gets is to kill the offender (if you win the quicktime event) or be choked (if you fail the QTE). As for “dealing with what happened”, this is it. There are a few instances in the game where we see an attempt of showing us how Lara deals with certain events (don’t want to spoil any details), but even that falls short in my opinion. And why does it fall short? The game promised to show how Lara became the heroine we know – and I’m sorry, but that’s not what’s we see in the game. What IS happening TO US never makes us a better, stronger person (emotionally; not talking athletics here). It may do the opposite – cause mistrust, depression, survivor’s guilt, self-harm, suicide, you name it. What CAN make us a better person is HOW WE DEAL WITH IT.  (Another good read on that, including statements from an expert on sexual violence: Penny Arcade Report)

So, regardless of whether Lara faces an attempted rape or “only” attempted murder (Did I just write that? Outside video games, it seems very, very wrong), she doesn’t get the slightest chance of dealing with it. It very much reminds me of how Shepard is resurrected from the dead in Mass Effect, with practically no explanation of how she (or he) deals with that. Shepard’s death and rebirth become as trivial as Lara carrying out her first kill when she shoots her offender in the face. Of course, unlike in Mass Effect, the story in Tomb Raider doesn’t allow for any prompt extensive processing of what happened, but if that is so, please don’t go around telling everyone how you are explaining Lara’s development. Just keep her suffering, moaning, groaning, getting impaled, choked, and burnt for the sake of our entertainment until she somehow turns into a killing machine. In other words: Don’t use rape in your stories if you can’t deal with it.

[Note: Of course, I don't yet know the ending, so take this article as the analysis of something incomplete and probably inaccurate.]

Some more recommendations on the matter that didn’t quite fit into the text above: Dan Whiteheads Saturday Soapbox, Ashelias article on how for her, Tomb Raider did help with coming to terms with her own history.

I was interviewed (in German!) about women in games by Robert Glashüttner, digital lifestyle editor for Austrian alternative radio station fm4. It was awesome to be back at a radio station – I was an intern at one in 2005!

I’m at home, baby!

Here’s a screenshot of the preview of the interview on the fm4 website:

And here is the mp3 of my interview!

[You can download the file here]

As always, I’m looking forward to your input or feedback. Is there a special female character you’d like me to discuss in my next blog post? Also, what is your favorite female character in games and why?

While the game has a lot of rare strong suits, like the continuous, interactive world with beautiful day & night cycles and some clever level design choices, it also has a few annoying aspects. I won’t go into details about most of them; let me just say that the quest log was particularly frustrating because I picked up the game again after several months and the log didn’t help at all. But overall, I liked the game a lot. Risen stands in the tradition of the German cult RPG series Gothic and was developed by the same studio, Piranha Bytes, after the rights to the series were temporarily unavailable due to legal problems with the publisher JoWood. It is very similar to the Gothic games, but not frustrating as hell.

The people on the island of Faranga have daily routines and roam their camps and go to the tavern, go to sleep and back to their workplaces in the morning. That part was quite well done – but, it was also very revealing of the society depicted in the game. I am often confronted with the argument of “historical realism” when discussing gender issues in games but I won’t accept that for a fantasy setting. If you make up undead creatures, magic spells and whatnot, there is no claiming realism to justify why women aren’t treated or represented equally in a game. ( The “representation” vs. “treatment” is an important point, because I wouldn’t mind if the treatment of women in the game served the plot and could be protested against or changed, but it usually can’t be.) There are lots of unnamed NPCs in Risen, bearing markers like “Townswoman” or “Farmer”, etc. There seem to be roughly equal numbers of men and women, but none of the women work in the fields, smithies or in any other craft. Neither are there female guards, warriors, mages or bandits. The women also never go to the tavern. Ever. C’mon!?

Of course, there’s a brothel in the island’s only town. (My fingers are itching to write a whole post about courtesans/prostitutes in games.) The brothel is the only place outside their house in which women actually do work; and I really dislike the message that sends. The more important NPCs, like merchants and quest givers, all have names. That’s why it sticks out that there are very few female ones, and their portrayals are rife with clichés. A few examples:

Rachel – the wife of the bandits’ leader, Don Esteban. You will mostly see her work in her fancy open-air kitchen in the bandit camp. She does play a role in your getting to speak to the Don, but overall, she’s the camp’s cook, and that’s that.
Kayleigh – a rather annoying woman who wants a pearl necklace in exchange for a stolen ring that you need to bring back to his owner.
Sonya, Olga, Lilly, Gwen, Anika – prostitutes, some of which you can actually have sex with. You can save Gwen from physical abuse by a guy called Erikson. You can distract a guard called Marek by paying for Anika’s services.
Jasmin – a hunter and merchant, lives in a remote cottage, protected by a tame wolf and her partner Hendrik
Tilda – a mother of three sons who is worried about them and sends you on a quest to see if they are okay
Patty – the only female skill trainer in the entire game. Guess for what skills? Acrobatics, a largely useless skill that you can also get temporarily by wearing a ring. And lockpicking, okay, that’s useful.

But there’s more to Patty. She is the only woman in the entire game that has more than a negligible role. Patty is the daughter of a famous pirate, and owns the tavern in Harbor City. You will be sent on a quest to retrieve some documents for her then enable her to leave the town through the secret tunnel. In a later chapter you will help her find her father’s treasure and spring her from the cell where the infamous Pirate Romanov locks her up. Here’s what she looks like – yes, it’s your typical cropped, cleavage-exposing nothing with hot pants and overknees. SIgh.

Pirate Patty

For the longest time, the quests involving her didn’t portray her as a woman who could hold her own in a fight, but at least she had a background and some really good lines. Here’s a short video captured from the later part of the game, where you rescue her and she then helps you, until after the final bossfight.

Patty is an interesting character because for quite some time, I had no idea that she would turn out to be a companion rather than eye candy; and strong woman who was cheeky and flirtatious without appearing easy or needy of the hero.

Since I started writing this post, Risen 2 was published, but I haven’t yet played it. So I might soon continue telling Patty’s story from my feminist gamer’s perspective. As of now, I am quite hopeful – but it wouldn’t be the first time that a strong female character was twisted into a mere shadow of her former self in a sequel. Yes, I’m looking at you Isabela.

My thesis is about:

Aesthetic, Immersive and Transmedia Potentials of Game Platforms – Taking the Example of Assassin’s Creed

Now let’s be clear: My thesis is 160 pages cover-to-cover, so these are very limited, selected results.

I’ve stated three research questions in my thesis:

Immersion:
“How do technical parameters define a platform’s aesthetic, and in further consequence, immersive potentials?”

Transmedia Storytelling:
“What are the transmedia potentials of a multi-platform game franchise?”

Convergence:
“If there will be not one single “black box” to replace all other platforms, will smartphones become the focal point that integrates with all other platforms?”

These were the platforms I selected, and the reasons why:

I’ve conducted a comparative analysis of these platforms in the theoretical part of my thesis, and then asked questions about them in general, as well as related to Assassin’s Creed, in my online survey.

Here are some results of my survey:

Now, since the context is a bit less academic than within my thesis … if you do not know Assassin’s Creed, go play it – the respondents of my survey agreed that AC2 was the best one. And if you can’t, check out the Wikipedia article or look at some YouTube videos.

Now, these were my main observations about Assassin’s Creed on a few selected platforms:

Now, let’s finish this up with a selection of conclusions about the three main topics:

That’s it for now. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments!

• Sexy Marvel Universe character gender swap in a generally very awesome blog.
• Funny one of Asterix and Obelix.
• And here’s author Jim C. Hines trying to strike typical poses of female characters on fantasy book covers. It’s hilarious!
• Hines also links to this gem, a blog post in which a martial artist and contortionist talks about how he tried a typical female action hero pose – and failed.

Hope you enjoy!

No comment. No allusion. No pun. No Mass Effect 2 in-joke.

The current topic is fitting for the weather in Central Europe: cold (Kälte); and since I played 153 hours of Skyrim, I just have to comment that the inhabitants of Skyrim must guzzle potions of cold resistance like crazy. Even those who live in huts without big fireplaces or doors (!) sleep without blankets, while it’s snowing outside. Yes, the Nords of course have adapted to their environment (blah), but all immigrants have the same unhealthy habit. It’s funny if you pay attention to such details, but of course very nice if you want to pickpocket people.

The female armors in Skyrim are very similar to the male version, so at least there’s no freezing to death in Daedric bikinis like described in this recent post about another freezing RPG world.

PS: The title is a pun about a track by a German band, so “Nordisch” is not a typo.

Missed the topic “new beginning” (Neubeginn) last week, but I need to catch up on this. VERY QUICKLY. Very briefly.

Warning: Contains spoily spoilers for the beginning of Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect 2 was a great game. I loved many things about it, but it fell especially short in an unexpected regard: The story. In my opinion, the game focused so much on the “recruit teammate – gain teammate’s trust – recruit next teammate…” cycle that there was no “Shepard story” as in the first game.

Unfortunately, and with this I’m returning to the topic “New beginning”, this becomes evident quite early in the game, when Shepard is resurrected (a bit prematurely) after two years during which everyone had to assume (s)he was dead. In terms of the cinematics and escape from the station that is under attack, this is presented very well.

If you haven’t played the game, here is a YouTube video of these starting minutes of ME2:

It’s also a nice explanation for the opportunity to change his/her class entirely; and advance the plot, allowing ME1 veterans to discover many new things that have changed since the end of the first game’s narrative.

But most reactions to his/her reappearance from authorities, friends and enemies are simply underwhelming, and the topics of life, death and resurrection are never dealt with in any detail. This would’ve been difficult (but hey, it’s BioWare), but the way it is now, it’s a missed chance (yes, hey, it’s EA) to discuss something immensely meaningful in a computer game.

The Titan character is one of the few examples of male characters without full plate armor, the rogue (Schurkin) one of the few of females with full (leather in this case) armor. [Note: The image is photoshopped to see both characters without the icy layer, which disappears on mouse-over.] Yes, the second one, the Knight, as well as the third, the Mage and the last, the Healer characters are pretty stereotypical again, but it was enough to screencap it and post it now.

"You can do it, oh no you can't." (Devs create characters with sensible armor.)

However, seeing that this world seems to be covered in ice and the heading reads “Survive the icy times”, I don’t see much of a chance of survival for any of them if they don’t have a warm coat and thick fur boots ready somewhere.

I fondly remember Robinson’s Requiem and The Dark Eye/Realms of Arkania, where your characters would die quickly without the proper equipment. Mind you, I wasn’t so fond of this when they died the first time.

So, as I said elsewhere recently, I either want all characters to wear silly armor that exposes their vital organs while emphasizing their assets, or the laws of physics (however exotic they may be in fantasy/sci-fi worlds) to apply to all sexes equally – and that means they should cover up for protection from the weather as well as their enemies’ steel.