So I was watching a little video roundup of some of the worst video games ever the other day and I came across some footage from a justifiably obscure little first-person-shooter called Operation Matriarchy.
The premise of this 2005 PC game, made in Russia, may as well have emerged from the fevered imagination of some Men’s Rights activist. Here’s how the promo blurb at MobyGames explains it, with the especially MRA-ish bits in bold:
In the mid-24th century, a virus of unknown origin wiped through the Velian civilization. It affected only the women, twisting them into brutal killing machines. They modified their bodies, enhancing them with cybernetic and bio-engineered parts. The male population was enslaved, used for genetic experiments and food. The previously democratic society became a matriarchal ant-colony; a hive-mind focused on one thing only – Domination. All-out war erupted between the Velians and their former allies, the Federation of Earth.
But fear not! For a brave Men’s Rights Activist space solider, Senior Sergeant Paul Armstrong of the Federation, stands up against these evil matriarchs and their robot friends when they attack his ship. Also, there are monsters.
So, basically, this game offers dudes an excuse to shoot scantily clad women for hours on end. Granted, some of these women are trying to shoot at the bold defenders of all things male, but others are unarmed, and are shot down long before they get close enough to do any harm, making the game ideal for anyone who fantasizes about shooting down wave after wave of women in fetishy gear.
You can see what I’m talking about in the gameplay video below.
This is all very reminiscent of the fantasies of “restorative, retaliatory” violence that seem to drive so many in the Men’s Rights movement, as I noted in my review of Michael Kimmel’s Angry White Men on the American Prospect.
And some men are very dedicated to these fantasies indeed. One odd little side-note to the history of Operation Matriarchy that seems to underscore that point. You see, the game was so incompetently made that when it first shipped it was basically broken. As Wikipedia explains:
Operation: Matriarchy, was released with what appeared to be damaged music files and incomplete sound files; all of the music files, except for the main menu track, simply play static, while several of the sound files are simply silence.
Also, it was ugly as shit.
But some enterprising fans were evidently so taken by the premise of the game that they decided to step up and fix the game themselves — so they could have the opportunity to, well, shoot down wave after wave of scantily clad women while listening to music at the same time, and without the graphics and the story being quite so completely awful.
Wikipedia again:
A pair of fan made mods that replace these files and made other enhancements to the game were released:
In August 2007, a fan-made music and sound enhancement mod was released, which added a complete in-game music score and enhanced sound effects. In addition, the story was rewritten.
In September 2009, a second fan-made mod appeared. This offered a complete (optional) translation to German and further changes to the sound effects and music. However, the largest changes were to the visuals, with enhanced lighting and improved versions of many textures and bump maps.
I don’t know if the video above is one made using the visually “enhanced” version of the game or not. All of the videos of the game I’ve seen — and there are many, many more on YouTube — look awful to me.
If you want to buy this monstrosity, you can get it on Amazon.
And the whole thing reminds me of a “choose your own adventure” “short story” I read in a magazine when I was a teenager (CYOA stuff was hugely popular in Bulgaria before the advent of computer games and proper pen-and-paper RPGs). It was military sci-fi, the author admitted that it was inspired by Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but apparently decided that shooting bugs is too dull and put “amazons”, an all-women race, as the enemy. I still don’t know if the author was playing it straight (he had a reputation of being an asshole), or just exploiting the attitudes of the target audience (teenage boys). Not that the actual reason matters much, in both cases it’s horrid, just in different ways.
Crap. I wrangled the blockquote monster, but the italics goblin got me. Someone fix that.
DUN
DUN
DUN
Sounds like something that Preggo Punchout guy would make.
(Massive TW for rape racism and a shitty game all in one):
Don’t forget Custards Revenge. Yeah. Fortunately that game also frequents “worst game ever” lists.
…
As an aside, thinking of the MDK series makes me hungry for atomic toast. Delicious!
I remember when MDK came out, but I never played it. For some reason I kept getting it confused with “Abuse” by cracked dot com/bungie. No idea why.
@Kittehs
Yeah, Klan titles tend to have names like “cyclops” and “dragon” (link = Wikipedia). I know a proper secret society is supposed to have a pompous and slightly fantastical vocabulary, but those titles and “kalendar” periods sound like they were made up by the writers of Welcome to Night Vale.
@Draconius
I think you mean “Custer’s”, and yes, those games are fucking vile.
Yeah, I really want to sympathize with them now .
RE: Kittehs
OH that was something in a Raw Story about a couple of Klan morons in Alabama: one of them called himself the Grand Cyclops.
The Klan were actually infamous for having really doofy names for people in the organization. (Dragon was a title there, too.) They were partly brought down by reporters dishing all these secrets, including the silly names, and mocking the hell out of them. Once the Klan stopped having respect (these are just a bunch of assholes with stupid names trying to act like they’re part of a creepy racist club!) their popularity diminished.
RE: awful games
What’s really frustrating to me is that it’s not hard to have female enemies that aren’t so freakin’ misogynist. I find myself thinking of Silent Hill 2, where you had those creepy awful nurses beating you with pipes. The final boss of the game is a woman! And yet, somehow, despite the scads of female enemies, it also had tons of male enemies, and at least one female ally character, depending on your interpretation of ‘ally.’
Ditto American McGee’s Alice, which has a couple female bosses. Then again, part of the reason the kids here love that game is because you play a knife-happy teenage girl, have a female ultimate boss, and there’s not a single instance of sexualization.
King’s Quest VII? Female player characters, and female final boss! Then again, that’s not a “kill everything that moves” game, either.
Ninjaed by emilygoddess, and also note, the Klan info I said is stuff I heard secondhand, so I’m quite possibly remembering it wrong or heard bad info. I mostly learned it because Superman was involved! (The old Superman comics actually had the Klan as mocking targets, IIRC.)
Yeah, auggziliary. I mean, a lot of the trolls we mock here seem to think that all feminists collectively shriek like ambulance sirens if we see a game with a male protagonist and a female villain. I have yet to hear any big feminst outcry over Silent Hill 2. (Though admittedly, I am WAY out of date on games.)
It’s not the what, it’s the HOW. Also, Silent Hill 2 has enough male and female characters that the entire gender load doesn’t just rest on one person. You have Maria, and Mary, and that little girl, and the creepy nurses. You have the PC, and that poor guy who kills dogs, the Doorman, and that ghost guy. Some of those characters help you, some of them want to kill you, and some of them change and some of them are something else altogether.
See! It’s NOT THAT HARD, guys. And you still get to have your blood-fueled horrorfest that you love.
I meant it in more of a “point and laugh” kind of way.
LBT: Don’t forget GlaDOS! (Female protagonist, female antagonist, not to mention the Freudian implications of the Portal gun…)
So let me get this straight, the game is bad because you kill mostly women? Even though the overwhelming majority of shooter games have you kill men pretty much exclusively?
However could I forget GlaDos?
@Emilygoddess
Oh, thank you! Apart from the lack of apostrophe, I’m also sorry that my typo was also incidentally ableist. Not to say that Custer wasn’t a big fool or anything…
RE: Portal.
I still need to play that; GlaDos sounds like a fun robot to be around!
Custard’s Revenge sounds like a really strange game about intestines …
[MRAsshole]
But Anita Sarkeesian made money complaining about this violence problem we don’t have! Waaaaa! But but but Anita Sarkeesian!
[/MRAsshole]
Perfect! 😀
@Charlotte No. The game is bad because it is a poorly made Doom skin based on a premise of all women becoming evil because reasons. The men and women who are killed in other games are usually depicted as part of an organization being fought. Even those games can be pretty damn racist though.
I wonder if Fact Finder/ Ideologue Review / Preggo Punchout has seen this one. It looks right up his ally.
Oops, ninja’d
Charlotte, try reading this paragraph again:
Get it?
You’re reading this in the context of a blog that mocks the constant, extreme misogyny of MRAs, remember. This game sounds like one of their fever-dreams.
RE: Charlotte
You realize that I just recently mentioned fucking Silent Hill 2, where you play a male character who beats nurses to death and the final boss is a woman, right?
Seriously, I’d say I ninjaed you, except I didn’t actually expect it to happen.
I’d say the mass effect and dragon age series are also both pretty good at having a solid amount of female enemies and allies.