No Girls Please: Gender Stereotyping in Indie Games.

 In Critter Crunch, an extremely polished puzzle game from publisher Capybara Games, there are three characters. First the game is introduced by a nature documentary presenter slash explorer. Having discovered the unique eco system of the island, he delights on explaining the critters habitats and behaviour. He then goes on to introduce the puzzling central protagonist; a rotund and furry critter called Biggs, and the progeny of that creature called smalls. Each of these critters could have been genderless, but the writers make it clear that this hunter gatherer creature is a father looking out for his son. So within the first two minutes of the gameplay; the exposition has been carried out, and two squashy main characters have all been represented as arbitrarily male. This may seem like a moot point as it doesn't affect gameplay directly; it could even be a nice twist on how we perceive caring for children, but as the developer makes no explicit attempt to explain the gender choice for any of the main characters it comes across as lazy or sexist design.

Wait where are the balls in this diagram?

From the excitable, and parachuting adventurer, to the father-son combo, the game glibly assumes the only possible audience for this otherwise interesting, colourful and appealing puzzler will be male. Added to that it seems to share the assumption that boys will only associate with male characters, which has long been held by producers of children's television programming.  In recent years however with the break-out hits of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a show that has developed an enormous fanbase amongst young men (aged 16-25) and with the newest season of the Avatar kids television franchise: The Legend of Korra. The latter show was only given a ten episode run as the network was extremely anxious that young boys would be unable to connect with it's eponymous female protagonist. The show was an enormous hit and now has 40 episodes in the pipeline. Boys and girls connected with the Korra and this hopefully made bosses sit up and listen to the idea that boys will watch girls if the story is good enough.

omnomnomnomnom

The male characterisation seems decision that boys play video games and therefore they will want to be the protagonists in this adventure. Furthermore, the central mechanic of the parent - child relationship is that the father gathers food, and when there is a long combo, you get the option to “barf rainbows” into your waiting child's mouth. Perhaps it was deemed inappropriate for women to regurgitate food, it's not as if children take liquid from women's bodies both in the womb and from the breast after. Sticky fluid is certainly not something we want to associate with the female form: that would be indiscreet. Intention, is of course a dangerous thing to write about, and though I was tempted to email the publisher, I felt aware that I might come off as blinkered, when really I want to improve video game story telling. If the producers of the game had explained the decision, I think I'd be able to swallow it. But I felt disappointed that this puzzle game could have shown an interesting series of relationships, instead chose to build a game that would appeal predominantly to little boys.

Indie game developers obviously still have to find a market for their games, but they do not have to pander to scared, sexist and outdated publishing practices. Capybara games are not alone in their particular decision perpetuate arbitrary gender characterisation. For the most part developers choose a male protagonist and this is not always problematic, but the decision becomes particularly noticeable when the player character is in fact an object. In the platformer Nimbus, you play as a bullet shaped space-ship that has no means of internal propulsion but floats using gravity and air streams. The little spaceship is not manned, apparently, but a sentient creature with, you will be surprised to hear... a pink girlfriend space ship. In the opening cut-scene, the two little space ships are having a moment of fun, when an evil eye plucks the helpless pink robot out of the sky and laughs maniacally. The perfect expression of lazy design, the developers hark back to retro platformers without considering how problematic this stereotype is.

Nimbus could have used it's beautiful air mechanics to show objects falling space and showcased what makes this platformer unique. Puzzle games have every right to pare down on narrative through cut scenes, if they don't have the resources to carry them out. But when effort and time has been put into recreating the tired princess-kidnap trope, I am left wondering how that time might have been better spent. When developers cut narrative corners they inevitably rearticulate dominant paradigms, they fall into mediocrity and innovation is tainted. It's a shame, because interesting mechanics and concepts deserve polished stories that say SOMETHING, rather than repeating the small nothings of every slip-shod game that has preceded it. 

Blackwell (Series) and the Female Legacy.

*Spoiler warning* This post contains spoilers. It will ruin your gaming experience, but those spoilers are necessary to explore the gender narratives of this excellent collection of games. So if you don't think you will play, you're not interested in point and click, or want to read my analysis anyway, read on gentle traveller. p.s. Most of the spoilers come from the first game in the series: The Blackwell Legacy.

[Trailer]

That's a ... pretty severe attitude,
wouldn't you say?

The Blackwell series is a collection of four point and click adventure games which trace the relationship and life of Roseangela Blackwell and the ghost that has haunted the women in her family for three generations. The game begins with Rosa scattering the ashes of her aunt, who, we learn later, was the previous host to smooth-talking 40s ghost Joey. Her voice is monotonous, and if you watched the trailer, like me you may have laughed at the opening line delivery by her voice actress. But as the game begins you quickly realise that her monotonous drawl is an intrinsic aspect of the disillusioned new yorker's personality. Rosa is anxious, she is shy, she is not charismatic and so the monotony of the voice is the culmination of these aspects. In a commentary that comes with the game, the writer Dave Gilbert compliments a colleague who animated Roseangela's walk, noting that she looks slumped and lazy; her walk is as hesitant as the character to whom it belongs.

Her isolation is illustrated by the games opening puzzle; a punk-ass teenager mans the door to her apartment, and refuses to let her in, because he knows everyone in the building, but he doesn't know her. From the players point of view, entering into a game about ghosts and spirits, you imagine shenanigans are afoot. Is she dead? Is this a dream? Is this kid pranking her? But it turns out that he simply doesn't know her, despite her living in her current apartment for several years. A freelance writer, Rosa, seems to fit a stereotype of a recluse. But then even this representation of an ordinary, dumpy, awkward woman as a protagonist of a video game is innovative.

As the game gets into full swing Joey appears, explains that Roseangela will be haunted the rest of her life, and that she must help restless spirits pass by solving the mysteries surrounding their deaths. Roseangela and Joey have a tense relationship which carries through several hours of gameplay without being resolved. Occasionally the ghost is flirtatious, occasionally cruel, and consistently his overt 40s sexist names, "doll", "kid" and "sweetheart", invade conversation. Joey is the vehicle that forces Rosa out of her apartment and into the adventure. To begin with he berates her, but they develop a more equal partnership once Rosangela appears to accept the role that she has been given.

So a ghost walks into a bar...

 At times, Rosa enjoys the ghost hunting, but this enjoyment is consistently overshadowed by the fear that she will, like her aunt, go insane. This is the threat that pushes her into ghost-hunting since the insanity is always articulated as a lack of acceptance of the role forced on them by Joey. Insanity pervades the first three games as a consistent theme set against the theme of death. Indeed for most of the characters that Joey and Rosa encounter one of two fates is laid before them: madness or death.

There is strong emphasis on the fact that Joey haunts only the female members of the family. Perhaps therefore he represents a particularly gendered form of madness. He frequently, terrifyingly, threatens his host that IF she reveals his existence she WILL be locked up in a loony bin, and that he will make her life a living hell. However light Rosa makes of these threats the game uses the achievement system (steam) to reinforce them. "Crowd Control" is awarded if you never speak to your ghostly friend in the presence of another character.

Blackwell Unbound is the second game in the series and it follows Lauren's (Rosa's aunt's) time with Joey. The game is sad. Throughout you know of Lauren's unhappy ending in the mental asylum. Within the game, as the trailer shows, Lauren is warned that she "may die". "Oh, is that all?" she replys. Ironically it is the insanity that she fears which is to be her fate.

In placing the two female protagonists in this bind; with only a choice between ghost hunting and insanity, Dave Gilbert creates an interesting narrative about female fear and agency. Rosangela certainly is a character who prides herself on clarity: a freelance reporter her intelligence and analytic skills are the source of her self-esteem (limited though it is). Thus she takes more pride in working out how to drug a neighbour's dog than in having established a friendship with that neighbour in the first place. Not making sense and loss of agency is far more threatening than isolation. Joey has removed the majority of that agency, so little wonder that the Women in Rosa's family have fallen into madness. Incoherence is a particular fear for a well-educated, probably (ambivalently) feminist, character. Aware and frustrated that there is a "Legacy" of madness amongst women in her family, Rosa has over-compensated.

There is a recurrent spot where the
pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous
eyes stare at you upside down.

Another legacy emerges. If we consider literature and women's history, we stumble upon other narratives of the female search for clarity, and for being taken seriously. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story traces a young woman who under the rest cure stares at patterns in the wallpaper, and in them she finds her own form of clarity but in the process goes insane. Outspoken women, difficult women, angry women, frustrated women, have through the century been derided, laughed at and considered insane by those around them. In my family, we have our own legacy of female madness. By which I mean, my granny was difficult, my mother is emotional, and I am both. Rosa's visceral fight to maintain coherence, despite her paranormal activities, is her fight against the supposed hysteria that has plagued her family.

Typically in videogames, the central aim is to not die. The choices you make have consequences that will or will not lead you to death. If you fail to jump here, or you miss the quick-time event there, then the consequences for your character will be a swift and painful death. In the context of a point and click, especially this one, the only consequence for failure is not progressing with the narrative. In this regard, the fear of loss of agency is elegantly placed in a point and click character; because failure leads to stasis; not unlike the rest cure that Aunt Lauren suffered. By using the frustration of point and click to articulate Roseangela's working role, Gilbert demonstrates that her sarcasm, her irritable personality and her self-imposed isolation might have deeper feminist anxiety driving them. The fear of being incoherent.

Indie Games for Girls (and Boys) Introduction

Blackwell: Excellent Games for Girls (and Boys)

So there was This interesting article on the Mary Sue about upcoming releases. It is a list of anticipated triple A games that were due for release that might be interesting to the Mary Sue's predominantly female readership. I was pleased to see that they went for the games with guns, the games that are typically not placed in women's demographic. I was just a little disappointed by the lack of indie titles, though they did include "Torchlight 2". So this post is probably going be part of a series of reviews and previews of existing indie titles, through my inevitably rose-tinted glasses. I'll start with the Blackwell games, a series of point and click adventures so good they were worth playing twice. Then in upcoming articles I'd like to cover, The Binding of Issac, a game I have sunk seventy hours into (and counting) and perhaps I'll do a couple of shorter articles on interesting titles and the problems they encounter when they use gender in their titles Nimbus, Hamilton's Great Adventure, and Dangerous High school Girls in Trouble. In each case I hope to interrogate the gaming industries stereotyping of female characters and explore the claims that female characters are under-represented or poorly characterized.

My decision to look at indie games is two-fold. First this is a less well trodden path; fewer people look at indie games as a medium. Secondly, indie games are not constrained by the barriers placed on games produced by established publishers. Without the marketers and businessmen's input, in theory, these video games should represent a wider selection of female characters. My aim with these reviews and articles is wonder at how games now are representing women, and to consider exactly what makes for decent female character development, and what is the result when bad characterization enters games. 

Are women playing the major roles?

How interactive are female characters? 

And, especially important, how do game mechanics delineate gender? 

Video games are medium unto themselves. By exploring the specifically interactive modes that these games use to articulate gender, I will be able to show how games should be designing female characters to depict their strengths, and their weakness in ways that cohere with game mechanics, art design and characterisation.