So our old friend Vox Day is working on a video game. And he’s decided to make a bold and unprecedented choice in his design of the game: he’s not going to have any ladies in it.
But it turns out this choice has nothing to do with anything so pedestrian as misogyny. In fact, it was the only rational choice he could make. Let’s let him explain. He has such a way with words. (He’s apparently some sort of writer.)
I am a game designer. I am designing and producing a game that does not, and will not, have a single female character in it. This is not because I am misogynistic. This is not because I do not women to play the game. This is because putting women in the game makes no sense, violates the principle of the suspension of disbelief, and will not make the game any better as a game.
Well, that makes sense. I mean, the game is probably some game that has to have only male characters to be believable. You know, like Dance Party with the American Presidents or the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association Board of Directors Simulator 3000 or something like that.
I am the lead designer of First Sword, a combat management game. The game has orcs and men, elves and dwarves. It has goblins and trolls. But it has no women.
Uh, wait. It’s a combat game filled with orcs, goblins and trolls, but putting women in it would “violate … the principle of the suspension of disbelief.”
Because the game is a gladiator game. Women cannot credibly fight as gladiators. We don’t put women in the game for the same reason we don’t put bunny rabbits or children in the game.
Well, why not? You put fucking orcs in it. Why not make a combat game with bunny rabbits?
Actually, someone already did that. It’s called Overgrowth. And it’s supposed to be pretty good.
Putting women in the game would be an act of brutal sadism, an act of barbarism even by pagan Roman standards. While the Romans did occasionally put female gladiators in the arena, they were there as a comedic act.
Really? This is a VIDEO GAME. You can do whatever you want with it. It is really harder to imagine a woman being able to fight a man than it is to imagine entire races of imaginary humanoid creatures?
We could, of course, throw out historical verisimilitude. But we’re not going to. Because we value that verisimilitude far more than we value the opinion of a few whiny women who don’t play the sort of games we make anyhow.
Historical verisimilitude? Historical verisimilitude?!
YOU’RE MAKING A GAME ABOUT ORCS AND TROLLS.
ORCS AND TROLLS DO NOT EXIST.
THEY HAVE NEVER EXISTED.
THERE IS NO HISTORY THAT INCLUDES ORCS AND TROLLS.
My Norse and Saxon sword-swinging ancestresses are all palming their faces and shaking their heads at this goon.
I bet his writing is just as sucky and uninteresting as his game concept.
Like, I can deal with women not being in fighting roles. You can have a gender stratified society in your stories. But be aware that you’re CREATING it. That’s YOU. It’s not just intrinsic to humanity, it’s your active creation.
And also have it go both ways. If your female characters aren’t allowed to swing swords, then your male characters shouldn’t be allowed in some other important field — medicine, or whatever. Don’t just pretend “that’s the way things are,” because no, that’s the way YOU’RE CREATING THEM.
Sorry, this is something that bugs the hell out of me. Artists, take responsibility for your creations! I know the mythos is that ideas just pop out of you full-grown, but come on.
Someone make him play GuildWars2 where one of the current ‘great friendships’ is a non-sexual warrior-bond between a cat-girl and a big beefy dude, and one of the current ‘great romances’ is between a female necromancer and mesmer, and where there’s a storyline event where a male character comes and begs you to save his true love, who turns out to be another male character and no one comments on the gender aspect because no one cares – THERE’S AN EVIL GUY COMING IN AND KILLING INNOCENTS.
Run-on sentence. GW2 may have its issues, but God do I love the Sylvari:
“I worry that Wardenhurst could fall!”
“Would you like me to hold you?”
“…Does that move work on other guys?”
Oh, I do have to catch up on GW2 lore, as my first thought was “When did Rytlock end up a cat-girl.”
Also sweet jesus no Charr women are not “cat-girls”. (As an aside, I had to figure out if I should call them female or women, because female seems disrespectful but women is humano-centric).
That said, beating Bercilak to death really is one of the most satisfying early game quests. Sylvari are awesome and the Nightmare Court can go collectively fuck themselves.
I thought this was funny, “Putting women in the game would be an act of brutal sadism, an act of barbarism…..” You mean, unlike the peaceful and gentle slaughter of men, Vox?
I’m telling you, these men’s rights men are doing men’s rights all wrong. Last week they were advocating prison rape, this week it’s slaughter by gladiator.
On the question of Pox D’s racism I could point to some ditties about him being a ‘racist sexist homophobic narcissistic dipshit’, but that would be merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
How to do fake html? You need to master the > tag, so that you can write the markup your fake tag as: >/fake>, which will produce: >/fake>. Once you’ve put in the > you don’t need to worry about the slash or the right-angled bracket.
Or rather, that should be < — obviously the blockquote monster is diversifying into having me fail at remembering html. *epic fail*
I remember the last time a fantasy RPG boasted of being “historically accurate”.
A little number some of you may have heard of called F.A.T.A.L.
You know, I can’t believe I forgot about that. On reflection, though, I wish that I kept forgetting. Such a perfect blend of social/cultural assholery and asinine statistic systems.
Brandi, major content warnings on that link of course! The review is extremely funny yet likewise extremely problematic for all sorts of reasons related to the subject matter, but also how the reviewers pulverise it into the ground.
OMGFATAL! I indeed remember!
Roll for Anal Circumference!
Long before Vox Day was kicked out of SFWA for bigotry and harassment, he should have gotten kicked out just for being plumb stupid.
Fighting game with orcs…sheesh.
Well, Vox Day is so very original and rebellious by taking that position. Quite the revolutionary.
http://www.vg247.com/2014/02/17/deep-down-the-rabbit-hole-of-ingrained-games-industry-sexism/
Oh, wait
Two things floated through my mind while reading this post and comment thread.
1) A sick and mean part of me would love to see Vox Day or any other “girls can’t fight” doofus last even a single round with someone like Gina Carano (or heck, with one of the lady coaches at my CrossFit gym).
2) Have any of the table-top gamers here ever read or played The Blue Rose RPG? It was billed as “romantic fantasy” in the style of Mercedes Lackey, Tamara Pierce, and similar authors; and notably, its “good-guy” nation featured an enlightened (though not utopic) society of gender equality and acceptance of homosexuality, from the ground up (one of the chief deities of its pantheon is also the patron of same-sex passion/romance, for instance).
The game was favorably received for its rules-system (a streamlined version of 3rd edition D&D), but nearly every review I read of it complained about its gender and sexuality elements being “preachy” (and that’s a polite version of the objection). I recently came across it and find it a refreshing departure from the industry-standard Tolkein knock-off. I’d probably really enjoy playing or running a campaign in it.
Here’s a sample review. http://dndorks.com/article/52/page1.aspx
I’d see not being on Vox Day’s game as a positive.
Wow. Good SHOW capcom. Have a slow clap.
I put ‘cat-girl’ I suppose because it’s a bit hard to explain the charr in one word aside from ‘cat-person’ 😀 That said, Rox is unusually cat-looking compared to most of the cheetah/lion/wolfish female charr. She’s still a huge slab of muscle, but she has a very alien face/eyes that I find a little bit weird:
She also has an awesome backstory and is made of perfection, so I don’t care. And killing Bercilak is something I always take great joy in. I have killed him about seven times so far.
ANYWAY: Rox/Braham. A serious friendship story with a possible tragic parting that is incredibly close, nearly romantic, but not sexual. Between a male and a female in a game, both of whom are in-depth characters. Eeeee.
And here is a link to the rulebook for The Blue Rose RPG, for anyone who’s interested.
http://www.freegamemanuals.com/pdfrpg/BlueRoseCoreRulebook.pdf
It’s probably for the best. If he made women characters they’d probably have boobs that are somehow not subject to gravity and really impractical clothing such as a chain mail bikini.
@steampunked
Oooo I had heard about Rox and Graham, but I didn’t really play too much into it. I haven’t played GW2 lately, a little bored with it to be honest and my computer likes to derp when it’s loading up zones. Seriously, sitting around waiting for Lion’s Arch not to look asstasstic with the camera derping up for ten minutes? Yeaaaaah. Dunno what happened, my comp used to handle it fine. Oh well.
Sorry I just had the mental image of a charr in cat ears and a tail. I am not sure if this is terrifying or awesome. Given charr, it is probably both.
Why yes, charr is my favorite race why do you ask? (I also wish they’d make skritt a pc race).
The first time my best friend tried to play D&D, it was with a bunch of geeky guys she was friends with. She was the only girl in the room so they thought it would be reeeally funny to rape her character. The whole experience was so gross and off putting that it put her off D&D for like 3-4 years :/
Just jumping off what you said here: they wouldn’t have laws against it if it wasn’t something that happened. We don’t have laws against enrolling your pet fish in public school, because no one would do that as fish don’t benefit from school and don’t want to go. They wouldn’t make laws barring women from arenas if women were never in arenas in the first place!
🙁 I really hope she found different geeky guys to be friends with. It sounds like they would be the sort of basement dwelling trolls found playing F.A.T.A.L.
Oh *jesus fuck*. As they say, with friends like those…