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!

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?

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…

Their executive producer was discussing the challenges this young Lara has to face, which includes violent beatings and an attempted rape, and how this would make players want “to protect her”.

The internet exploded with rage, and I got sucked up in it a bit too – it came after I’d spent hours reading and listening to accounts of female gamers being threatened with rape just because they dared to play socially.

A day later, Crystal Dynamics retracted the “attempted rape” comment and said it had been misunderstood.  Largely, I am inclined to agree, but not with the use of ‘attempted rape’; that bit wasn’t misunderstood.  Having seen the footage, that’s exactly what it is, although it is nowhere near as gruesome as much of the internet’s collective imagination has fathomed it to be.

The scene in question is part of their E3 trailer “Crossroads” (you need to be signed in to YouTube to view it as it has a content warning on it).  Naturally, I will say that it will be triggering for some – as could the paragraph after next (& other parts of the rest of this post) when I briefly describe what happens – the specific scene occurs at 2:15 on the vid.

This Tomb Raider is going to be set before the others, and is aiming to develop Lara’s character into the strong, kickass woman she is in those core, original games.  She is stranded on an island with her crew but there’s also an all-male gang who have been stranded on said island for much longer and have turned extremely savage.  They kill Lara’s friends as she watches/hears without being able to help them.  She tries to sneak away, but is found.

The guy who finds her runs his hand down her body; she knees him in the groin and tries to run; he grabs her and tries kissing her neck; she bites his ear and possibly rips some of it off; runs, gets her hands free, gets his gun; they wrestle over the gun… she shoots him in the face.

Doubtless the full scene in the game will be much longer than what we’ve seen here, but it is, at least, nothing so crass as hammering the X button on the controller to push him out from between her legs.  All clothes remain on, which doesn’t make it any less atrocious of course – but it could be much more graphic for the player.

I think where Crystal Dynamics have been misunderstood is with their intention, and perhaps they’ve misunderstood their audience when talking about this assault.

Discussing why it’s difficult to develop a female lead, Rosenberg said: “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’.  She’s definitely the hero but – you’re kind of like her helper. When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character.”

-from DigitalSpy

What I find most concerning/irksome/interesting is this idea that the player wants to protect Lara as opposed to be her. Having watched that trailer, I don’t want to be her helper and protect her, I want to jump into her skin and kick the daylights out of that guy.  Perhaps that’s just me.  What I think was ill-advised of Mr Rosenburg (the exec producer) was his move to discuss this damsel-in-distress notion at the same time as discussing the attempted rape.  It kinda oozes the idea that Lara is just an object for men: to abuse or to protect.

I suspect above all that Crystal Dynamics probably need to educate themselves on better phraseology and improve the content of their press interactions.  They don’t seem to mean that the assault and the assault alone turn her into the Lara we’re all familiar with: it’s the whole ordeal on this island.  I’m sure shooting a guy in the face not 5 inches from your own is going to be life changing, and on the flipside, for once a studio is at least trying to show the psychological effect of killing (as opposed to all the other games where you’re expected to believe the protag is completely unfazed by murder, despite being an office worker or somesuch beforehand).

But what about the inclusion of the attempted rape in the first place?

Good point.  After the initial furore, I wondered whether it could be a useful educational tool: to show the audience that rape is horrific, abhorrent and should never be permitted.  Depressingly, this is a message that doesn’t seem to have sunk in with some people in society.

Then I saw an interesting theory in a comment thread, in which one chap theorised that we could see this attempted rape symbolically.  Perhaps this potential rapist represents all the slavering, masturbatory porn-ifying by (mostly) male gamers of Lara in previous games; her escape could represent the escape from this pin-up mentality the franchise has been plagued with.  I thought that was an intriguing hypothesis at the very least.

I think their move to include this assault is bold and their intention – presumably to explore the psychological transformation of such a famous female lead – is sorely needed, because we don’t have many fully developed standalone female characters (i.e. that aren’t just an option opposite a male version).  Above all, however, they probably need to be able to express themselves in a much clearer fashion and, preferably, drop this ‘the player just wants to protect her’ nonsense.

If, when it is released, we discover this attempted rape has just been used to crush her identity as a strong, independent female character, to put her back in her place as a subjugated product of patriarchal desires, then I will stand corrected.  For now, I think we should step back and see where this goes.

Overall, however, I fear Lara will never be free of the patriarchy that created her – in both her story and her creation as a game character. At least they seem to have designed her wearing a bra this time around.

Wider Reading:

• ‘Lara Croft and rape stories: breaking down the bitch’ – Laurie Penny, New Statesman
• ‘Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Especially when you’re made out of pixels’ – Charlie Brooker, The Guardian
• ‘Tomb Raider: why play up to the Madonna/whore dichotomy?’ – Tom Mendelsohn, The Independent (blogs)
• ‘Tomb Raider creators say “rape” is not a word in their vocabulary’ – Kotaku Australia
• ‘Ultraviolence in videogames: a defence’ – Oliver Cragg, The Independent (blogs)
• ‘Video games and the Male Gaze – are we men or boys?’ – Brandon Sheffield, Gamasutra

Humble Bundle V

The Humble Bundle is a nice little concept: a collection of indie titles for you to pay what you want for and then decide how much of that fee goes to a) the developers, b) Humble Bundle themselves, or c) charity.

I got it on the first day (and, sorry, but by the time this post goes live I suspect the window will have closed) so I only got the first five games that were included.  Since then there’ve been three more titles added if you paid over the average.  These were added in light of this bundle making over $1.8 million in the first 15 hours.

Included in the Bundle were:

• Psychonauts
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• LIMBO
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP
• Bastion*
• Braid*+
• Lone Survivor*+
• Super Meat Boy*+

* denotes games that were unlocked if you paid over the average; + denotes those titles added at a later stage.

Like I say, I only got the first five, but I’m not too sore as I already have Braid (not a big fan) and I’m not overly interested in the other two.  I’m not going to discuss the games themselves here because that’ll be coming in a “Playing…” post later on.

I thought it would be nice show you that sometimes, somewhere out there, someone does something good.  A lot of money has been raised for charity through this: not least through Big Names of Gaming competing to be the top contributors (Notch and HumbleBrony Bundle have been vying for the top spot: when I bought the bundle they were dueling around the $3000 mark, now they’re on $12,345.67 and £11,111.11 respectively).

Taken from Humblebundle.com at 10:40am GMT, 13/06/2012

Of course, as the popularity of indie games continues to rise, it’s nice to be able to have the choice to decide how much of your cash goes to the developers as opposed to not really knowing for sure how much just gets kept by various third parties.

Sigh, Misogyny

From that nice little snippet of camaraderie, I regret that I must now depress the tone somewhat and talk about InternetFail, and more specifically, how it’s been discussed recently with regard to the world of gaming.

At the start of June BBC News Magazine ran an article highlighting the constant, abhorrent abuse that female gamers get in online play: here.  It mostly focusses on the experiences of one Wisconsin gamer called Jenny, of the CoD ilk, and the abuse she gets daily on voice chats.  She records them and uploads them to her website, Not in the Kitchen Anymore, and I gotta say, she handles this shit pretty well but the point is she shouldn’t have to.  Especially, as the article points out, 42% of US gamers are women, and adult women outnumber teenage boys quite considerably.

There’s also a BBC World Service programme based on her experiences and those of other female gamers.  If you read the article or listen to the programme you might hear some charming young fellows claiming “freedom of speech”, but here’s a point of interest for any such time someone tries to use this smokescreen of an excuse if you call them out as misogynists (or racists, homophobes, etc… the list, depressingly, goes on).  In both American and European (incl. British) law the “freedom of speech” excuse doesn’t fly.

Why’s that?  Well, if you actually read the laws you’ll see there are exclusions to what the precious First Amendment protects: look here.  What’s that?  Obscenity?  Threats?  Defamation?  Intentional infliction of emotional distress?  They’re all excluded from protection by the First Amendment?  OHGAWDNO!  It’s like living in a world where people treat each other with respect!  How horrible.

And, Euro law?  Just for starters you can consult Article 10 and Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights.  Yeah.  Human rights.  But be careful out there: trying to educate these fools in the error of their ways and the legal flaws in their defence might offend them.  The fact you’ve done some learnings (that aren’t centred around how to make tasty lunchtime treats) is clearly a work of pure evil!

Although Jenny of Wisconsin might be able to deal with it, there are a lot of people out there who can’t or don’t want to.  It takes a lot of effort, seriously.  I’m an antisocial gamer – we know this – I like playing games on my own, I hate chat and I hate voice-chats even more.  I don’t want to listen to somebody’s inane drivel while I shoot stuff, regardless of the content.  I ditched the one MMO I played a long time ago because of the racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic crap that occurred on a daily basis.  Not directed at me, just there – and no one really ever objected (if you did, you got the abuse turned on you).

My solution is not one that everyone can adopt.  I just avoid the social elements, even if it’s online team-based play like TF2, and I refuse to disclose any information about myself.  Generally, I am the wallpaper: I keep quiet and ignore chat.  This is mostly because I’m a misanthrope and do not care for being social, but partly it’s also because I know that a lot of people on chat are going to be dicks.  I just don’t understand why banter has to be offensive, even if it doesn’t go near questions of gender.

Taken from Kickstarter.com at 11:30am GMT, on 13/06/2012

But back to the specific point of misogyny in the gamingverse.  I mentioned the KickStarter from Feminist Frequency in May’s “Playing…” post and the woman behind it, Anita Sarkeesian, has been yet another figurehead victim of abuse.  She put her head over that parapet, so to speak, and has had it all but shot to smithereens.  Gladly, however, this isn’t going to stop her making those videos, nor has it stopped people pledging (when I last checked, she was on $87,000+ with 68 hours left to go).  But this sort of thing does make me want to adopt a superhero persona, fly all over the world, and stand in defence of these women.

I was going to say “brave women” just ther, but that, to me, gives too much credit to these scum-sucking parasites of the internet.  It shouldn’t have to be brave just to identify as female and like games.  FFS.

At least – if we’re to take anything positive away from this – this all-too-common abuse is being given more and more of a public face.  A site that BBC article mentions is Fat,  Ugly or Slutty (because that’s pretty much all you are if you’re a female gamer, apparently) where you can upload screengrabs of sexist abuse/harrasment.  So, if you can catch the abuse you receive, or see, in a screen grab or a recording, make it known!

I will try not to be too exclusive in my content here, so I’ll try to avoid anything that you won’t understand unless you’ve played the game, and I’ll be focussing on the game through a feminist lens. That’s what we’re trying to do over here, after all, right? One last thing to say is… SPOILERS.

"Through me, into the city full of woe; through me, the message of eternal pain; through me, the passage where the lost souls go." Yep, that's what happens if you don't heed the warning of the Spoiler Klaxon... "all hope abandon, ye who go through me."

Enough with the dramatics! To the game!

Technology, mechanics & gameplay

I thought I’d get this out of the way as I reckon there’s very little feminist critique one can offer on this side of things. I played on a PC, so some of my concerns won’t be shared with console gamers, most obviously the power required in your machine to play the game. As a PC gamer, you have keep your technology up to speed with new titles, but console versions come as-is to the standardised specifications of the machines. My computer isn’t the fastest, or the most hardworking – it’s actually just a dual-core with one graphics card, several series behind the most recent, not for lack of will but for lack of cash. Keeping a PC up to date is expensive.

My reason for telling you that is so I can tell you how well my absolutely-not-top-of-the-range PC handled a brand new, heavy-hitting title like Mass Effect 3. “Not too bad” is the answer. At times, faces looked a mite too angular, but I had no problems running the game at all.

The game mechanics are almost the same as the were in the previous instalment, and although they can be a bit frustrating to get used to for the first time, they work well within the context of the game. I have heard complaints on the overuse of the spacebar – that it is assigned to far too many actions – and although I had no issues with it, my partner did, so I suspect it’s a personally variable thing.

Combat has been streamlined slightly since Mass Effect 2, and you still have to learn how to fight with each different class you can choose for Shepard. For example, I played through first as an Adept, who enjoys a lot of long-range Biotic powers, so you don’t always need to leave cover and use guns; then I started in a different class and had problems adapting to the new style.

Some Femi-Relevant Content

As much as I could, I shouldn’t spend my entire word count talking about mechanics and gameplay here, so we’ll move on. While playing the game I had a little list of things to look out for that I could critique or criticise, and honestly, there wasn’t much I could pick out. You don’t get treated differently if you’re a male or a female character. The only notable difference I found was in a conversation with the female Krogan, Eve/Bakara, in which she says “we’ll show these men how to do things!” (or similar) if you’re a ‘FemShep’, but not if you’re male.

The only sexism we see comes from the Krogans; Urdnot Wreav claims that Eve is his and that she is obliged to father all his children as he rescued her. Eve, however, is having none of it. That’s good. Eve is awesome.

One issue many players had with Mass Effect 2 was the fact that if you wanted the ‘Romance’ achievement you had to initiate a heterosexual relationship. This has been addressed – you can now gain the ‘Paramour’ achievement through any (albeit still sexual) relationship. There are a more visibly present non-hetero characters too: at one point you console your shuttle pilot who is upset over the death of his husband. It’s never shown in a “LOOK OVER HERE! I’M GAY! HAPPY NOW?!” manner; it’s much more realistically handled in that a character may mention something that discloses their orientation, but ultimately all questions of the personal kind are of little consequence in the face of the impending problem of Total Annihilation Of All Life In The Universe.

I was very happy not to have any feminist niggles or femirage over the game – perhaps that does somewhat diminish my options for what to write for this, a feminist, blog! The best thing that I can say is that it is quite feminist-friendly and the only things I could suggest improving would be the inclusion of non-binary genders and equal cutscenes-for-sex with all races/species (I got no sexy cutscene for my (F)Human-(M)Turian coupling, but one trailer shows a (M)Human-(F)Human sexy cutscene).

The Ending

Before I conclude, I was content and pleased with the ending. Apparently, I may be in a minority there. My partner, for example, hated it. Basically – EPIC SPOILERS, look away now if you don’t want this detail! – pretty much everyone dies. BioWare went to town on the deus ex machina mechanism here. Yes, Shepard pretty much dies no matter what you do.

I was happy with that. I thought BioWare were very brave to stick behind such a potentially contentious ending, and they enacted it beautifully. Many on the interwebs were in uproar, and appeared to successfully bully BioWare into announcing that they’ll be producing alternative endings. I suppose it was difficult to respond to fan requests for a FemShep trailer, then stonewall on the Ending Issue, but it would’ve been nice if they’d held their ground and kept a smidge of artistic integrity.

But in some ways, it turns out now, they did. As the ‘Extended Cut DLC’ has been announced, BioWare has made a new statement that clarifies this will not be “…a re-imagining of the ending or a new ending.” HOORAY!

I fear the pressure of BioWare’s pact with the evil giant EA was involved in their decision to cave, however partially: after all, EA like money, and undoubtedly they can see the potential for Extra Content that a fervent fanbase will definitely pay for.

The Verdict

If we ignore the Ending Issue, I’ll give it a solid 9/10. I’d still give it that with the ending, because I liked it, but I understand how others might knock it down because of it, which is a shame – it’s a great, well-constructed and well-told story that happens to be a game.

I predict that this will not be the end of Mass Effect, as BioWare have stated, but it probably should be. Shepard died and saved the universe; that’s a good ending. The last thing you see and hear before the credits roll is a young child asking their grandfather if they can have ‘one more story’ about ‘The Shepard’. And Grandfather says that it’s getting late, but agrees to tell one more story…

Just one more story...

First off: the games.  Obviously there’s Mass Effect 3, but as I’ve mentioned before, there will be a full post dedicated to that shortly.  For now, though, I’ll say that it’s a great addition to anyone’s collection: well-constructed story, superb combat mechanics, good graphics and generally an absorbing and engaging universe.  The ending(s) have caused issues among some fans of the franchise, and although I shan’t say here what they were or why that is, I’ll just say that I had no problem with the way it ended.

Better then that we talk about the Kinect.  I got one at the beginning of March and a few little games to go along with it.  Kinect Adventures is the title that comes with every single sensor (if you’re buying second-hand, be sure to check!) and it is a simple bit of fun.  You use your body to complete little challenges on the screen, collect points and progress through various ranks of adventurer.  It’s a little bit addictive when you first get the Kinect as it’s all very new and novel and amazing, but in the long run it would probably hold the attention of younger gamers or be best suited to family-centred gaming sessions.

I also got Kinect Sports (the first game), which proved much more popular between my partner and I.  You get the option to partake in six different events: Football (Soccer), Bowling (10-pin), Table Tennis, Track & Field (which contains six events in itself), Boxing and Beach Volleyball.  Again, this is a great bit of fun and you can use it for a spot of exercise as well.  You can play against four levels of computer opponent, as well as playing against your friends (or with them) online or in the same room.  You garner points and progress towards Champion status, but really it’s all about the amusement and the potential for collective gaming.

There are another two Kinect games knocking about my living room, but I didn’t want to talk about them as they don’t have the rather pleasing feature I’m about to detail.  The Kinect games that use your Xbox Avatar in-game (especially in Sports) are also populated with lots of other Avatar people as your opponents or team-mates.  Now, this may not sound altogether too ground-breaking or interesting, but for me it was quite nice to see a fairly equal mix of – albeit randomly generated – Avatars of all descriptions.  In simpler terms, they aren’t all male.  Even on team sports that are traditionally ‘single sex’ sports (like football) you have men and women of all ages charging about the pitch with you.  I thought that was a nice little nod – particularly for games that will have a lot of younger, more impressionable gamers – just to say “Hey, women exist too!”.

Now for the depressing stuff.  The company Game went belly-up in March and already my local Gamestation (part of the group) has been stripped bare and locked up tight, never to be set foot in again.  I admit I rarely bought anything from Game or Gamestation, but as the last notable games-only high street chain, it’s sad to see it fail.  As a PC gamer at heart, I felt the group had forgotten about me over the years as it focused more on console gamers – and that’s fair enough if that’s where the money is – but apparently that didn’t bring in enough revenue to save them.

Things were not helped when EA refused to supply the group with copies of Mass Effect 3 on credit and they had to give everyone who had pre-ordered their money back.  Even a few days before they closed up shop, the Gamestation I usually wander around was begging for trade-ins of the title as not a single brand new copy was in sight.  I suspect this may have been the last straw for many customers, but the advent of the internet worked its evil glory too: after all, if you can buy a two-week-old title for £15 on Amazon when it remains £30+ in a high street store, why would you go that extra mile and pay more?

It is, nevertheless, a little saddening to see the group suffer the same fate as many other high street names.  Should they remain, in one form or another, I hope they can take a more competitive stance on the price war with the internet and stop pricing themselves out of the market. Game’s statement has more detail on the immediate results of their entry into administration.

One final word…

Coincidentally, a couple of days before Game was declared a financial black hole, my partner bought himself Skate 2.  You may remember January’s Gamer Diary, where I mentioned watching him play Skate and lamented that there were zero lady-boarders.  Well, in the second instalment, there are girls flying around on boards, and you can also choose to be one.  Super!  Also, the mechanics and graphics are much improved.  It has, however, to me been dubbed ‘Skate 2 AKA “Shut up, Reda!”’.  Don’t worry if you don’t know who Reda is; all you need to know is he talks too much.

Next Time

I’ll be honest: I don’t yet know what the remainder of April will bring for me.  Never fear!  I will locate juicy content for you and in the meantime you’ll soon be able to read all about what I made of ME3 at last.

The Trailers

You may remember that when I first burst onto the pages of BadRep I was talking about RPG advertising and the distinct lack of women in these trailers, despite the games’ built-in capability for you to play as a female protagonist. I mentioned Mass Effect advertisements, and no sooner had I criticised them than they announced they’d make a ‘FemShep’ trailer and let the fans vote on what she’d look like. So I thought it’d only be right to address the marketing of ME3 before I tell you all about the game itself.

The first glimpses we saw of Mass Effect 3 didn’t show a female Shepard; actually, they barely showed a male Shepard either (but he was still there) – we were simply teased with the knowledge that the war was coming to Earth. Notably, the voiceover doesn’t say “if he doesn’t bring help” but just says “Shepard” to avoid any issue of gender. But then you see male Shepard… so, er, kinda redundant there.

When they first showed everyone FemShep, to me, the trailer didn’t have the same production quality that it could have had, but they made this up with later offerings, such as those below.

Next we have the Take Earth Back pair of trailers; one male and one female. These two did good. They’re the same, just with a different version of Shepard in each. There’s no making one look cooler, or more badass, than the other, and that’s great. The pity is, though, that TV channels didn’t really seem to pick up FemShep’s version – I only ever saw the male version being broadcast.

Then we get to launch day and they start pushing the ‘Launch Trailer’, and as far as I can discover, there’s only one version: Male Shepard (or BroShep)’s version. This might not be too bad; there’s a lot of female characters shown – Ashley, Liara, Jack, Miranda etc – and that’s more than a lot of games can say at the moment. The thing that ruins it, though, is the (totally unnecessary) sex snapshot of Shepard bedding Ashley, who is the woman fighting beside you in the T.E.B. trailers I linked above.

Of course, it could be argued that having that in the trailer shows how you can romance your team-mates if you so desire and that it’s an all-inclusive RPG experience. But it really isn’t necessary and is completely discordant with the rest of the trailer.

The Packaging

Here I can only talk about my box when it arrived, so there may have been people receiving differently presented games. When my game arrived the sleeve insert (that paper thing that slips under the plastic on the box) was displaying a proud BroShep on the front and back. I was a bit disappointed as I’ve never really thought much about Template BroShep’s appearance as part of my gaming experience.

It wasn’t until I had to insert Disc 2 while loading the game that I discovered FemShep hiding underneath the disc! The cover is reversible, so you can have FemShep on the front and on the back (though the screenshot inserts are still BroShep) if you take the insert out and flip it around. Obviously, I did this immediately so I didn’t have to look at his smug face anymore. The reversibility is great, but you have to realise it’s available and then you have to do it yourself.

Have they done well, then?

I think they have, but there’s a bit of improving yet to do – not for Mass Effect, as the trilogy is now complete, but for other titles following in its footsteps.

The male interpretation of an either/or, binary choice, RPG protagonist is still the default in marketing, it seems. There may well be more male gamers buying these titles, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want to see all a game can offer.

I’m really very pleased that the marketing strategy has improved – at least for this game – and I’m hoping it’ll continue to do so for other releases this year and in the future. It is a real treat to see FemShep kicking some bottoms in that Take Earth Back trailer, and I hope we’ll see lots more awesome female protagonists to come.

—

As a side note: for those of you waiting to see a review, it’s coming – I’m just being extra thorough. And yes, I will talk about that ending and the ensuing furore.

Dear Esther's artwork is deeply beautiful and will make you feel things

Dear Esther

Dear Esther was released through the Steam platform on February 14th this year as a standalone offering via The Chinese Room. This is not, however, the first incarnation of the innovative story-led first person; it began life four years ago as a mod for Half Life 2, and for its independent release it was supported by The Indie Fund, who recouped their investment within five and a half hours of the game going on sale (selling over 16,000 copies in the first 24 hours). Now, that’s pretty impressive for an extremely minimalist game in a market full of guns, cars, swords and big bad monsters!

It’s £6.99 here in the UK, which means it’ll be floating somewhere around the $10/10€ mark for other regions, but bear in mind it only has full audio support in English. As it was plastered all around Steam and was something new, interesting and completely different, I thought I’d give it a go – if nothing else I’d have a new release to tell you all about for once! My first attempted playthrough ended rather swiftly, late at night, after the game decided it didn’t want to listen to my keyboard commands.

Never fear, I came back to it the next day after I’d had some sleep and my computer had been given a chance to think about what it had done. It worked fine the second time around. You start off by a lighthouse on an island somewhere in the Hebrides; the (male) voiceover begins to read excerpts from a letter (or letters), addressed to “Esther”.

As you walk around the island, trying to find your way, he reads different excerpts at different points in the game. I’d go into much more detail, but as I finished the whole sequence in just over an hour, I wouldn’t want to spoil things for anyone yet to play it by discussing my theories. Instead, I’ll tell you about the atmosphere and the artwork, both of which are superb. You’re alone on a bleak island, battered by wind with no person or animal in sight save the odd seagull, and it is a sadly beautiful world.

I found myself a little unnerved walking around, especially when I spotted a shadowy figure in the distance who, when I approached, disappeared (this happens twice). I think, in retrospect, that I was mostly spooked because I’d watched The Woman in Black the day before and was still half-expecting some ghoulish face to pop up and scream at me.

However, personally, I found Dear Esther a little underwhelming considering the hype it was garnering; I understand every compliment given to it, but equally those amazing, clever, innovative bits are altogether a bit too brief, especially at £6.99 – about 10 minutes per £1 in my case. The art is great, the story is great (if a little too easily guessed), the concept is great and it is a brilliant injection of something different into the market. It just would’ve been better if the ‘value for money’ factor was improved.

Apologies for the lack of feminist critique, but the only thing that it could be faulted on there is the age-old “Why is it always a bloke protagonist?”. Esther, obviously, is hugely important to the entire game so although she is absent, she is constantly present as she is who you’re talking to – she is the one you love. Still, indie game + male protagonist = not all that innovative after all.

It’s a good game if you want to have some feelings, think a bit and look at pretty Scottish scenery while under no obligation to chase, fight or challenge anything. My only advice would be to make sure you definitely don’t want to use that £7 on something that might last you a bit longer.

Other Bits & Bobs

Apart from the above, I haven’t been up to much with the sole exception being Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection on PSP. Yep, I dusted off the ol’ PSP and have been button bashing during my lunch breaks on my Saturday shifts. I’ve also discovered I’ve lost all my wicked-sick skills and keep getting K.O.’d by rubbish opponents. It’s fun for portable fight-based gaming and there’s a bowling minigame too. It features the standard Arcade and Story modes as well as the potential to PvP online. As it’s a) old and b) PSP (now replaced by the Vita) it is pretty cheap to buy – best bet is probably eBay though – and presents a standard bit of amusement, providing you can ignore the panty-flashing from almost every single female fighter.

Next Month

On March 9th I will have a copy of Mass Effect 3 in my hands, so you can expect a review on that once I’ve powered through it, and hopefully I’ll be able to say it’s improved on some of the downfalls of the last game (which I explored many moons ago, elsewhere in the interwerlds). I will find other fun things to play and gabble about for you though, as I know not everyone cares about ME3.