Sponsored by the US-based Viscera Film Festival, WiHM has really taken off since we covered it in 2011, and we’re very proud to be WiHM Ambassadors – check us out on the list!
We recently kicked off a set of posts on Women in Horror with a return to our soapbox by Irish horror author Maura McHugh, who returned to BadRep Towers to spotlights some women she admired working in the genre across a range of media.
Before we go further, though, we’d like to share the Women in Horror Month Mission statement.
This Mission Statement is taken from the Women in Horror Recognition Month website. They’ve asked that it be shared, quoted and spread about as much as possible, so we’re giving it the spotlight in itself for a moment, before we get down with our horror-nerdy selves in these pages.
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The Mission
Women in Horror Recognition Month (WiHM) assists underrepresented female genre artists in gaining opportunities, exposure, and education through altruistic events, printed material, articles, interviews, and online support. WiHM seeks to expose and break down social constructs and miscommunication between female professionals while simultaneously educating the public about discrimination and how they can assist the female gender in reaching equality.
The Vision
A world in which all individuals are equally given the opportunity to create, share, and exploit their concept of life, pain, and freedom of expression.
IT’S THE YEAR 2012, NOT THE 1950s. IS THERE REALLY A NEED FOR WiHM?
Absolutely. Otherwise, WiHM would not exist. Women are still not offered the same pay and opportunities as their male colleagues in many industries, particularly the arts. Discrimination runs rampant in Hollywood and it’s very difficult for females (even well-known actresses) to get their films funded by major studios.
Statistics prove that women are still not offered the same opportunities as men due to an array of reasons, from discrimination to female professionals accepting less than they are worth in order to receive the same opportunities as their male colleagues.
In other parts of the world, women are still stoned to death for speaking their minds, excommunicated when they are sexually violated, and not offered proper education. Atrocities continue to happen that force the female gender to be subservient to a patriarchal system that tells them how to dress, who to marry, and what they should do with their lives. All discrimination must be exposed and obliterated for the female gender to truly achieve equality.
WiHM focuses on supporting the achievements of women who utilize the most extreme mirror available in storytelling: horror. We encourage women to explore and represent these horrors constructively, in positive environments.
WHAT ARE THE INDUSTRY’S STATISTICS?
- In the 1920s there were no more than 10 women working in Hollywood in leadership positions.
- In 2009, the mainstream film industry’s ratio was 16% women to 84% men.
- In 2011, women made up only 5% of directors working in Hollywood.
- www.womeninhorrormonth.com
- www.viscerafilmfestival.com
- www.facebook.com/WomenInHorrorMonth
- womeninhorrormonth.tumblr.com
- Ed’s Tiny Note: Our team are in full support of this; given the diverse make-up of our own team’s, we would likely expand this phrase where it occurs to “all genders” and “all gender identities, presentations and expressions”.
SO WiHM IS ALL ABOUT WOMEN. WHAT ABOUT MEN?
WiHM was created with no exclusion. Men play a vital part in the female gender reaching equality. There are many male WiHM Ambassadors and artists who choose to assist and work with professional and talented underrepresented female practitioners. Be a guiding example of a man who respects both genders equally.1
WHAT CAN THE PUBLIC DO TO ASSIST WOMEN?
Personal Responsibility
We all must take personal responsibility for our beliefs, values, and actions. Participating in positive, constructive environments that encourage and provide a safe platform for women to share and explore is vital.
Education
Education is essential. Knowledge is power. Understanding history and where that puts us today, politically and socially, demonstrates how we are interpreting each other and ourselves.
Work with Women
Finding professional women to work with in leadership positions is one of the most important actions you can take to assist the movement. Don’t just work with a woman because of her gender, work with her because she has a lot to bring to the table.
Banish social constrictions
Stereotyping, judging, cattiness, competitiveness, comparing, and gossip – all of these actions hurt men and women. We are all on our own path in life, careers, and personal relationships. We are encouraged to play into these cultural expectations when we are young, which can create judgment of those who are different. Stop it.
Be a WiHM Ambassador
Every February, WiHM Ambassadors host charity events (blood drives, film screenings, art shows), write blogs and articles, conduct interviews, and create videos and podcasts for mass consumption. All of these events and content specifically represent and assist the underrepresented female genre artist and are for philanthrpopic reasons only. No profit is made from WiHM, or the Viscera organization.
Participate
Go to the events, read the articles, watch the videos. Be conscious of the fact that you are consuming different perspectives of a movement that is assisting a struggle that women have experienced for at least the last four thousand years: equality. We have incredible potential right now to destroy discrimination. It deserves your attention.
Donate
Donate to WiHM. All funds go directly into the organization to improve the events, materials, and outreach. WiHM needs the support of the public.
Support other organisations
Organisations such as CARE, Women for Women International, RAINN, and WIF. All these organisations work hard all year round to assist women in achieving equality. Visit their websites and educate yourself.
The Board
The Board of Directors for WiHM is comprised of women from all facets of the horror film industry, including WiHM founder Hannah Forman, Debbie Rochon, Jovanka Vuckovic, Heidi Honeycutt, Jen and Sylvia Soska, and Shannon Lark.
The Organisation
WiHM is a service provided by the Viscera Organization, a 501(c)3 non profit organization expanding opportunities for contemporary female genre filmmakers and artists by raising awareness about the changing roles for women in the film industry.
Dear Deep Silver,
I have just seen the parody ad for the collector’s edition of Dead Island: Riptide. While violence against women and graphic dismemberment are fairly cheap, extremely tasteless and far too easy targets for “shock value”, I’m impressed by your provocative attempts to further the dialogue about the sinister and ingrained misogyny of videogame culture by taking it to a disgusting extreme.
Limited Edition! Specially designed and crafted! Completely and utterly terrible!
Oh… wait, hang on, I’ve just heard from Rock, Paper, Shotgun that you’re actually serious about this. This apparently isn’t just a misguided pastiche of publicity stunts. Oh. Oh dear.
You claim that this hunk of resin will:
… make a striking conversation piece on any discerning zombie gamer’s mantel.
Well, as someone who has notched up damn near 1,000 hours of zombie killing in recent years (thanks, Steam, for keeping track of that. I was starting to worry that I was wasting my life), let’s have a conversation about it. I’ll go and brew up a steaming cup of Sityourassdown while you perch on the naughty stool and think about what you’ve done.
I can hear it already, the rumbling of defensive PR managers approaching.
“But it’s a zombie game! The whole point of it is to commit heinous acts of violence against the undead in self defence! A zombie torso with its limbs severed is a trophy that represents your prowess!”
Before I address this, in the interests of full disclosure, I have to say that I am not a qualified physician. However, from my forays into the study of human and zombie biology, I can confirm that the healthy, warm-tanned skintone, obvious freshness of the blood, the lack of any sort of necrosis or decomposition of the flesh indicates that this torso was certainly not a zombie at the time of her dismemberment.
Exposure of the lower ribs suggest traumatic chest injury; however, it’s not clear whether this occurred before or after the time of death. My working hypothesis is that her death had something to do with either decapitation or the loss of all her blood. Even without formal medical training, I am fairly confident in positing that there is no coming back from complete removal of the head.
There isn’t even any artistic merit in what you’ve created, which is almost as offensive as the glorification of horrific violence against women. You have the gumption to describe it as:
…Dead Island’s grotesque take on an iconic Roman marble torso sculpture.
No. Stop. Please. The skies are filled with the anguished cries of Classics and Art History students, joined by the despairing sobs of everybody with a functioning pair of eyes. There are several salient differences between your abomination and classical works of art, but I’ll set out a few of these for your convenience:
- Artistic merit. Marble sculptures are exquisite works by highly-skilled craftspeople demonstrating the depth of their abilities. Weeks of work go into a marble sculpture, creating something dynamic and evocative from a chunk of something cold and unyielding drawn from the earth. These are not pieces that can be “designed” in an afternoon by a gaggle of fratboy marketers over their weekly office keg.
- Anatomy. Sculptors who work with marble show an intimate and thorough knowledge and understanding of human anatomy. Every muscle, every curve, every millimetre of skin is honed to a perfect representation of the human form. What you have done is plonked two tennis balls on a solid block of resin, doodled in a crude cleavage with a Sharpie, then splashed raspberry sauce all over it and called it a day. Which brings me neatly onto my next point…
- Overt sexualisation and glamourisation of violence against women. Classical torso sculptures are not without limbs due to some horrible run-in with a horde of undead and a crazed survivor with a katana. If any Classics types would like to weigh in on this, I’d be interested to learn. However, I’m pretty sure that the motivations of those classical sculptors was not “Hurr, violence is EPIC. You know what else is epic? TITS! Yeah! But you know what’s not epic? Any part of a woman that isn’t tits or crotch. Let’s put, yeah, some tits and a crotch in a string bikini, and like, cut everything else off. Gamers will eat that up. Oh man, I’m jizzing my pants already. Tits and extreme violence. We’re geniuses.” (Again, classics students, if there’s any evidence of the great Graeco-Roman sculptors having had this discussion, I will withdraw this point. Let me know.)
In summary: what the hell? After the first Dead Island game failed to quite live up to its own teaser trailer, do you just feel like you need to continue along this trajectory of disappointment? Were you hoping to hit rock bottom with today’s sick display in the hope that thereafter, the only way would be up? If that’s the case, I’d be tempted to applaud your shamelessness, had it not been such a swing and a miss.
Now, I’m a feminist, but I also don’t believe that every catastrophic misunderstanding of how to exploit the “desirability” of anything that vaguely resembles a woman’s body (usually one that conforms to narrow standards of Western beauty) is born of true misogyny.
I believe it’s quite possible that you “just didn’t think” of the implications and repercussions of showing a violently dismembered female torso and selling it as an ornament. For those of us – women and some men – who actually live in bodies like the one messily represented in your collector’s edition, it isn’t possible to “just not think” about the possibilities and the realities of violence.
Women are disproportionately more likely to be the victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse, both by people they know and by strangers. We are taught from childhood that our bodies are weaker, that if we don’t want to be attacked we have to dress demurely, to know our limits, to keep our mouths shut and to do as we’re told.
We live in a victim-blaming world that constantly promotes the idea that the only way to not be a victim is to not provoke those strong and burly menfolks, who cannot be held to account if they attack you because you were obviously “asking for it” if and when it happens. Although this line of reasoning was born of institutionalised misogyny, it doesn’t exactly paint men in the most flattering of lights either.
The discussion is thankfully broadening, so this is not an issue I’ll go deeper into here. But Deep Silver, consider yourselves called out. There’s a wealth of resources, information, blogs, zines, articles, and opinion pieces out there. You have no excuse for not educating yourselves about why what you have done is damaging and irresponsible.
Everybody fucks up sometimes when it comes to the way they think about or treat people less privileged than they are. What really proves whether or not they’re capable of meeting the criteria for being a decent human being, or a company with any integrity, is how they handle and learn from their fuckups. My advice? Apologise. Be humble. Be grateful to people who have called you out on this. Make the choice to educate yourselves. And for the love of all things zombie, don’t do it again.
I do, however, have one thing to be grateful to you for about this. Should I find myself romancing a fellow gamer in future, and we go back to their house, this statuette will be an immediate and unmistakable red flag that this person has questionable taste in games, décor and attitudes towards women. This information will be a clear indicator that this isn’t somebody I should be spending time with.
Perhaps your statue could replace the endless whining about “the friendzone” as the hallmark of somebody utterly clueless about human relationships and endlessly disrespectful to women. Then I would laud you for your achievement, because that shit is getting very, very tiresome.
Yours sincerely,
Mia Vee
]]>Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is the single most famous roleplaying game in the world, the route most people got into roleplaying, and the flagship of the hobby. So it’s a tragedy that the game is pushing away potential fans through artwork and even game text that is overwhelmingly focused on one customer demographic: white men.
Photo via Flickr user Megan Knight (http://www.flickr.com/photos/meganknight/5497474167/)
That’s a pretty provocative statement, right there. But I’m confident in making it, because the evidence is there for anyone who wants to see it. You could start by flipping open a copy of pretty much any D&D book and looking through the artwork. See how many women and people of colour you can find – and then see how many of them are half-dressed or made to look weak or submissive.
Actually, you don’t need to, because someone already did it for you. Anna Kreider reviewed the artwork in the D&D 4th edition books (specifically the Dungeon Master’s Guide, Players Handbook, Players Handbook 2 and the Adventurer’s Vault) and rated the images therein.
Kreider’s findings were striking – of the 40% or so of humans (and demi-humans) that were depicted as female, well over a third hit each of the measures she chose (being half-dressed or posed in a sexually suggestive way, for instance). Needless to say, the remaining 60% of images, the ones which were of men, tended to be wearing more clothes, in more active, non-sexual poses.
It gets better, because Chris Van Dyke had a look at D&D from the perspective of race. He was able to find only two examples of a non-white character in the core books of all four numbered editions of D&D. That means non-white folks are practically invisible in D&D.
Now, these findings are based on subjective judgements. That’s unavoidable, because things like “sexually suggestive” and “white” can often only be judged subjectively in artwork. You can go and judge for yourself if you doubt their conclusions. But I think if we’re honest, these results only confirm what most of us already knew from experience.
It isn’t the end of the world. I’ve enjoyed lots of pop culture replete with sexism. And after all, it’s only a fantasy! But then again, shouldn’t our fantasy worlds contain a richer variety of creatures than real life? And what does it say to potential new gamers if they can’t find a picture of someone like them anywhere in these books? Is D&D really just a game about white dudes slugging it out in a dungeon somewhere? I don’t think so.
OK, so what to do about it? I love roleplaying, and despite years of moaning about the mechanics, I still love D&D. The fact that it’s not exactly a beacon of gender and racial equality is, for me, an obstacle to be overcome rather than a sign I should give up on the game altogether.
It so happens that Wizards of the Coast are writing a new edition of D&D right now. That’s why I put together a petition calling on them to do better.
If you’ve read this far, maybe you agree with me – and if so, it would be great if you went and signed it, and better yet share it with your friends and encourage them to sign too.
The petition won’t change anything in itself. Wizards of the Coast could ignore it, and maybe they will. But if they can see that there are hundreds of gamers out there who want more than whitewash and chainmail bikinis, maybe they’ll respond. We owe it to the hobby to give them a clear message.
- Rabalias is a leftie, feminist Londoner and veteran roleplayer. He plays and GMs more than any normal person and less than he’d like to. He designs games in the time he has left over from playing them, and blogs about roleplaying at Black Armada. Rabalias has two cats and a lady companion who also roleplays, which is pretty sweet.
Borderlands 2, or ‘the Accidental-on-Purpose, not-so-secret, feminist game’
There really is a lot that can be said about BL2, and although I’m not going to say it all, I’ve picked up on some points I think are more relevant for BadRep. It isn’t, however, as hard as you might expect to find good, feminist-friendly things to say about BL2. In fact, it’s probably one of the best AAA titles in terms of its ability to give players something quite egalitarian as an overall experience.
Basic game-stuff first, though: keeping to form, Borderlands 2 is beautiful. Hand-painted landscapes, smooth animation, great character design, brilliant monsters and, like, a gazillion-billion guns and other loot items. It’s an FPS/RPG that combines the best of both game styles; you can recognise the colour-coded scale of awesomeness for your loot alongside the superb right-in-there combat mechanics. You can grind, farm, explore – whatever. It’s fun. A lot of fun.
It’s available on the three big platforms (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) and is big on multiplayer, though frankly it’s just as great solo. However, the one thing that annoys me with these big multi-platform titles and multiplayer is that we can’t interact with each other.
While I can play through Steam with one friend, my Xbox friend can’t join in and is left to languish alone with inferior loot. Not the fault of the game – more the big console companies trying to keep their corner of the market isolated – but it’s still a letdown.
Anyway, these things aside, why is this such a great egalitarian game? Put simply, it takes the piss. Out of everyone. On the surface of things, anyone is fair game, but(!) if you listen and observe, what I’ve noticed is that there’s a bit of a slant on the piss-takings, and it’s a positive one. I’ll give you some examples, but from here on out, beware the spoilers.
My two favourite NPCs are Ellie and Tina. They’re both great examples of powerful, self-confident, self-reliant women who aren’t your average pin-up character and who represent integral, practical and useful components of the story & mission.
They’re not decoration over in the corner of the room; they’re key to your success. Ellie is a mechanic (and a bit of a whizz at that) and she’s a larger woman. She loves it, and so does the game and its creators.
In the book that came with my special edition game-pack, Inside the Vault: The Art & Design of Borderlands 2, one character artist has said:
Ellie is one of my favorites… I like that we have embraced a variety of different character shapes.
Ellie’s dialogue is snappy, funny and generally awesome. Some examples include: “…they like skinny chicks ’cause they’s pussies!” and “My mom Moxxi always told me if I slimmed down, men’d pay me more mind. Shows what she knows – I got these boys bending over backwards…”.
And Tina. Tina is an early-teens girl who has been orphaned and likes to spend time having tea parties and, uh, exploding stuff. She’s the best explosives expert on the planet. Even the man leading the resistance defers to her.
Tina’s a confusing character to meet – her speech is a little discordant with her sweet appearance – but she nevertheless maintains BL2 hilarity while being totally badass.
Tina and Ellie are just two of the female NPCs (yup, there’s others!) but I gotta say, having played through, the women are very important in BL2. They’re powerful, proactive, and practical. They can fight, build, explode stuff and save the day – they are full and proper characters and they’re equal (if not more awesome) than their male counterparts.
Even a rather minor female NPC adds to the all-round feminine badassery by “accidentally” giving you coordinates to mortar a very misogynist fellow into tiny pieces.
What’s great is that while the game’s pleasing me by being fair with its female characters, it’s also very subtly passing on the message that misogyny and sexism isn’t cool and isn’t funny. Plenty of anti-egalitarian types rear their heads in the story, but they all get punished in-game. I think that’ll go a long way to dissuading that sort of behaviour in the audience – and hopefully show other developers that women can be awesome too.
Deadlight, or ‘the obligatory, festivity-themed title that’s actually pretty awesome’
Finally, in the spirit of all things spooky, there’s Deadlight, which recently ported across to Steam from Xbox Live Arcade (released on Steam 25/10/2012). Developed by Tequila Works alongside Microsoft Studios, Deadlight is a tense indie zombie-survival offering set in post-apocalyptic 1980s Seattle. You play Randall Wayne, who’s been separated from his wife and daughter, battling and evading the ‘shadows’ as he navigates a ruined, hazardous cityscape to reunite his family.
It’s a simple premise by all accounts, and we’ve certainly seen plenty of zombie themes in recent years across the entertainment spectrum – but don’t let that put you off.
Deadlight is a side-scroller with a dark, moody art style reminiscent of LIMBO . It doesn’t feel too distant from the survivalist title I Am Alive, which also requires you to focus on your stamina levels to avoid falling of buildings or running out of energy mid-fight. Similarly, you have limited weaponry and ammo (only what you can salvage on your way) so a lot of the time you have to make do without, meaning you can’t go full force forward shooting everything that moves. Nor can you charge about with an axe and splatter everything, because that runs your stamina down pretty sharpish.
Running, climbing and hiding are some of the best options, but there’s also environmental elements you can use to your advantage. Zombies aren’t smart: if you jump over a hole in the floor, they’ll just fall in it.
Without giving away too much, zombies aren’t your only problem in Deadlight, and not every moment is spent dashing about. It’s good fun and manages to keep up the tension without being so nerve-racking you log off (I’m looking at you, Amnesia… you too, Slender!).
At under a tenner full price (£9.99) it’s not bad value either, but if you’re quick there’s 15% off on Steam until the end of today (£8.49), so it’s worth checking out for a little Hallowe’en amusement. For those of you who prefer XBLA, it’s 1,200 Microsoft Points.
If you aren’t tickled by Deadlight, don’t forget, Thanksgiving is nigh approaching (22/11/12) so keep a look out in November for more sales all over the place from US-centric platforms and digital management systems!
]]>So I bring you a short and sweet look at Torchlight 2 and some interesting developments re: Booth Babes.
Torchlight 2 is an adventure RPG that has a slightly more cartoon-like presentation than big-budget rivals like Diablo III. Despite this, it’s been a huge success. It allows a lot more freedom than D3 does when levelling up your character with skill points, and there’s character points to spend where you want, not just automatically assigned. There’s a great variety of skills to play with to suit your play style and your character. I’m currently playing through as an Engineer, and although long-range weaponry is an option I’m sticking with my two-handed melee weapons because I much prefer bashing my way through enemies. That’s my example, but as I mentioned, I have yet to finish the game (or test the other classes out) so all I can do is advise you on what I know so far.
My favourite feature of the game is one’s pet. There’s more choice in this game than the first as to what species of pet you have – I picked a ferret for the novelty – and being able to dump items in Professor Furzl’s inventory when mine is full is like a gift from the gods of gaming. No longer shall you agonise over which rare item to pick up with only one space left in your backpack! Even better, you can send the pet to town with a bag full of junk, and he’ll return to you – wherever you are – with some lovely gold coins. Best feature ever.
The final plus-side I’ll bring for you today is Torchlight 2‘s price: £15/$20, which is half (or less) than what you’ll be paying for the big-budget, AAA+, giant developer titles (I think I paid £35 for Diablo 3 on release). The smaller price doesn’t give you any less enjoyment, I’ve found. It’s a great title with brilliant features, and comes in at a decent price.
Now, a brief word on Booth Babes
You probably know what I’m on about here; you go to a show or an expo, and the companies bring scantily clad women to sell their games. It’s insulting to the gamers and there’s a lot of bad press about how these women are treated, too. Well, as of next year’s show the Eurogamer Expo here in the UK will be formally enforcing a ban on booth babes. Frankly, I am glad, but I fear that those people who really don’t get the message will still try and sell their games with a little T&A. We will have to see what happens next year, but from my point of view, and that of others I’ve spoken to on this topic, it’s a step in the right direction!
Hopefully by the next post I’ll have completed at least one playthrough with Borderlands 2… which, as I suspected it would be, is a secret feminist game. More later!
]]>I’m also a bit of an amateur linguist; I look at the language people use and what it means to use it in different circumstances for no other reason than it interests me. I’ve been considering a discussion on the language of gaming with BadRep for some time now, and I think this would be a good first topic: the problem with ‘girl gamer’ as an identifier.
Obviously, everyone is welcome to self-describe however they see fit, but I’d just like it if people could think about this term a little bit before applying it to themselves or others.
Let’s think about ‘gamer’. We all recognise this as meaning ‘someone who plays games’ with the extended connotation nowadays that this means computer- & video-games (as opposed to card games or board games). There’s no other extended definition: it’s not exclusive to male players. A gamer is just a person.
Now: ‘girl’. I have a serious problem with the general use of this word when referring to adults, anyway. A girl or a boy is a child. Use of either when speaking of an adult is insulting, infantilising and diminutive. (I won’t even use the words boyfriend or girlfriend if I can avoid them). The problem with coupling ‘girl’ with ‘gamer’ is that it accentuates the misconception that the gamer in question isn’t mature enough or capable enough to play with the adults – thereby widening the void between male and female gamers and adding to the sexism that some experience.
~Insert disclaimer on how we all know that not all gamers are sexist. Furthermore, it’s not just male gamers who are sexist in gaming either.~
Using ‘girl gamer’ on one’s self and others is just adding fuel to the sexist contingent’s fire, because it’s a way of self-segregating, and not a very positive way at that. We rarely hear of other segregated terms – you don’t nearly as often see references to black gamers, white gamers, asian gamers, boy gamers, gay gamers, intergalactic invader gamers – at least, not in the same way. So why should we encourage the use of ‘girl gamer’ if at the same time we’re trying to fight against being segregated based on sex or gender?
Sure, if we’re actually talking about children, then by all means use ‘girl’, as long as we’re willing to use ‘boy’ alongside it. In the adult world, however, self-referral as a ‘girl’ plays into the patriarchal control mechanisms of English, which then eke their way into the gamer consciousness. Unfortunately, as English-speakers, we get to speak a very sexist language, historically used by the powerful to subjugate and cling to power. In the past, those powerful people have primarily been male, so there’s no surprise that the language of the realm has been adapted to keep others out of power and quash protest.
You can see this simply in the way people talk without even touching on gamers and gaming. How many times have you heard someone refer to male and female adults as ‘guys’ and ‘girls’? ‘Guy’ is widely accepted as referencing an adult man, whereas ‘girl’ is a word for a child, and puts the women in the inferior position.
Language is important and so is the use of language. Any linguist will tell you that, regardless of their sex or gender. If you pause to think about it, anybody can realise how important language is. The words we choose to use are always vital to building the way we want to describe, discuss, identify and progress. ‘Girl gamer’ is problematic. It’s used as a derogatory term by some in the community to imply that female gamers are separate and inept, and that they should be kept that way. Attempts at reclamation of the term are fraught with complications as no matter how positive the intention, it still perpetuates this segregation, infatilisation and dismissal from the realm of The Gamer.
We need to remember that within gaming, it’s the game that matters. Games are forms of escapism, so why should anything about us personally be important when we’re gaming? Yes, our identities come into play when we discuss development and progression of our preferred art form/entertainment source, but when we’re playing, they’re irrelevant. You don’t need to be male, female, trans*, gay, straight, bi, queer, old, young, white, black or anything else; when you game, you are a gamer. Anyone can game, and we have the potential to create and mould a fantastically inclusive community to wrap around our favourite hobby – we just need to take care with how we define ourselves and the language we use.
We are all gamers.That’s it.
]]>Unmechanical
Unmechanical is a sweet indie puzzler that is pretty darn gorgeous on the eyes too. It combines a variety of different puzzles (physics, logic, memory) on your quest for freedom through an underground labyrinth designed to feel at once organic and mechanical. You are a little blue helicopter thing that’s been abducted from the surface world and dropped into this maze. You can fly, and you have a tractor beam, but aside from bumping into things like a confused bee there’s not much else you can do. The way you navigate and solve puzzles relies on your interactions with stimuli around you, pulling levers and lifting rocks with your tractor beam to get the desired result. The puzzles range from the fairly familiar – like the remember-the-pattern puzzle involving four different coloured bulbs that make different noises – to the far-reaching and complicated. It’s great fun and a well-composed title – there’s a neat bit of thinking alongside the Aww-Factor -and it’s available through a variety of digital content platforms (Steam, Gog, Gamersgate & OnLive plus it’ll soon be coming to the AppStore (for those of you that use Apple products). Free demos are also out there on the aforementioned platforms or straight from the site.
Sometimes it can get lonely, as a little blue helicopter adrift in an underground maze…
Team Fortress: Mann vs Machine
Mann vs Machine is the new Co-op mode for Team Fortress 2 and yet another sizeable update/announcement coming from the Valve camp (could it be all a distraction to disguise a lacking of Half Life 3?). In keeping with TF2 Free to Play mantra, you can play these new Co-op maps on community servers in what is called “Boot Camp” – but, should you so desire to, you can also pay to enter “Mann Up Mode” in which you can get the chance to win rare items as a reward for completing missions and the Tour of Duty. Currently there’s only one Tour of Duty (“Steel Trap”) consisting of six missions; in Mann Up Mode you have to pay with a Tour of Duty Ticket for each mission, and these are 59p/99c each from the Mann Co Store.
Lured by the promise of rare items, I paid to get into Mann Up Mode and completed a Tour. Unlike my partner, who has now completed three Tours and hasn’t had any SuperCoolRares, I got a rare item at the end of my Tour. Woo! That’s not the best thing I want to talk about, though. The Co-op mode itself is pretty awesome, and a great addition to TF2, because for once you all have to work together, even if you aren’t Pro, with a bunch of people you have been allocated. It can create a really fun atmosphere if you get a good – and nice – team. The robot army you have to defeat presents a challenge if you don’t learn quickly how to coordinate and function as a team. Normal multiplayer doesn’t tend to require this much interaction with other humans (unless you’re a pre-formed team who know what they’re doing) and so the update has successfully added a new dimension to the experience of TF2. Needless to say, however, if you get a rubbish team with too many ill-informed egomaniacs, you won’t get far.
Unfortunately, Valve encountered some problems with this update. At times the servers die, you can’t access Multi-player or Co-op because the allocator has crashed, the store shuts and everyone gets grumpy. These issues seem to be being worked on so just have a little patience.
Other Stuff
I’ve also been playing Borderlands again, in preparation for Borderlands 2 (release date 17/09/12), but I was a bit disappointed by the ‘Girlfriend Mode’ gaffe. Borderlands is very fun, very entertaining and pretty in-yer-face; while it would be easy to criticise some of their portrayal of women in the game I think it’d also be fairly misguided. The game isn’t one to be taken seriously: it makes a mockery out of pretty much everything, so it’s a fair assumption that they’re probably poking fun when it comes to female characters too. I tell myself they’re doing it to make a point; satirise the gaming status quo, if you like.
So, with that in mind, I was disappointed to see someone from the developers being stupid enough to utter the phrase “Girlfriend Mode” in reference to the I’m New To First Person Shooters and Don’t Know What To Do mode. I admit, I take it personally when these things come up: I’ve played FPS games longer than my boyfriend (and a lot of male gamers I know) so it really does hack me off when it is assumed no female gamer ever likes FPS of their own volition. I like shooting things! What’s so weird about that?
Despite this foolishness, I haven’t cancelled my pre-order of Borderlands 2. Why? Well, there’s the reasons I’ve mentioned above, plus the fact there are more female characters – and they do look amazingly kickass. I want to get to know them. In turn, so will you, as that’s pretty much the only thing I expect to play in September – yay!
In contrast with the irritating ‘Girlfriend Mode’ story, I’d like to bring you a little Well Done story. Guild Wars 2 has gone live and ArenaNet have tried, it seems, to make the most welcoming community possible – and they’ve caught a lot of flack for it. They’ve been suspending people. Oh no! you say, why ever would they do that? Because they’re actually sticking to their own rules and upholding them for the benefit of the majority of gamers who don’t feel the need to be odious.
Let me explain. ArenaNet are upholding their Naming Policy on characters, which is pretty commendable (both the list and sticking to it), but some gamers felt the need to whine when they got banned. Admittedly, some banned-users’ names weren’t in contravention of the policy so ArenaNet took to Reddit and told them all (and in doing so shamed the perpetrators publicly) that their ban was due to their inappropriate chat, which I warn you isn’t nice. So, I say Well Done to ArenaNet for keeping horrible arsebags out of the community (even if the suspensions are only 72 hours) and trying to make Guild Wars 2 a welcoming and inclusive experience for all its gamers.
]]>First I’ll give you something of substance.
The posts I wrote last month (here and here) were somewhat laden with negativity – you could say legitimately – so I thought that for this offering I’d continue to talk about our gaming community and the relationship developers have with their audiences. Most importantly, I’d like to highlight a couple of examples of those who are getting it right. Or, at the very least – because no one can be perfect – who seem to be doing it better than others.
There are a lot of devs and publishers who have their plus points, and there are those that have their negatives. Most have both, but some are more memorable for either one of these polar options. For this post I’d like to look at the ones who are most famed for being a little bit awesome.
It being summer, those who know them will not be surprised that I’m going to bring up Valve. During the Meet the Pyro update for Team Fortress 2, they announced the Source Filmmaker, and as the Summer Sale began, they announced Greenlight.
I jumped on Filmmaker and have quite enjoyed playing with it. Here’s my one-and-only even-vaguely-close-to-finished short I made. The tutorials started off simply enough but after a few of them, ‘Bay’ (our guide) seems to dispense with the explaining-it-to-a-layperson format and just starts blurting jargon at you left, right and centre. Hence why I haven’t finished the tutorial video yet. (That and the fact I got distracted with my little Western-style showdown there.)
One other criticism at this point is that the Store Page (on Steam) for the Filmmaker has a list of minimum system requirements, but not all of these are accurate. The page lists that you need a minimum resolution of 1366 x 768, which I had, but this creates problems with displaying all the necessary functions of the tool. I had to bump up to the “suggested” 1920 x 1080 in order to get full functionality out of it. But, hey, it’s free, it’s pretty fun and is a great way to get involved in the community.
Now, Greenlight is not something I expect to benefit from – as I’m not a developer – but I will definitely be checking it out from a voter’s perspective. Here’s the basic premise: lots of games get submitted to Valve looking to be sold via Steam; they started to think maybe there was a better way of selecting games; having seen the success of the Workshop ratings system they thought of employing a similar thing for games; Greenlight allows developers to submit their games and be at the mercy of the community. In theory, if the community likes your game(s), you get high ratings/votes, and your game gets to go to Steam and be sold through the client.
This is a brilliant opportunity for a lot of smalltime and bedroom developers to get recognition for their work, to build a fanbase and maybe make some money out of their work. So, Steam users of BadRep, get behind this! When it arrives, let’s make sure we show Valve this is a good tool to help out the smalltimers.
Competition Time!
In celebration of a variety of things (Valve being awesome, “summer”, I’ve been at BR Towers over a year now…) I thought a little gaming giveaway would be nice. As BR is voluntary, this is me buying prizes for you guys, so given that I’m sure you’ll understand why this competition happens to follow the Steam Summer Sale.
Up for grabs:
- Torchlight – as mentioned June’s “…Playing” post.
- Bastion – also from June (see link above).
- LIMBO – recently part of Humble Bundle V (discussed here)
How to enter:
Leave a comment on this post (they do not automatically see the light of the internet so your details will only be seen by Team BadRep) and remember to include an email address linked to a Steam account or your Steam ID and which of the three games you’d prefer.
Early in August I’ll collect all the details, and using some funky random number generators to do some description of Name-out-of-the-Hat magic, I’ll then get in touch with winners to arrange the gifting of their new Steam game.
Simple as that, really. Good luck!
But if you’re feeling generous, could you spare a couple of minutes to complete this little survey?
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Repeat readers of my contributions will know that when we’re dealing with things that could potentially be spoilered, I tend to engage vagaries and nonspecifics to try and save people the pain. This won’t be any different, but just in case, here it is:
THE SPOILER WARNING.
There.
Boobs
Overall, Nolan hasn’t done too badly. Anne Hathaway seems a good choice, and there isn’t any in-yer-face cleavage or suspicious anti-gravity trickery.
Unlike in Arkham City.
+1 to Dark Knight Rises
Though she did have some cool moves, those boobs never seemed affected by the basic laws of physics.
Bums
Catwoman does have a black, skintight suit, but so does Batman – some compensation, I guess? – and there are only a couple of unfortunate shots of her bum as she rides the bat-bike. This is however; a) a big improvement on Arkham City‘s near constant sexy-butt-wiggling right in centre-camera, and b) offset by her being awesome on that bike.
+0.5 to Dark Knight Rises
Backstory
It’s important to remember that the game and the film encounter Selina/Catwoman at different points in her story and her relationship with Bruce/the Bat. Despite this, both mediums do quite well in demonstrating her motivations and character. The film, however, does marginally better as it manages to do this while advancing, generally, a bit more respectful portrayal of her as a woman.
+0.5 to Dark Knight Rises
Bitch
The most disappointing Catwoman scene of the whole thing. “You dumb bitch!” snarls the guy she’s fighting.“No-one’s ever accused me of being dumb before,” says she. Now, Selina ignoring the b-word could either be a) because she’s showing that its intended purpose (as an insult) doesn’t affect her, therefore suck it, or b) it’s such a commonplace piece of vocabulary she doesn’t see why it’s so excruciatingly wrong. I hope, and like to believe (based on Hathaway’s facial expression on-screen), that it’s the former. I was midway through writing this at the time, so I’m extremely disappointed it was there at all. Seeing as we’re comparing the movie to the game, however, having one instance of “bitch” in the whole film is 1000x better than hearing it every other second, like you do in Arkham City.
+0.5 to Dark Knight Rises
Boots
YES THEY’RE TOTALLY PRACTICAL.
Also in that “bitch” scene is the sudden appearance of Selina’s massive metal stilettos. Why?! No one can be that gymnastic in 5″ fucking heels. As you may note, this hacked me off considerably. The film tries to justify these ridiculous boots by having the inside of the heel sharpened like a serrated blade (check out the poster image, right) – but that seems to me like a poor token to try and throw off the fact they’re pure decoration and only there for prettifying Catwoman. She doesn’t need them! They aren’t practical, even if there’s a Swiss Army Knife in those heels, it’s just… no.
The second attempt to validate them comes as a baddie asks her if they hurt (implied: to walk in) to which she responds, “I don’t know, do they?” and kicks him with one. Fun retort, maybe, but they’re still unnecessary, and all the credibility the film gained by not focussing on her boobs is lost as they just use those heels to return her to unrealistic pin-up status. Game-Catwoman has similarly stupid shoes so there’s no betterment to be found here.
+0 to Dark Knight Rises
To sum up…
Nolan & Hathaway’s Catwoman does better than Arkham City‘s, but there remains a lot of space to improve. The age-old issue of practical footwear is the big one for me – after making such an effort to cover up cleavage, making the top half of her outfit much more practical, what exactly was the point in contradicting that by forcing her to don stilettos?
The ‘bitch’ thing also irked me quite a lot, but it was much better than in Arkham City, which was almost unplayable in places for the amount of churning rage brought about by being called a Catbitch so often (I mean, aside from the fact a female cat can be called a ‘molly’, ‘queen’ or ‘dam’ where a bitch is a female canine, of course).
Film Catwoman has the common sense to tuck the boobs away so they don’t lollop around as she beats up baddies
As I said, film-Catwoman’s body isn’t made nearly as much of a focal point as it is in the game. There’s no cleavage to ogle, lots of close-ups on her face, and when her body is in view, it’s often as hidden as Batman’s is by varying descriptions of black attire. Downfall is a bit a of bum-shot while she’s on the batbike, but this is nowhere near as big a negative point as Catwoman’s near-constant sexy wiggling in Arkham City.1
On the whole, film-Catwoman does much better than game-Catwoman for all the above reasons and many more I daren’t go into here for fear of lolspoilers. The film on the whole is pretty awesome, and the female characters are integral to the story: despite what the trailers may suggest, it is not simply Bat vs. Bane with a bit of eye candy on the side. I won’t say more because that’ll give too much away, but go see it and decide for yourselves. I enjoyed it immensely and will probably be seeing it again in the not-too-distant future.
- NB: Yes, I know about the portrayal of Catwoman in many of the comics and blah blah fidelity, but this is the 21st century, not 1940… so, surely, we can update her just a little to move with the times after 70+ years? And I don’t mean revealing more skin.
I’ve also had a bit of a TF2 revival this month, and that’s been fun, but what more can be said about TF2? There are no female characters (yet), although there are plenty of female gamers. I personally haven’t seen much SexistFail in chat but I know it does happen on some servers (you do, however, get a lot of childish insults and obscene ‘sprays’ on some servers). It’s a fun, team-based game that’s F2P (Free2Play), and Valve just hired an economist to help with the ever expanding Mannconomy and the inter-game economies as they grow further still. That’s interesting, right? Plus PYROMANIA has landed.
Bastion’s protag, “the Kid”, looking a bit moody.
To Bastion! This is a very curious indie title that offers a considerable amount of play-time compared to other indie offerings. It’s described as “…an action role-playing experience that redefines storytelling in games, with a reactive narrator who marks your every move”. I’ve heard similar claims before and ended up disappointed, but Bastion really delivers on this concept. Admittedly, the narrator’s voice does get on my nerves but it really does react to what you do. I’m sure there’s an inventory of quips and comments that are selected according to specific trigger events in the game but it’s still pretty cool.
The art is lovely and it isn’t just the simple damsel-in-distress format that I have encountered in a lot of other indie titles (LIMBO, Braid, for example), which is a nice change of pace. Although the main active characters are all male and the one female (so far) has been pretty passive, there’s still a good bit of joy to be taken from this game. It’s simple enough to grasp and you can make it harder in a variety of ways, so for gameplay and originality it gets a thumbs-up from me. Unfortunately, if you didn’t get lucky and snap up the Humble Bundle, Bastion as a standalone is £11.49 on Steam but is currently going for under £9 on Green Man Gaming (sort of an alternative to Steam).
The one last thing that I will mention about Bastion is the soundtrack, which is beautiful, and I bring this up because I also want to make a special note of Torchlight’s soundtrack. While playing Torchlight I am constantly finding myself with the urge to go and watch Sunshine again. This is because the generic background twinkling of Torchlight often hits some of the same chords or sequences that the piece ‘Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)’ features. Now, that piece (composed by John Murphy) makes me all soft and wibbly on the inside every time I hear it. As does watching Sunshine. But, alas, ’tis presently packed in a box somewhere.
Torchlight only features 3 classes and only one gender and set appearance for each… HEY LOOK more boobs that don’t require proper armour; that really is magic.
Music aside, Torchlight (yes, it’s 3 years old, sorry!) is a great little RPG offering. I have it because I pre-ordered Torchlight II via Steam and got Torchlight to play with in the meantime. Torchlight II is making some people in RPG land a bit excited after the numerous issues people have had with Diablo III. The first game is charming, easy to use and offers some features bigger RPGs haven’t, such as sending your pet to town to sell items from your backpack – meaning you’ll end up with a huge surplus of Town Portal Scrolls as you never need to use them! It does, regrettably, fall foul of the tediously standard female-armour-fail… do all these women seriously have bullet/arrow/sword/magic proof tits and navels? That’s the only negative so far, but this looks like it might be halfway rectified, at least, in Torchlight II: go and check out the character classes on their site (only one of the 4 female figures has cleavage showing!).
Now for something released in 2012; I know, incredible, right? Max Payne 3 has amazing visuals, even on low-spec PCs, and great mechanisms for exciting gameplay. It showcases the new Rockstar engine that will be used in next year’s Grand Theft Auto V; not a franchise I’m fond of, but with this engine, it’ll look stunning and run spectacularly. Max Payne 3 has kept fairly faithful to the originals and the basic ‘essence’ of Max, which is a relief for the old fans, but offers plenty for those new to the series.
Max Payne 3 has refined and capitalised on the Shootdodge mechanic of previous games
As an observer (not the sinister Fringe kind) to Max Payne it’s a little different to discuss than if I’d been the player. I was hoping to get my partner to contribute something here, but the house-moving saga has put paid to that plan. Max Payne does play with some damsel-in-distress themes and always has, but it also manages to twist them around. Originally, Max becomes an avenging angel, fallen-from-grace figure after his wife and infant daughter are murdered. He tears up NYC seeking revenge, but finds conspiracies abound, and then his moral compass takes over and he kills all the baddies.
In MP3, he’s given up being a cop and is playing the private security game. Although the game starts out with the feel that Max is off saving, and I quote, “fallen women” all over again, it swiftly changes tack in the brutal underworld of Brazil and Max, in the middle of an identity crisis, isn’t sure whether he’s a good guy, a bad guy, or a magical pixie putting the world to rights. I’m not sure if he ever really ‘finds himself’, but he shoots all the baddies and conquers another conspiracy in typical grim, noir style. The combat mechanics set this game apart and offer a truly varied way of kickin’ ass. As, I say, the graphics are gorgeous, the engine is shiny and the music is atmospheric (not to mention nostalgic) the whole way through.
Still pretty spry for an old guy: Ezio takes in the view of Constantinople.
Here I am, talking so much about music and mechanics, you thought I’d forgotten AC:Rev, didn’t you? Well, let me squeeze it in now. I have yet to complete the game because I’ve been purposefully dawdling in order to enjoy sandboxing in such a magnificent environment. Constantinople looks great, and you get to train up your Assassins right from the get-go, as well as the usual bits and pieces around the city with added stalkers who occasionally try to stab you right when you’re supposed to be tailing someone. The main storyline, so far, hasn’t been too riveting, which is a shame. I’m sure – after I’ve finished unpacking – that I’ll charge through the story and update you all next month.
What else can you expect in July’s end-of-month post? I’ve got a couple of new games to play with (actually new, i.e. newly released!) and I’m always keeping an eye out for things to play, but summer tends to be time for the blockbuster films until autumn brings gaming back into focus again…
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