Gender in Games: Week 4

For week 4's main subject topic we discussed gender in computer games. Before I begin the synthesis one of beginning observations of gender in games I have before reading the articles is how little female targeted games there are and if there is a female targeted game, the females are nearly always put into a very female stereotyped design or role (the damsel in distress; Princess Peach, the bimbo that always gets herself in the worst situations; Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Dead Rising, or the promiscuous femme fatale;007 girls, the perfect mother teresa; Aerith, and the emotional drama queen;Jade Empire)? And if the character doesn't fit into one of our stereotypes of female behavior or roles then they are made up for in visual character design (for example a more voluptuous figure or maybe more revealing clothing; Tomb Raider, Heavenly Sword, any fighting game like Soul Caliber or Mortal Combat or Guilty Gear or Street Fighter)? Then there's the last category for female characters that don't fit into either category, but usually they are just back up and NPC characters for comic relief or game stuffing (characters designed just for the sake of having another character to choose from). Are the game designers conciously doing this to shape our idea of how women should be or just a reflection of feeding in to how our society expects our women to be.

Anyhow, the first article I decided to read was Playing with Fire: Trouble in Super Macho World? written by Gonzalo Frasca, which discussed and analysed Nintendos Super Princess Peach for the DS. Gonzalo main point in his article was pointing out whether or not the game should be praised for the first time in the Mario Franchise having Princess Peach as a protagonist instead of just a damsel in distress however enforcing female stereotypes. Most notably for example, how in Super Princess Peach, Peach's method of super powers is using her emotions against foes and to heal herself. Gonzalo also brings up from this that what actions you are able to do with a character in a game adds to another dimension of the characters personality. So not only is Peach's looks quite stereotyped (blonde, blue-eyed, pink dress, high heels, and a parasol, come on!), but her actions are also (intentional or not Peach comes across as a highly emotionally unstable girl).

I agree with Gonzalo in what he conclusionally states by saying that it is great to see more high production rate games targeted towards the female population but Nintendo can still do a better job in giving its female characters such as Peach more depth and personality in playable game actions beyond being bi-polar. However I won't blame Nintendo too much since Peachs persona has already long been established and to change it now would be bizzare. For example for me it would be the same as Apple all of a sudden deciding to change their white and sleek marketing look toward something more dark and punk like Hot Topic. Would Peach be the same Princess if she had laser eye beam powers? Now think, if you could think of a better super power for Peach that is less stereotyped but still within the boundries of her already built character persona what would it be? Honestly I can't really think of anything, but then again I'm not a team of people paid to build upon a already iconic character. On a marketing stand point, sure it's probably not a great message to be sending out to to pre pubescent girls but it's not as bad as making an iconic character out of character. Also I think that if anyone takes a game like Super Princess Peach seriously as an adult as something they strive to become then I think something is really wrong with them. Yes, children do imitate what they see from games to an extent but it's also normal for them to grow out of it (which is what is called play stage in sociology BTW) as well and distinguish it as just a game.

Now on to the next article I read which was Got Game by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade Chapter 2. The chapter mainly was about how games influence on people (young persons especially) who play them and whether or not they really are influencing them in regards to gender roles, violence, and isolation. In aspects of Gender Roles, yes, males do show to have a more favor towards games with a "fast-twitch factor" (how the book describes them such as racing, sports, FPS, games etc.) while girls tend to favor more mind stimulating puzzles and quizes. But overall games seem to be an activity anybody (male or female) this day and age can pick up and not have it be abnormal in the bit least. Also the chapter also adds that games even allow more gender role experimentation without consequences like in the "real world" where you can't as easily see what it's like to dress up an avatar or take care of a baby or have facial hair. In violence no official word has been released proving once and for all violent games correlate with violent behavior. Except that data does show that crime statistics have dropped after the large introduction and popularity of games depicting violence. Isolation in games have been a worry for many non-gamers beliving it is a way for player to escape from the real world thus losing real world social interaction, but the chapters take on it is that gamers can differentiate what is the real world and what is just a game. Also that the large majority of youth actually play video games and so it really isn't such an isolating thing but rather normal. Many are using games as a way to bond as well with others.

While reading chapter 2 I find that it echos my sentiments exactly as I had with the article on Super Princess Peach in that, as well as touched on some thoughts I had in a previous blog about how most gamers once playing a game recognise this "game reality" and never really mix it up with actual reality. Once the game is over it's really over, they don't really go and continue playing the game in real life after turning off the system. Just like with Super Princess Peach and how I said that once people grow up we tend to not really take the game seriously into our lives but rather it is just a game meant for our entertainment. We can cheat on our wives in The Sims but that doesn't neccessarily mean we are going to go out and cheat on our spouse in real life. It's just a game however we play. Yes there are those who for them games become their obsession and choose their escapist life over reality but those are few and far inbetween just like sociopaths(media just loves to publicize it though). And yes games do allows us to experiment things or atleast have a remote idea about things we would have otherwise have not known was like such as raising a child, being a hero or a villain, saving the princess, winning a soccer game, building a city, designing a house, dressing up, etc. But to go as far as blame games for causing people to have violent behavior I think is like blaming casinos for people having gambling additions. The resposibility should lay on the individuals not the items or activites their behaviors latch onto for excuses. Stereotypes in my opinion are defined by each individual, there are only there if you believe it's there and it is their choice to follow them or not. For example in Harvest Moon DS Cute you play a female avatar and she portrayed visually as a blonde blue eyed girl with long hair. Yes you can say the designers were stereotyping woman by making her have long blonde hair, when she could have had lets say short brown hair (Like Elle if you are familiar with Harvest Moon 64 on the Nintendo 64) or red short hair and a serious face (Like Nami from Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life on the Gamecube). But when I play I see a girl regardless of what stereotype she supposedly is following, because that's all she is to me, a girl. If she looked more like a boy, she would still be a girl to me nothing would change. In the game you can do everything the boy main character in Harvest Moon can. But neither thinking is entirely wholely "right". Each thinking is correct to that single individual. So shouldn't it be the individuals choice to follow the stereotype or ignore it?

Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games by Sharon R. Sherman, was out of all this weeks article the most frustrating to read which was prompted by the subject matter. Sharon's article analyzed the game Super Mario Bros. in terms of Marchen (the fairy tale format) and Myth (the format followed by real world common myths). Though half of what Sharon wrote I could say was valid points and analysis (mostly the hero's evolutionary journey in comparison to Mario's journey to save Peach), the other half was what I saw as (un?)intentional biaism from being so uninformed. Something I would typically see done in a high school newspaper by journalism students who take zilch time to actually research their topic. A good example of this was when she wrote that drug culture was a subtle role in some of the games, like Marios ability in some of the games to change size just like Lewis Carolls book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Super Mario Brothers Game Designer was Japanese (Shigeru Miyamoto) and so I highly doubt the use of mushrooms and the ability to change size was alluding to drug use since in Japan they weren't affected by the 60s drug culture as dominately as the USA at all. She also presented alot of opinions as if they were facts (which made it even more frustrating to read). Namely in page 8 & 9 of the article where she interviewed and quoted from serveral different boys and girls on the matter of sexisim and gender roles in games. She uses their quotes as if they give her side of the argument as validity without also actually stating hard evidence and facts for her theories/assumptions. The ironic and sad thing is I feel that it's writers like Sharon that just enforce the stereotype of gamer girls Sharon speaks of.

Gender in Video Games is always one of my favorite topics to speak about since I myself am trying to get into a statisticly male dominated field. And after reading all three articles I still continue to hold my opinion that what types of game produced and are popular really just show what type of society we have at the moment. Compare games from back 10 years ago or 20 years ago, and you can see a shift in what we see women and men portrayed as (not only in games but all forms of entertainment) and more freedom to choose what gender you are in games as well as how you express their genders (Fable 2 allows for cross dressing). Yes, some game men are still portrayed as the overly masculinized hulks and barbarians, but there are now equally a number of men portrayed as having qualities we would recognise as feminine in quality, and some characters as ambiguous. The same goes for woman, there are less and less damsels in distress waiting to be rescued and more independant woman figures propelling games. But there will always be some damsels in distress, bimbos, and scantally clad woman as well but isn't that what our society is made up of? A mixture of all types of people?

What Makes a Game a Game?: Week 3

This week's topic is what exactly makes a game a game and how we should discuss game content. Computer Games by Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn and Gareth Schott in chapter 1 discussed exactly what made defined a game officially a "game". Short and simply it was brought up in the chapter that games would in the book be studied as games and not literature, film, art, and other forms of entertainment that are currently being studied. They went on to use game designer Celia Pearce’s definition of games to define what was made a game as well as Jesper Juul’s framework definition for games.
In Celia’s framework a game contains some sort of goal, obstacles to that goal, resources in helping your obtain your goal, rewards for once you reach a goal, penalties in case you fail to obtain goals, and info (known by all players and the game, or by a certain number of players, or known to the game only, or progressive info obtained through playing the game). This also brought up the main difference in games in regards to other “text” (movies, books, etc.); in that they are played and not just observed as in the player has the ability to manipulate the events in the text.
Juul’s definition differed in that he wrote that games are based on rules, have variable quantifiable outcomes, outcomes that are weight positively or negatively, players try to gain the desirable outcome, players become emotionally attached to the aforementioned outcome, and lastly the game has negotiable consequences for real life. Juul’s framework emphasized more that games have rules differing game from just play which has no set rules. The chapters had also mentioned how some games such as The Sims don’t fit into any of these set frameworks but are still considered games.

After reading chapter 1 I think the only thing I would add to what I considered a game instead of random play would be that in games you unchain yourself from reality to conform to preset rules of the “new reality” where your actions as a player of the game determines (or alters) the game as well. You play rather in a more linear style of play where you decide your actions in a predetermined sense of what you want to do, instead of a spontaneous feeling of play.

In Chapter 13 it was discussed how we should analyze games, which was decided that the best way would be to analyze both the ludic (the more game framework on the game based more on games themselves than other texts [the game system]) and representational (basically any part of the game that can be reference to other types of texts such as movies, books, art, music, character design, etc) aspects of the game in order to most accurately judge it. As well as the message/concept the game tries to convey, how they do it and how well they deliver it.

This chapter I believe was very fair in its way of defining games, and was a similar way I previously would analyze game as well. Since a game with only great representational aspects but lacking ludic aspects does not make a good game but rather a symbiotic combination of the two is what really makes a successful game. Games need to have fair footing in all aspects of not only its system but in its complexity as a text as well in or to really have practical playability as a game and enough originality and feeling of intrigue and connectiveness to the player. I’ve always been a firm believer in that a game is only as good as its weakest component whether it is game play, storyline, characters, visual appeal, music, etc.

For the single article I had to read and analyze I chose to read Play Dead: Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment by Diane Carr. The articles entirety was to compare the differences in game play style of the games Silent Hill and Planescape Torment. Both games had different game play styles made to suit what affect they were trying to convey to the players.
In the article it proposed that both games had in style a set maze that the game made the players go through in order to get their objective met. Silent Hill’s maze was more linear so that the player had less of a choice of divergence in the storyline and to gather a more “on-the-edge” frightening thriller like feeling through the playing of the game in order to learn more of the history of Silent Hill (through exploring maps, overcoming puzzles, and entering cut scenes planned sequentially) as you tried to find the main character’s daughter Cheryl and survive. The whole point of Silent Hill as a Survival Horror genre game is to frighten the player as they uncovered more of the twisting plot as they are playing. While Planescape Torment is more on the RPG style genre with a more open non linear game play to allow the player to determine more their game purpose (which is to decide whether to corrupt more of the characters world or correct it on to the right path from the darkness it has sunk to). Quests and puzzles are given a choice to finish to the players leisure and thus determining part of the end of the game as well as the game play by what quest, NPCs talked to and puzzles are completed. Much like the game Fable Planescape Torment also has the avatar of the player change depending on the choices you played throughout the game. To make the game even less linear it adapted an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons style of dice to determine stats (like damage, and healing) as well as allows the player to customize the avatar in leveling stats for unique game play. Planescape Torment leaves it up to players to determine was the purpose of the game was for them as the game adapted to the player.

Both games were highly successful in trying to convey their purpose to the player by utilizing certain styles of game play to their advantage. In my opinion, it seems like the utilization of certain styles of game play to certain genres are becoming more and more standardized so that there is once again a high need for innovational games willing to try new methods of game play yet to be discovered in order to in a way try new styles of narration to draw them apart from other games from the same genre. For example Little Big Planet on the PS3 was a very different game play style to its usual platform game predecessors. If more and more games were willing to step out of the box and try new methods of game play, the game industry would be inventing better ways of making games superior and faster to previous ones.

Literature in Videogames: Week 2

This week’s articles provided an excellent intro into the main idea of our class, video games as literature. Each article brought their own insight into the matter, providing very different ways into seeing how games are literature as well.
I began my list of reading with IGN’s article The Influence of Literature and Myth through Videogames by Douglass C. Perry. My thoughts on Perry’s article was completely like-minded, considering my favorite games are all influenced or based on some sort of mythology (Age of Mythology, God of War, Okami, and Fatal Frame) or literature (Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright, and Alice McGee’s Alice) I wasn’t that surprised from the article since I already knew of all the backgrounds of all the games I was interested in (because I like to play things I already know the background of such as old folktales, myths, cultures, symbolisms, etc ) . I also completely agreed with their opinion on the need of revolutionary games that leads more towards original narrative play than short thrills on game technology alone. Since we are running out of more and more original content to base games off of it is becoming increasingly obvious we need more revolutionary games willing to go out of the box and depict things we’ve either never seen before depicted in games or depict recycled ideas and stories in a more refreshing way.
Next I read Once Upon a Time by William Vitka, another article arguing how videogames were literature. Vitka’s take on the argument was by comparing other different forms of entertainment such as film and literature. Film and literature both have storylines/narrative and so do games (as well as many of forms of entertainment like music, art). The only difference was how they told that story. Each separate art-form has its own way of telling the same story with each one having pros and cons on getting that story’s message across. A very good example would be the Lord of the Rings franchise, which originally stemmed from the written series by J.R.R Tolkien, then was made into a highly successful movie and then a successful game series. All were different views into the world Tolkien originally wrote. Vitka also goes on to explain the lack of narrative in games now a days, leading to a overflow of nice looks games with supped up game play with no emotional connection to the player. That’s like reading a horribly written book on a fancy new Kindle 2 with amazingly colored font. It might look nice but the connection is just not there, and it’s still a horrible book.

The only difference of the medium of video games compared to the rest of the entertainment mediums would be the game/story is different each time for the interactor instead of being the same thing each and every time. The interactor has full control to lose or win or die and how he goes about doing it. No other medium has this ability games do. Though on the other hand games have it harder on them to be successul in getting their story told since they must immerse the interactor will every medium used in the game successfully or they will fail in getting the message across (typically that means all mediums in usage; music, art, movie, etc.).

Out of all the articles I agreed the most with Vitka’s opinion, since I deem the best games that have actual content to them that I can ponder over time just like the better number of movies and books I enjoy as well.
I admit the most difficult articles to read through were the last two essays written by Zimmerman and Montfort due to the way they were written. Their written styles left me feeling cold on the inside, since they were written in a more essay like form where they argued their case in a more factual manner than conceptual manner. But I can see how their essay would be more revealing to people who believe video games are truly not literature. Since they both went about their essays speaking about the definition of narrative and how we can weave our own narrative into everything in our lives to create some sort of literature since we do physically interact with them.
Reading though all the articles I think the message that resounded within me the most was the idea that games are most arguably literature due to our own interaction with them in creation, which in causation makes a narrative which is in itself literature. This idea really connected with me because I have already believed it is truly nearly impossible to find any game that hasn’t had any real influence from outside sources may it be books, fashion, culture, television, music, other movies or games, etc. Even under an unconscious level we as people (humans) continuously are mirror reflections of the societies we live in. Nothing is ever truly new, but this is quite a conundrum since if that is true, then where did the idea for narration come from originally if nothing is ever new? I guess to answer that question would be that, human consistently need to be recognized as individuals (this is because it’s a strategy of survival and mating) so we strive for things that are what we deem “new”.
For example in the fashion world, people are always clamoring over the “newest looks”, but are they truly new, or just reused styles and marketed as the “newest hype” made popular by so-and-so’s newest fall collection?
Some examples of games off the top of my head would be The Sims created by Will Wright created off the idea of simulated life and based off of true life. There is also Neverwinter Nights from Atari that was highly influenced by Dungeons & Dragons for their storyline and game-play. In Neverwinter Nights they are even using the same damage calculation method (dice rolling) as D&D. In turn D&D was influenced if not based on all the fantasy novels in the same genre.
If you were to investigate into each game or book or movie or piece of artwork, there was some kind of influence from the creator's lives melded into their creation. Just like our emotions, what we create all tell in a way a story of ourselves and what we have experienced and wish to experience.

King of Kong: Week 1

Having grown up around video/computer games my entire life as well as being related to a competitive gamer, it was interesting watching King of Kong. Though I believe the only thing that was really noticable to me while watching the movie was how biased the directing seemed to be so it made Billy Mitchell (Steve Wiebe's rival in King of Kong) seem to be a incrediably coniving and menacing person, willing to do anything to manipulate his relationships with Twin Galaxies to his advantage in keeping his high score in arcade Donkey Kong. But hey the movie probably wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it didn't contain a protagonist and antagonist, right I suppose. While Steve Wiebe was portrayed as a ever honest and vigilent man just trying to be first place for once in his life.
I couldn't help but observe that the reaction to this movie in class was to commonly side on to Steve Wiebe's side of the story. But personally I really had no preference to Billy Mitchell or Steve Wiebe, but I can say that I do respect both of them for being two of the best of the best players of Donkey Kong worldwide. Being the best at something is never an easy feat and I think should always be appreciated in the highest regard even if you are not number 1. It's the idea you out of the rest of the human race has made a dent in the ever conformist (and unique paradoxial) human ideology we have. Having experienced competitional gaming and also been a witness to what it does to people, I really didn't think what was shown of Billy Mitchell was that awful. From competitions I've seen the best of gamers destroy their own computers out of anger for losing tournaments let alone bad-mouthing their competitors. So I've been completely accustomed to this type of "sportsmanship", not that I endorse it but just that it isn't that uncommon (if not most normal in competitional gaming behind closed doors). Competition can bring back the worst in people when they want to win but it can also bring out the best. Believe it or not people have even died from gaming. If you had the highest recording score for anything in the world at all, wouldn't you honestly be hoping even alittle bit that the person that outranks you that one fateful day was cheating to continue being called the best of the best?