Welcome to the first installment of “what the hell is wrong with people, I mean really,what the hell Saturday.”
Today we’re going to look at a couple of recent controversies in the world of gaming. And by “controversies” I mean “women daring to get involved in the gaming industry and getting harassed by misogynistic assholes.”
First up, let’s look at the tale of a woman who’s now facing an angry internet mob because she drew a picture of the video game character Mega Man … as a woman.
A little backstory: The video game makers Comcept recently raised roughly a million bucks on Kickstarter to fund a game intended as a sort of sequel, at least in spirit, to the old Mega Man games. And they hired a woman named Dina Abou Kara as a community manager to handle their forums and other social media.
There was just one little problem: when the folks at Comcept announced her hiring, they also posted a picture she’d drawn of Mega Man, imagined as a woman. Aghast at the very notion of such a gender switch — though Dina wasn’t even involved in the actual making of the new game — the “community” collectively lost its shit.
As Ian Miles Cheong notes on Gameran,
Finding fault with her presentation, these persons decided to pry into Dina’s personal life by combing through her Twitter account for other transgressions against the human race, and found that she had written tweets supportive of feminism and linked to one of Anita Sarkeesian’s videos. …
These vocal individuals went so far as to produce a video “calling out” Dina’s past with “dirt” on her—because sympathising with the feminist cause is indeed enough to demonize someone according to these people. The vocal, well informed fans have since been calling for her resignation from the developer. At this point, these individuals have flooded the game’s development forums, and are trying to hold the game hostage by asking for refunds.
One user, a Mr. Nicholas Day, wrote: “This is a bad idea guys. I don’t want any anita sarkeesian feminism all up in my megaman reboot. I don’t want a sjw [social justice warrior] monitoring the forum, deciding who has good opinions and who has bad ones.”
So, yeah.
And while we’re speaking of douchey gamer assholery, there’s a whole other tale of harassment developing. An indie game developer named Zoë Quinn made a game called Depression Quest, and, a couple of days ago, she posted it to Valve’s Greenlight service, hoping that Valve would pick it up and sell it.
Instead, angry dudes attacked her as a “cunt” and an “attention whore” who could never truly understand depression because “all females are sluts and have no right to be depressed.” And then, she says, some dude or dudes started making obscene phone calls to her.
Here’s her eloquent response:
I'm not going anywhere, assholes. I hope my games about love & empathy & vulnerability piss you off.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) December 12, 2013
Check her Twitter for updates and more examples of the shit she’s been dealing with. FOR MAKING A GAME ABOUT DEPRESSION WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BEING A WOMAN.
The Mary Sue has more about both stories.
I like to watch my boys now play this one PS3 game called The Last of Us .Seriously its like watching a movie. I just make some popcorn sit back and watch the action .LOL!
I remember reading an article somewhere about how video games got gendered, that I really wish I could find again. The gist of it was that the very first generation of video games, your Commodore 64s and Atari 2600s, weren’t really marketed to any particular age bracket or gender – they were sold through toy channels and advertisements depicted both boys and girls playing them. Then the great game market crash of 1983 happened, and when Nintendo started the second generation of home video games with the NES/Famicom, they marketed specifically to young boys.
AHA Here it is: http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed
*Googles Depression Quest*
I am so playing the shit out of this game.
@ patagonianhorsesnake
“wait, it was men who hunted the mammoths, and dragons attack mammoths in skyrim… that means dragons are men! and you’re supposed to kill all the dragons in that game… skyrim is misandry!”
Reminds me of a mod I saw on the Nexus that eliminates the boob plate from female armor, making it more realistic, immersive, but less…. sexy. That was the primary objection. The mod actually made it to the files of the month category, so I feel good about that, but the mod author had to post this in response to the overwhelming backlash:
“After trying out 747823’s “Less sexual female armor,” I was so happy with his mod that I wanted to go write a comment on his mod page. That did not happen. Why you may ask? The comments to the mod page are locked due to a “debate on a file release thread.” That made me very sad… I peeked around in their comments section and noticed a sticky stating that there would be “zero tolerance on transphobic/bigoted/hateful comments.” The fact that they had to post that also made me very sad…
After working for many days, I finally made enough armors to create the release you see before you today. With that said, please let there be no debates or hateful comments on my mod page; they will be ignored and the only thing you will do is make me very sad…”
The argument boils down to “fully clothed and realistically armored women whose boobs are not clearly visible is MISANDRY” Yeah…
Here’s the mod link, btw. If you play skyrim on the pc, I recommend it 😀
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48160/?
Are gamers opposed to having women in “their” space because it wrecks the cherished illusion that women are scantily clad 2D slutbots with perky FFF breasts and no opinions of their own?
Or is that an oversimplification?
OT: My friend recommended that I watch The Bletchly Circle on Netflix, about codebreakers in England who go back to domesticity after WWII, unable to even tell their spouses about the important work they did. It immediately reminded me of all the times our trolls come here to tell us that women do nothing during war. Good miniseries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/arts/television/the-bletchley-circle-on-pbs.html?_r=0
Lana, it’s interesting you mentioned The Last of Us. MRAs have wigged out about that one, too. http://manboobz.com/2013/07/04/the-last-of-us-has-evil-feminism-ruined-the-zombie-apocalypse/
Chie, The Bletchly Circle looks great. I’m going to start watching it this week, maybe tonight.
I have Depression Quest up on another tab to play when I can have the sound up. So far, it looks compelling.
I know one young woman that said she got a lot of sexist remarks .One of the problems was she was so good at the game they even accused her of lying that she was really a guy.
Eventually what happened it they collaborated and ganged up on in her the game.
She went back at a later point as a guy and none of that happened.
I don’t know I think part of it could be at core they have to have a clear divide of what is masculine and what is feminine in order to feel masculine .Once they define what is masculine girls are a threat to their masculinity if they want to “play” and especially if the girl is just as good or better.It distorts their masculine image of themselves.
What’s so bizarre about this nonsense is how much it relies on a revisionist version of gaming history. The large scale focus on the dudebro gamer type wasn’t really a thing until the 90s…and there have been women game devs from the get-go.
Wait, people freaked out over a mod to make female armor less sexual? The whole point of mods is that they’re optional. No one is forcing this mod on anyone.
I can fathom being a guy who doesn’t want less sexual, more realistic female armor, but to be offended at the idea of people who aren’t you wanting the option is just… I can’t.
the modding community for bethesda games has been pretty awful in that respect for a long time, i think.
and it frustrates me that finding a clothing or armor mod that actually resembles something a person going out in the wilderness would wear is so difficult! they’re all “sexy” nonsense. i’m glad you pointed that mod out, fromafar.
honestly, the way the base game forces the basic clothing to turn into a dress if you’re playing a woman, and pants if you’re playing a man, has always been a big source of frustration for me. does anyone know of a way to fix that?
Well, if people like it, then it might Catch On. And if it catches on, it will be In Demand. And if it’s In Demand, more people will want to supply it.
And then the planet blows up or something, the details are a bit fuzzy.
You know, I can see why some women would want an armor that shows it was made for a woman, much in the same way that some nobles had plate armor that emphasized the male chest. My argument is when game developers chose to emphasize boobs over armors functionality.
i musta gotten the feminist version of Skyrim (or i just haven”t played it long enough) because my female character wasn’t wearing particularly feminine clothing until I got some vampire armor. I’m not really looking forward to finding out that the rest of the armor is going to be stupid. I suppose I could just wear the armor of any males I kill.
@Chie Satonaka, have you seen there’s another series of The Bletchley Circle coming, in the New Year?
I just can’t be bothered with gamer dudes. Really, the fact that some people want to remove the boob viewing window in armor makes you feel angry and threatened, insecure little man? Too bad.
It’s so pathetic, isn’t it? It’s not like these tossers can’t look at all the porn they want, but noooo, every woman, every representation of women, has to feed their boners. Or rather, rageboners, since they’re still going to complain they’re not getting any as is their right. ::rolls eyes::
It would make more sense in a world in which the boob window was the only chance they had to see boobs, but dude, you are writing these comments whining about the boob window mod ON THE INTERNET. A whole world of free porn awaits you, just a few mouse clicks away. Go forth and wank and leave the people who want to play games without the wanking component alone.
Not only that, but our societies are saturated with women’s bodies as display things in advertising. The whining from these dudes makes less and less sense (which means it’s well into the negatives by now).
I suppose they’ve gotten so used to that being the norm that they think any deviation is a crime against humanity.
(Playing Devil’s Advocate here) And what about those guys who specifically prefer 2-D porn to 3-D porn (this is where the meme “3-d pig disgusting” came from)? Are you trying to get rid of their precious fanservice?! Do you realize that to say to such a guy is equivalent to telling a lesbian who likes her partners butch to just go get a real man instead? Do you know see how insultingly offensive that is, eh?
That’s playing Devil’s Advocate, or parody?
At least (s)he stopped dropping random quotes with no context. Or was that a different troll? ^^?