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.
LBT: Oh jeez… =(
The first time I had a girl in my gaming group is still one of my favourite RPG stories to tell. She was a family friend, and I introduced her and her little brother to the “Toon” RPG. So, after quick character generation, and a basic explanation of the rules, I start.
Me: You are walking down an alley, when a big yellow bulldozer starts bearing down on you. What do you do?
Her brother: I dodge the bulldozer.
My brother: I dismantle the bulldozer.
Her: I’m driving the bulldozer.
(shocked silence, laughter)
Me: Right! Make your rolls folks!
The next 20 minutes ended up being a free-for-all cartoon battle across town, which was probably a hell of a lot more fun than whatever I was planning on doing originally.
Imperator Zor,
It’s too bad the movies didn’t carve out a space for Lobelia.
I love the Oz books. Glinda is such a feminist icon for me. She is easily the most powerful and intelligent person in Oz. She has that book that tells her everything that’s going on in the world so she literally knows everything. She can use a spell to fix any problem, but she only does it as a last resort. She doesn’t have a huge ego and isn’t a glory hound. She lets the others in Oz be empowered too. I love that she teaches the humbug Wizard to become a real wizard after the fourth book.
As much as I love the movie, it kills me that they made Glinda a pink tulle clad pretty princess instead of the elegant, sophisticated and wise woman she is in the books. The movie version is what everyone thinks of when they think of Glinda and it has colored all the various retellings too.
Sorry to go on so long. I’ll just seize on any rare opportunities to discuss the Oz books. They’re some of my favorites even as an adult.
@Karalora,
Yeah, Blue Rose is a recent find for me, and I really like it. One of the things that made me search it out was the odd dichotomy of every review I read of it (while trying to learn more about the True20 system in general), which all boiled down to, “innovative rules because streamlining, stupid setting because girly gayness.”
Turns out I like the setting a lot more than I like the rules. I found its opening analysis of the difference between what it calls the “romantic fantasy” genre and the default D&D genre to be pretty insightful. It really highlights how gendered the default D&D setting is, without engaging in any kind of polemics. That was a subtle touch.
I have a majority-female gaming group, and though I haven’t introduced the Blue Rose setting to them, I’ve found that it fits in well with the kind of characters they already conceive and play, anyway. Some of the women in my group are big Mercedes Lackey fans, so I think they’d dig Blue Rose a lot.
That said, I’d rather play in Blue Rose than GM it, so I’m probably going to introduce it to my group near the end of our current campaign, when we start thinking about what to play next. Maybe another player will get the itch to run it.
Let’s be fair I’m sure orcs and trolls are way more pleasant than Vox Day.
I’m actually working on some tabletop RPG stuff right now.
One’s a modern fantasy setting, based around conspiracies of hidden magic operating in the modern world and a pocket dimension full of monsters and magical resources (no elves or dwarves, just humans) – I wanted to be a kind of “medium fantasy”, where you get loads of magical stuff flying around but the campaign focus is on commerce, politics and everyday issues. Incidentally, one of the major details of the setting is that 75% of the entire Mage population is female, and several important factions that control territory in both the mundane world and the pocket dimension can ONLY recruit women because ONLY women can learn their signature magic.
The second thing I’m working on is a GURPS conversion of the D&D setting Ravenloft, remixed a little to cut out some of the sillier stuff and focus the upcoming campaign on discovering the hidden Awful Truths of the world.
And if Vox Day really wants “historical verisimilitude”, then why the fuck is he even making a game about gladiatorial combat rather than FARMING? For fucks sake, any given person any time and anywhere would probably be closer to working to provide food for whoever than actually fighting anything. You get a hell of a lot more people focused on getting food than killing if you look at the general history of humanity.
@10 knives
Not to mention, they’d more likely be the victims of roaming bands of knights/samurai/centurions than be members of those groups. There’s been an awful lot of random rape & murder carried out by such heroic types while en route to their glorious quests. The whole genre of fantasy fighting games sides with the perps to a large extent.
That’s a very low bar! 😀
Uncomfortable? No, not in the least, I thought the description of Grudge Guy was funny, and just threw in the bit about Tutankhamen’s injuries ‘cos it was interesting. He usually has been depicted as some weedy kid. The game reminded me a bit of Pratchett’s Pyramids .
RE: weirwoodtreehugger
You have good taste. The Tin Woodsman was always my favorite, and I blame it for my adulthood fascination for robots, cyborgs, and golems. Now THERE was a character who took the “emotionless machine” trope and smashed it into the ground!
I have to confess (somewhat shamefacedly) that I didn’t enjoy the first Oz book nearly as much as the film – probably because I’d seen the film so many times and so long before. I do like that Dorothy’s a stronger character (which I already knew) but overall, no, it didn’t have the emotional pull the film did. I haven’t read any of the other books, though – maybe I should.
RE: Kittehs
I remember liking The Land of Oz a lot, but Mr. Baum unfortunately didn’t actually like writing the Oz books very much and was pretty apparently sick of them after a while. If you want something more awesome that he wrote, you might like to try Queen Zixi of Ix, if you can find it.
Sounds a bit like Conan Doyle getting fed up with writing Holmes pretty quickly.
“Not to mention, they’d more likely be the victims of roaming bands of knights/samurai/centurions than be members of those groups. There’s been an awful lot of random rape & murder carried out by such heroic types while en route to their glorious quests. The whole genre of fantasy fighting games sides with the perps to a large extent.”
1) Sandor Clegane account spotted. /joke-and-a-reference
2) I think that’s a subset of the larger phenomenon of war fiction glossing over civilian casualties (also classism) – not many video games actually show firefights between soldiers wherein unlucky civvies are caught in the middle. Spec Ops The Line has some (duh), some of the Modern Warfare games had a few, one map of Civilary Medival Warfare had an entire objective of one team being the slaughter of serfs…I have actually spent a few idle moments wondering if there’d ever a team deathwatch shooter where non-aligned AI locals would factor in – running around in a panic, possibly getting shot by accident, maybe attacking with improvised weaponry if you pissed them off…
@thebobgoblin
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a great time playing D&D, but it does have certain patriarchal and imperialist assumptions baked in. I’m mostly familiar with 3.0/3.5, which never comes out and says you have to build your character along traditional gender lines nor includes any rules to that effect – and indeed, the example PCs include things like a female paladin and a WOC monk – but example NPCs are far less likely to break stereotypes, and published adventure scenarios tend to revert to kidnapped princesses and winning wars (as opposed to averting them or protecting civilians from the fallout). Plus stupid things the developers just couldn’t let go of from earlier editions, like the drow.
@karalora: One of these days I’ll trawl through my collection of DUNGEON Magazine and tally up the Damsels in Distress. I want to say that there’s fewer of them in the modern era, but that might just be wishful thinking.
I do remember one where a (woman) paladin has been killed and her soul is being devoured by a giant undead monstrosity that’s using the energy to power its mojo.
“While the Romans did occasionally put female gladiators in the arena, they were there as a comedic act.”
Whatever happened to “women aren’t funny?”
Women aren’t funny. Laughing at women is funny.
I can see how an MRA would find women being stabbed with pointy things hilarious. Congrats, guys, you’ve managed to beat the latter days of the Roman empire for perversity.
Eh, if there’s anything Whose Line is it Anyways taught us, it’s that good comedians (male or female) can make a bit out of any prop – so not real Classical Era weaponry?
For those interested in looking at tabletop RPGs that aren’t based on western sources:
Mr S and I have been working for some years now on a world that’s based on Asian cultures and literature, in particular China, Japan, Tibet, India and Korea. It’s also matriarchal. We wanted to see what matriarchy might look like. We also doubted very much that it would just be a reversal of roles and that portraying it that way would be lazy design. Since there are no matriarchal societies existing now and may never have been any to give us ethnographic analogies we had to be a bit more creative and come up with something new.
It’s on Mr S’s gaming and model blog and open source so people are welcome to download it and take a look.
I don’t want to post the link here, however, because the site contains information about both of us that I don’t want trolls getting hold of so if you’ll email me at [email protected], I’ll be happy to give you the address.
::waves at Seranvali::
I am soooooo far behind, but pet fish?
“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.”
No no, we don’t have laws against it because fish prefer to create their own schools! Or just skip school altogether and go their own way (FGTOW?)
*rimshot*
Ally? Was that a wave for a link?
Yeah, women being able to do things is less believable than fucking orcs and goblins and elves.
That is like on 10 billion different levels of depressing and misogyny, I don’t even…