While I don't believe Anita Sarkeesian - the pop culture blogger for Feminist Frequency - is a flawless crusader, I certainly don't believe she deserved the nastiness thrown at her. She fights a battle the deserves as much traction as it can, and that's female equality in video games. While I don't believe, necessarily, in the retiring of certain storytelling tropes - see Damsel in Distress, Damsel in the Fridge - as I believe they are important for some gamers to live out hero fantasies, I understand what she is saying and I support it.
Recently, at E3, there were more presentations for the Xbox One. The internet is still underwhelmed with this new beast for many reasons that aren't for this article. If you want to see some critique, it's literally all over the web. Have at. Sarkeesian had a problem with the fact that, once again, there were no games with female lead protagonists for this next generation of gaming. What followed was an onslaught so nasty it would make anyone cringe. Tweeters told her to "shut up", that she was a "cunt" and that "what did [she] expect, a cooking and cleaning game?" - are you fucking kidding me?
No, really, is this some elaborate ruse that I'm not in on? Because fuck.
She's right, you know. Sarkeesian's right. While we may have games with playable leads such as Lilith, Maya and Gaige (Borderlands, Borderlands 2), the unceremoniously named FemShep - short for Female Shepard - from the Mass Effect trilogy, Samus Aran from the Metroid series, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider and Sarah Kerrigan from Starcraft, who are unabashedly awesome characters in their own rights, there are by no means enough. Most of them are over-breasted, frighteningly-skinny-waisted ridiculous creations in games with titles like Wet, DoA Beach Volleyball and Lollipop Chainsaw. DoABV is an obvious fan service game that helps to perpetrate that gaming is a Boy's Only club and that ladies aren't welcome, while Wet assures us it's titled as such for the reference to an assassin doing 'wetwork' but let's face it, there's no way it would have a male protagonist, would it?
Now, there are some new ones coming out, like Mirror's Edge 2, Dreamfall Chapters, Beyond: Two Souls, Remember Me and Sanctum 2, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that the default video game hero isn't still a roguishly handsome, hulky, straight, white male with a bit of stubble and longish hair and a gruff voice. It's terrifying how many games' protagonists that represents. That does not take away that those games are good. I am not saying that. But we need to mix it up a little. Maybe the fact that we have a "default" hero at all is the problem.
Where are the gay heroes? The black heroes? Native Americans? Jews? I would sure love to play a gay, Jewish, black lady.
Mahalo.
Special thanks to Caitlin Welsh for reading this and sub-editing it so I didn't sound like (too much of) a jackass.
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
An Underrated Profession
One thing which is becoming more and more obvious to me is how underrated tradesmen are. Now, I'm not saying that they're all geniuses. Nor are they all good people. In fact most of them are thick, racist and strange - but mostly, kind-hearted. A weird mix? I know, trust me.
I started working for a construction/demolition company earlier this year and I got to know some of the guys on the job site. Mostly, in terms of 'physics' and job-orientated sciences, etc. they're all quite smart and really on intense ingenuity to make their jobs work. Now, I consider myself a privileged and highly educated person with at least average problem solving ability, but where I fall short by doing a task in a manner in which I ascertain as reasonable or intelligent, they will certainly find a fashion which is more effective, and at least twice as fast, "Why put in more effort than you have to?" is a common phrasing. Now, this may sound like the mediocre mass speaking, but realize that these people work for eight and a half hours a day doing physical labour - starting anywhere from 6 to 7 a.m. and going from anywhere between 3 and 6 p.m.
Also, it seems that these people - people that average, office-worker types consider debase, dirty and would hardly give them a sideways glance - are some of the kindest and most generous people I've met. They share food, money and advice. Most of them just want to be listened to. So I listen, and they talk. A change for me. They love, cry, lose and hate just like the rest of us, but maybe lack the poetic discourse that we so highly value in our society. They have worthwhile opinions on things, even though I may not agree with them all and generally consider some to be extreme, they are still eligible to be listened to.
It's also not like all of these people dreamed of becoming "tradies". They have their own ideas. Cops, singers, architects - they just lack the means, the money, but not necessarily the ambition. I've also had a weird experience working as a tradie. After eight and a half hours of hard work, sweating, cut, bruised, I walk home in the heat wearing my plaster, paint and grease covered t-shirt and jeans. As I do, I pass by some beautiful girls and, like a man, I check them out. As I pass, though, I feel what can only be described as "bad". Not because I looked, but because I realize that most of these girls wouldn't give me the time of day because of the clothes I'm wearing - to them, I'm a dumb tradie, not the semi-intellectual university student with artistic ambitions my friends know me as. It's a bad feeling.
Mahalo.
I started working for a construction/demolition company earlier this year and I got to know some of the guys on the job site. Mostly, in terms of 'physics' and job-orientated sciences, etc. they're all quite smart and really on intense ingenuity to make their jobs work. Now, I consider myself a privileged and highly educated person with at least average problem solving ability, but where I fall short by doing a task in a manner in which I ascertain as reasonable or intelligent, they will certainly find a fashion which is more effective, and at least twice as fast, "Why put in more effort than you have to?" is a common phrasing. Now, this may sound like the mediocre mass speaking, but realize that these people work for eight and a half hours a day doing physical labour - starting anywhere from 6 to 7 a.m. and going from anywhere between 3 and 6 p.m.
Also, it seems that these people - people that average, office-worker types consider debase, dirty and would hardly give them a sideways glance - are some of the kindest and most generous people I've met. They share food, money and advice. Most of them just want to be listened to. So I listen, and they talk. A change for me. They love, cry, lose and hate just like the rest of us, but maybe lack the poetic discourse that we so highly value in our society. They have worthwhile opinions on things, even though I may not agree with them all and generally consider some to be extreme, they are still eligible to be listened to.
It's also not like all of these people dreamed of becoming "tradies". They have their own ideas. Cops, singers, architects - they just lack the means, the money, but not necessarily the ambition. I've also had a weird experience working as a tradie. After eight and a half hours of hard work, sweating, cut, bruised, I walk home in the heat wearing my plaster, paint and grease covered t-shirt and jeans. As I do, I pass by some beautiful girls and, like a man, I check them out. As I pass, though, I feel what can only be described as "bad". Not because I looked, but because I realize that most of these girls wouldn't give me the time of day because of the clothes I'm wearing - to them, I'm a dumb tradie, not the semi-intellectual university student with artistic ambitions my friends know me as. It's a bad feeling.
Mahalo.
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