On the Mass Effect boards, via the comments on GameCritics.com, BioWare writer Patrick Weekes had this to say about my post:

I think that the writer had some valid points. I can defend some stances and explain others as unfortunate but necessary, but ultimately, our focus on creating a wide galaxy in the first game meant that we prioritized new races over different genders, and that resulted in a big universe with a lot of interesting cultures and no female turians, salarians, or krogan. We are hoping to address that in future games, and we hope that the size and scope of our galaxy makes up for that lack, at least in part, until we do.

On the issue of our female characters being hypersexualized, I would agree that they were generally presented as attractive, but then, so were most of the men — we didn’t have a fat or flabby model available for either gender, so every man on the Citadel, from Udina to Conrad Verner, is walking around with abs of steel. As a mainstream video game, we are always going to err on the side of making our characters attractive, just as you’d expect to see in a big-budget movie.

That said, the asari were not just peacemakers. Two of the game’s big enemy bosses were asari (Shiala on Feros and Benezia on Noveria). The Destiny Ascension, flagship of the Citadel fleet, is an asari vessel, not a turian one. And it’s not just a few female bosses. We had, if the oft-repeated soundsets are any indication, female generic enemies as well — hostile female vanguards and female merc or pirate gang members, and I’d hold our female merc up against BioShock’s “Do you think I’m pretty?!” splicer woman any day as far as a nonsexualized generic female enemy.

Of the female followers, one was a biotic, yes, but another was a computer hacker with a shotgun and a tendency to lob tech grenades, and a third is the only pure soldier of all the followers.

So some of the article I agree with, albeit from an inside-the-company perspective where I know why some decisions were made, but other points stem from wanting the game to be something that it isn’t. Mass Effect is always going to be a mainstream mass-market game. We are unapologetically aiming for a wide audience — summer blockbuster, not art house movie. As a result, our men are usually going to be attractive or ugly-but-rugged, and our women are going to be attractive or distinguished. That’s what most people want.

I’m flattered he took the time to read my piece, and glad the team is working on some of these issues for Mass Effect 2. I totally agree with his points about the human NPCs in the game. But I can’t help being a bit hurt at the suggestion that having a vast and varied universe might make up for the fact that most of the alien races don’t have females at the moment. It immediately positions women as inferior, an afterthought, something that can be added if there is time or money or memory enough. A nice feature but not necessary. And regardless of whether it could have been helped or not, it’s upsetting.

For the most part I seriously enjoyed Mass Effect despite the initial problems I wrote about in my last post. After the first couple of missions I had a handle on the gameplay and was at a point where I had the freedom to shoot things up or have deep conversations with my crew at my own whim. I completed most of the side quests and finished the game wanting more; I immediately began a renegade playthrough, though I did not have time to get very far.

Overall, Mass Effect took huge steps forward for inclusiveness in games. Its racial diversity is unlike any I have seen in a game: nearly all of the major and minor human NPCs are people of color, and none of them are stereotypes. In another impressive step, not only is there an important character–the Normandy’s pilot, Joker–who happens to be disabled, but a conversation with him reveals the many different layers of ableism he has experienced throughout his life. Unfortunately, the game stumbles when it comes to gender inclusiveness. While the game seems quite egalitarian on the surface, notably in the ability to choose whether to play as a male or female character, I have noticed some deep sexism in the world-building (galaxy-building?), some subtle and some not. I will be writing about how the game explicitly addresses sexism, racism, and other social issues in a future post; for now I want to examine how the fiction of the game has been influenced by sexism on the part of the developers.

I. The Alien Race of Women–I Mean, Asari

The Asari are the all-female race of blue aliens that are iconic to the game. The Asari member of Shepard’s crew is Dr. Liara T’Soni, a (relatively) young scientist and possible romantic interest for both male and female Shepard. Liara is a frustrating character because she is likable, but she was clearly designed to be as likable as possible–to a certain type of male gamer. Go on any gaming forum discussing her and there will be multiple posts talking about how hot she is because she is so “innocent.” This perception of her seems to stem from her nervousness when talking to Shepard and her implied virginity.

The positioning of innocence as an attractive trait in women has its roots in patriarchy, related to how patriarchy encourages the infantilization of women: women are portrayed as childlike and unable to make decisions for themselves, necessitating a male protector and provider who knows what’s good for her (thus maintaining patriarchy, despite how insulting and inaccurate this characterization is). The infantilization of women is seen in many aspects of our culture, and a quick Google search turns up examples in law, religion, advertising, and fashion. For this reason, I find the obsession with Liara’s innocence to be creepy, not to mention in contradiction with other aspects of her personality, namely her actual age–over 100–and her extensive experience as a scientist. (For the record, I also think rompers are awful.)

In addition, while some have praised BioWare for including the option of a lesbian relationship in the game, Liara is, frankly, a cop-out, a way to have hot girl-on-girl action for straight men without actually having any gays: both Liara and the codex explain at length how the Asari don’t really have a gender (by which I assume they mean “sex”, since sex and gender are two different things and the Asari are clearly gendered female) and they mate through psychic mind connections. While I don’t think the actual development of the relationship or even the sex scene is outrageously exploitative (though I would note that the sex scene with Liara is slightly longer, with more nudity than the others), when contrasting the romance options for male and female Shepard, I found the lack of a romance option between two men to be conspicuous. The absence of a gay male romance, which is due at least in part to the gaming community’s reputation as a notoriously homophobic space, implies that the female Shepard/Liara romance is mostly for straight male titillation rather than a concern for the inclusion of LGBTQI folks.

Obviously, my problems with how one Asari character is written shouldn’t condemn an entire species, but the Asari as a race are also problematic. In short, they are every female stereotype or cliche rolled up into one new species. According to the codex, the Asari have three stages of life: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Matriarch (otherwise known on Earth as the “crone”). These stages just so happen to correspond with what were, until fairly recently though arguably still today, the three acceptable roles for women in society. Making these archetypes an explicit aspect of an alien race that just happens to be all-female is at worst sexist and at best lazy and uncreative.

In addition, the Asari are sexualized to a much farther extent than any other species (partially as a result of point two, below). The first Asari the player meets in the game is called the “Consort,” and yes, she runs what amounts to a brothel: clients meet her for her “services,” which may or may not be sex. Walking through the Consort’s chambers, the player overhears nervous aliens telling the Consort’s aides that this is their “first time.” While the consort is not explicitly a prostitute, the situation is clearly meant to humorously resemble a brothel. The player can also watch Asari strippers dance at the club called Chora’s Den. Thirdly, Liara and the codex both describe how Asari can mate with any intelligent being through a sort of psychic mind-meld. Now, I am all for science fiction experimenting with different kinds of sexuality and sexual practices, but this is another case of pandering to straight men. It’s no coincidence that the all-female race is the one that can mate with anybody.*

Even Matriarch Benezia, one of the most powerful and wise beings in the galaxy, is sexualized. She had to have huge breasts and a revealing outfit because even though she is old and powerful, she still needs to be sexy, as the primary purpose of the Asari (just like women here on Earth) is to be attractive to straight men. Their second purpose is to serve men: as Liara drops her research to serve Shepard, as the Consort serves her clients, as the dancers serve the bar’s patrons, Benezia serves Saren and Sovereign. This turns her into a villain, but not even a willing one–she loses all agency because of Sovereign’s mind control, breaking it just enough to tell her daughter that she is not worth saving.

In another frustrating move, the Asari are known for their skills with Biotics, Mass Effect’s science fiction version of magic. This isn’t a problem in and of itself, but in the context of video games as a medium and RPGs in particular, there is a sexist trend of always putting women in the role of magic user, with few exceptions, ever since White Mage was the only female character in the original Final Fantasy. The codex also pays lip service to Asari Commandos, who are described as extremely deadly; the player encounters them in one battle in the entire game, during which they didn’t nearly live up to the hype.

As another detail that serves to emphasize how stereotypically feminine the Asari are supposed to be, the Asari member of the Council is representative of compassion and diplomacy. Where the Turian member represents military action and strength, and the Salarian represents intelligence and strategy, both men, the Asari member of the Council is the only woman and occupies the traditional role of women: peacemaker. Because she’s so good at understanding peoples’ feelings. Again, this isn’t bad in and of itself, but combined with all the other ways in which the Asari are stereotypically feminine, it belies the sexist assumptions about women in the mind of the people who created them, namely that the creators buy into gender essentialist arguments about how women are. (That article even cites the sexist and simply wrong idea behind the arrangement of the Council [emphasis original]: “A common corollary belief is that while men are physically and rationally superior, women are morally superior.”)

The Asari are the only alien species in the game with visible females, so they were made to be “hyper-female”, encompassing the stereotypical roles for human women. This is not only sexist and gender essentialist but a failure of imagination: why would an alien race conform to our (incorrect, arbitrary) human assumptions about what women are or should be? Good science fiction challenges our deepest-held assumptions, including those about gender, femininity and masculinity. With the Asari, Mass Effect only reinforces the idea that all women are a certain way, and that way should be as pleasing to straight men as possible.

II. Why Are There No Ugly Female Aliens?

In general, the portrayal of women in Mass Effect is better than many games. It meets the required minimum of having female characters that aren’t hypersexualized: they have relatively realistic proportions and their clothing is appropriately similar to the male characters’, for the most part. There remains, however, a notable discrepancy between men and women in the galaxy of the game: all the women are hot, but not all of the men are.

Look at the varied body types we see among male aliens in the game. In addition to the humans (most of whom, I will grant, are meant to be attractive–Kaiden certainly is), we see the lizard-like Turians, the hulking and reptilian Krogan, the large and cattle-like Elcor, the amphibian Salarians, the squat Volus, and the jellyfish-like Hanar.

All the female aliens present in the game, aside from a single female Quarian (who I will get to in a moment), are Asari**. The Asari, a species with all the issues I outlined above, that seem to be a space representation of femininity. This is Othering via world-building: male is the default for most races, but the ones that have females at all are so female they encompass female archetypes, run brothels, strip in bars, and have sex with anyone and anything.

Go ahead and do a word search for “female” on those Wikia articles linked above. It isn’t even mentioned on the Elcor or Volus pages; the only mention on the Hanar page is to say that there is “no discernible difference” between male and female Hanar, which is only problematic because of human sexism–see the side note about gender presentation below.

The only mention of “female” on the Krogan page is how all the Krogan females are on the Krogan homeworld trying to have as many babies as possible. Convenient! The only mention of “female” on the Salarian page is to note that the species is 90% male, and the females also all stay on the Salarian kitchen–I mean, home word, but it’s okay because they are all powerful politicians. Of course, this means they needn’t appear in the game. How convenient!

The only mention of “female” on the page about the Turians is in the “trivia” section, and it says: “No female turians are seen in the game. This is because there was insufficient development time and memory budget to support two different versions of the same species.”

This explains everything. The reason the stuff about Krogan and Salarian females seems like convenient excuses is because they are: when time and budget were tight, the non-hot females were the first to go. Other than humans, there was only room for one model for each species, and for the most part, the females were disposed of–except for Tali, the only Quarian in the entire game. Having only males did not stop the developers from having many Turian and Krogan NPCs, so why does the player never encounter even one other female Quarian? I mean, other than the convenient excuse that all the Quarians never venture outside of their own fleet (except when they do). Tali is saved from the chopping block because, unlike Turian or Krogan females, she is acceptably attractive: she has an hourglass figure, a sexy accent, and her mask allows fans to imagine that she has a face like their favorite actress.

The absence of something as insignificant as females may be explained, but that doesn’t mean it is excused. And it certainly doesn’t mean that Mass Effect’s depiction of a galactic society where every single woman, both alien and human, just so happens to have a humanoid body a supermodel would be jealous of isn’t sexist, messed up, and wrong.

A side note on gender presentation

The thing that kills me about the “we didn’t have time to make any females!” excuse is that there is no real reason male and female Turians, for example, couldn’t look just alike above their clothes. Not all animals on Earth have sexual dimorphism; why should all aliens?

Technically some of those Turian or Krogan or Hanar NPCs in the game could be female, despite having deep voices and no breasts. There is no reason an alien society should have the same ideas about femininity or masculinity as we do (or have such ideas at all!). The catch is, only humans are playing Mass Effect; therefore, any creature lacking sufficient feminine markers are going to be assumed (in this unfortunate case, correctly) to be male. The developers could, however, have easily challenged players’ ideas about femininity by casually referring to the ugly, deep-voiced Elcor ambassador as “she”.

As I said above, good science fiction challenges our most basic assumptions. Unfortunately, Mass Effect is not good science fiction. In fact, it seems to embrace our own societal “common wisdom” about women and femininity all too wholeheartedly. I can only hope someone on the development team has read Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness or some Octavia Butler before writing Mass Effect 2.

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* One thing I do find interesting about the Asari is the idea that “purebloods”–Asari who mate with other Asari–are lesser, as they don’t bring anything new to the species. It’s an interesting inversion of the “Mudblood” idea; the term is from Harry Potter, but it’s a common trope in fantasy: see the vast number of stories about half-elves angsting that they don’t belong to either the elf or human cultures.

** Some may object that the Rachni Queen is a female “ugly” alien; while this is true, they aren’t part of Citadel culture in any way; they aren’t meant to be seen as equal to humans or the other intelligent species. Not only that, but, as an insectoid species, the Rachni Queen’s only purpose is to breed lots of children–quite patriarchal. Also, one exception does not outweigh the six other species that are “ugly” and all male.

Thank you to Kateri, Simon Ferrari, and Ryan Gan for their help in the preparation of this post.

When I first started playing Mass Effect last week, I hated it. This is one game that makes a terrible first impression and probably loses players because of it.

After creating my character and watching a brief opening, I found myself thrust onto an alien planet with my two squadmates, and, after a tutorial that was at once bare-bones and overwhelming, I was killed by some disgusting reanimated corpses. Try again!

On a second attempt I made it through the area and came upon a couple of NPCs to talk to; I rushed through the dialogue since I was eager to learn more about the combat and how to actually play the game. The next area was more difficult, and I ended up dying again.

Just as I felt I was getting a hang of the combat, the level was over and it was back to cutscenes and dialogue. When I regained control of Shepard, she was in the office of the human ambassador at the Citadel, the major city of the game. This began a three-hour-long segment of running around talking to people, listening to exposition, and gathering my crew, all while I was itching to get back into the action.

To say the least, it takes a while to get used to Mass Effect’s pacing.

The game had other problems at the start, too. While I was thrilled to be able to play as a female character, I was worried there would be a Fallout 3 sort of situation where the dialogue for the female character wouldn’t make sense, or other characters would refer to me as “he.” This fear came about because of a scene at the beginning where Shepard is talking to her two human squadmates about humanity’s place at the Citadel, and includes “beautiful women” on her list of “things humanity has to offer aliens”. Really, now? I could see how a heterosexual man might say this, but why would a woman objectify herself, reduce herself to a commodity that could be used to appease aliens? (Not to mention it is a nonsensical comment–all aliens are heterosexual males or lesbians who are attracted to human women that meet our own arbitrary beauty standards? That’s a lot of assumptions!) I found it hard to believe any woman would say that, let alone the Commander Shepard I was playing, who threatened a man at a bar for calling her “princess.” Fortunately, this is the only instance of dissonance so far I have seen between my character as I play her and what she says.

The first major alien species you really get to know is the Asari; I have so many problems with this group that they will be getting their own post. For now I will just say they are a strange, dark mark on what is otherwise an impressively inclusive game.

In particular, the game excels at racial inclusiveness. You can choose the race of your character–and you aren’t limited to white/black/Latin@/Asian like in Fallout 3–and many important and minor NPCs are people of color: both of your human squadmates, Captain Anderson, and the human ambassador are people of color. You help out a reporter named Emily Wong. You meet a South Asian man mourning for his wife, who died in combat. Many NPCs also have accents, like the British doctor on your crew and the Dutch medic at the Citadel. Mass Effect makes it clear that in the far future, all humans will be welcome, not just white Americans.

This inclusiveness is part of what kept me playing the game through all the endless dialogue, and I’m very glad I did, because now I’m really enjoying it. Having settled into the proper pace, and finally coming to terms with the combat, the game has actually become quite fun. The story is intriguing, the characters three-dimensional, and the flirting hilariously awkward. I’m looking forward to playing through the rest of it and writing about it here.

So via Critical Distance I found this feminist critique of BioShock, written by Richard Terrell (who, you may have noticed, is a man). But it is really not sitting right with me. His thesis is that BioShock depicts women as weak and men as strong. So I thought the rest of the article would try to show how BioShock upholds patriarchal values.

And it does, at first, but I don’t really agree with the analysis. He starts off talking about the Little Sisters. Obviously, everyone else has pointed out the sexist dichotomy of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. But he states that when you play either good or evil, Little Sisters are commodified. I disagree with that, based on my friend’s* analysis that I wrote about over here: the entire point of the good path is to show that the Little Sisters are PEOPLE, not commodities; as Mighty Ponygirl states, you have to reject Randian philosophy and accept that they AREN’T resources for the taking in order to save them. And if you don’t, and you harvest them, you get the bad ending–you’re evil.

I’m also not totally sure I buy the argument about taking away the girls’ agency when you save them, since you are ignoring their resistance. These are very young girls we are talking about, not adult women, though I suppose your mileage may vary on this point.

The criticism of Tenenbaum is where the feminist analysis is really weak. Terrell describes how Tenenbaum is initially shown as logical, protective, and strong, saying that she is “a woman whose life style flies in the face of the patriarchal woman,” but then she “begins to artificially morph falling into the patriarchal gender role of women.” While I agree that Tenenbaum not shooting the player when zie harvests the first Little Sister (if that path is chosen, mind) when she had just shot a splicer for even trying to do the same is a bit of a plot-hole (though she could have known that the player was much more powerful than any splicer and could have feared getting killed, leaving the Little Sisters with no protection whatsoever), I don’t think that Tenenbaum morphs into a patriarchal woman. She doesn’t change, we just find out more about her, and as it turns out, she is rather complex (the post doesn’t touch on her background in a German World War II concentration camp). Just because we find out that she cares about the little girls doesn’t make her NOT a brilliant geneticist, and a Holocaust survivor, and everything else she is.

Terrell’s analysis is based on the idea that “logical = male = good / emotional = female = bad,” an association that is used and repeated by the author with no critical examination when he says that Tenenbaum defies patriarchy at first by being logical but succumbs to it by being emotional. I mean, should Tenenbaum have NOT been emotionally invested in the Little Sisters? I think that would have been entirely unrealistic, and even bizarre since in order to follow the good path, you must care (to some degree) about them yourself. In addition, an important concept of feminism is that logic and emotion are not exact opposites (example: it is logical for one to feel sad after one’s dog dies), the two qualities aren’t inherent to one gender or another, and they are both essential for all human beings. A feminist critique should take into account the fact that it is natural and human to be able to both reason and feel emotion, often at once.

Further, the author notes that Fontaine puts down Tenenbaum by calling her a “Mother Goose.” The author seems to forget that Fontaine is the villain of the game, so the player isn’t necessarily supposed to agree with him. I didn’t quite get his point here, but the Critical Distance post sums it up as “Dr. Tenenbaum’s redemption comes through an acquiescence to patriarchal ideas of motherhood.” But I don’t see what is specifically patriarchal about Tenenbaum’s maternal instincts. She has them, and that is enough to make her a tool of the patriarchy? (Should Tenenbaum, and women in general, NOT have maternal instincts in order to be feminist?) I would contend that Tenenbaum is actually a feminist mother in that she is a genius with a career AND a single mother figure! She is the head of her little non-traditional family, after all.

Tenenbaum is not an unproblematic character from a feminist perspective, but she is a lot more complex than the author of this post gives her credit for. The post also doesn’t mention the botanist, who is a woman and another genius; this gives the game at least two female geniuses, when most forms of entertainment rarely give us any.

I also take issue with this statement: “Throughout the rest of the game Tenenbaum guides the player through various tasks and objectives. She tells the player what to do, and the player does it. Simply by playing through the game, the player fulfils [sic] the typical patriarchal male role of a strong, proactive, decisive force.” How is the player proactive and decisive? I believe the player is actually reactive and obedient. The fiction supports me on this one: the entire point of the twist with Atlas, the line “A man chooses, a slave obeys,” is that the player has been doing what zie is told the entire time, without any true free will; zie is not a Randian genius but a cog in the machine. This is pretty much the entire point of the game and is, as others have written, a critique on the limitations of video games.

As my friend* pointed out to me, the game takes this critique even further by showing how the Little Sisters are conditioned to feel safe around and attached to the Big Daddies and negative toward women (Tenenbaum in particular). This social conditioning is something everyone goes through, and it affects (and to an extent controls) peoples’ thoughts an actions in a deep and subtle way. In feminist theory, patriarchy is a form of social conditioning that teaches people that there are certain traits that are inherent to men and women, that men are strong and logical and intelligent and women are weak and emotional, and so on and so on. In this sense, the game is actually agreeing with and explaining feminist theory.

The post goes on to describe the misogyny present in the game: the cartoons that cheerfully show violence against women, Dr Steinem and certain characters’ obsession with beauty. After several paragraphs describing these things in a negative tone, the post ends with: “[Rapture is] a place where women are forced to play in a man’s world according to his rules, and there’s nothing the player can do about it. And what’s worst of all, Rapture is a place that is like our own in many ways.”

… Right. At first I thought the author was criticizing the inclusion of the cartoons, the character of Diane McClintock, etc., but at the end he seems to understand that these things were included as criticism of the time period the game takes place in as well as the modern world. But doesn’t that undermine his thesis that the game isn’t feminist?

Even though the game may seem very problematic on the surface, overall I found it to have some deep feminist thought and themes behind it. It seems like Terrell couldn’t decide either way.

I would really like to hear from you guys about this one. Am I missing anything? I think part of the problem here is that Terrell looks at the game purely through a cursory understanding of feminist theory and I am coming at it as a practical feminist. (Another problem is that I use way too many parentheticals.) But a lot of you are probably more well-read about BioShock than I am, and I would like to hear more from that perspective.

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* The friend I keep referring to is Alex, who sometimes comments here (hi!). He’s a lot smarter than me (just ask about the Merchant King in Assassin’s Creed).

And now, W!F continues its tradition of timeliness with this post about Gears of War 2, which came out six months ago.

Recently I happened to watch the notorious tear-jerking scene in Gears of War 2 where one of the main heroes, Dom, is finally reunited with his wife, Maria, after she’s been tortured by the Locust for ten years, and then he shoots her in the head.

Okay, it’s not quite like that. But it’s close enough that it made me fairly angry. From what I see, it looks like Dom thinks he’s found his beautiful wife, but when it turns out she’s not so beautiful anymore, he decides the best course of action is a “mercy killing”. This all plays out in about a minute. He takes ONE MINUTE to make the decision to KILL HIS WIFE. Instead of, you know, getting her some medical attention at least. That’s just ridiculous.

I had a short conversation on Twitter with Mr Ryan Gan of the JPAG where he came up with some possible explanations, but when it comes down to it, the in-game reasoning doesn’t matter much. I was completely missing the point when I criticized that aspect of the scene. Even if the in-game reasoning were completely solid and logical, the game still utilizes the tired and sexist Women in Refrigerators trope; it is still part of a bigger and disturbing pattern of entertainment where female characters are killed off in order to develop or provide motivation for a male character. It’s not only lazy writing but lazy game design [relevant part is after the spoiler warning].

Getting lost in sorting out in-game justifications for sexism or racism or homophobia or transphobia and so on muddles the issue: just because there is an in-game explanation for something doesn’t mean it’s not offensive. Of course the people who created the thing are going to have some kind of flimsy rationale for it existing!

We saw this a lot with the Resident Evil 5 controversy. When critics expressed shock that RE5 contained African zombies actually wearing grass skirts and wielding spears, some responded that this was all explained in the game; the residents of Kiujuju regressed to a more primitive state as a side effect of the zombie virus.

Great, so there’s an in-game explanation for it. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s still a blatant racist caricature. In addition, why is a certain way of dressing considered “regressing” to a “more primitive state”? The thinking behind this design choice is ignorant and lazy at best. (Once again, N’Gai Croal has the answers.)

Now, this does not mean in-game explanations are completely irrelevant when criticizing games. The explanation for why something is a certain way or why a character does something can have important affects on the meaning of that thing or a person’s interpretation of the game. But these explanations cannot excuse lazy or ignorant writing, and/or helping to perpetuate institutionalized oppression. It’s something that generally needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis, but here’s a hint: if the criticism has to do with racism, transphobia, and/or other oppressions, then the in-game rationale isn’t going to matter very much.

I’m working on a post about Crisis Core, but I realized I should really get at least somewhat near the end before I start making judgment calls, especially about the story. In the meantime, I’ll be talking about Quest for Glory’s feminist and not-so-feminist ideas.

Quest for Glory is my favorite game series of all time. For the uninitiated, QFG is a series of classic Sierra adventure games (similar to the more well-known series King’s Quest, Space Quest, etc.), with the twist that it incorporates role-playing elements such as class selection, statistics, and combat, as well as the ability to export your character at the end of each game in the 5-game series to be used in the sequel (up until the last, of course). QFG is one of few game series to truly deliver a sense of adventure and heroism for me. In addition, it has the best magic system of any game, ever, by using magic not only by hurling fireballs in combat but to solve problems; this is something I rarely see in fantasy literature, let alone games. And who can forget the charming, pun-filled humor?

But how does this classic series stand up to feminist critique? I’m currently replaying the series yet again in honor of the release of the previously-mentioned Trial By Fire VGA remake, so as I play through the games, I’ll try to answer this question to the best of my ability.

Let’s start at the beginning. This post contains spoilers, by the way.

Throughout the series, you play as the Nameless Hero–a white, blond-haired blue-eyed male (though I think he does somehow dye his hair light brown at some point). The original idea was to offer the player a choice between races (fantasy races; more accurately: species) in addition to class, but the technology was too limited at the time¹. In today’s world, choice of race and gender, sometimes even species, are pretty much expected in RPGs. The choice of avatar does, however, fall in line with both the setting progression of the series as well as the intended evocation of other fantasy heroes like Luke Skywalker. It also makes sense in the context of SYWTBAH alone, with its Germanic/European-fairy-tale setting.

Oddly, but also hardly surprisingly, every character in this first game is white, except for Abdulla Doo, a guest at the inn in Spielburg. Race–and Abdulla Doo–will definitely be revisited in posts about Trial By Fire and Wages of War, the second and third games of the series. For now, I’ll just say that Abdulla Doo marks the beginning of a trend of racial stereotypes that the series never really bucks.

Since QFG, as both an adventure game and an RPG, is all about character and story, it’s important to look at the roles and actions of female characters.

• Zara: Magic Shop owner, accomplished wizard
• Amelia Appleberry: aka, The Healer
• Hilde: Centaur farmer’s daughter, produce seller
• Elsa von Spielburg: Baron’s daughter, absent for 99% of the game
• Baba Yaga: Hag, evil witch; antagonist of the game

There is also the enchantress Erana, who never actually appears in this game and is actually said to be dead, but her character is introduced as the creator of the protective aura around Spielburg and the peaceful, magical valley known as Erana’s Peace.

Oddly, yet again unsurprisingly, the majority of characters in the game are male (and all of the nameless brigand enemies–the only human enemies in the game–are male). The occupations of the female characters are overwhelmingly magical, especially if you include Erana. This unfortunately feeds into the same stereotype common in RPGs: women as magic users and men as melee fighters (though the latter is balanced a bit by Erasmus and the ability to choose to play as a magic user). The only exception to this rule appears to be Elsa.

Ah, Elsa von Spielburg. A slight twist on the tired and very un-feminist damsel in distress trope. Elsa, the daughter of the Baron, has been missing for ten years; she was kidnapped by brigands. In the climactic encounter of the game, the hero discovers that the notorious leader of the brigands was actually Elsa under an enchantment by Baba Yaga.

When it comes down to it, Elsa needs to be rescued by the male hero. And yet the storyline isn’t totally offensive because of one important fact: the only thing the enchantment changed was Elsa’s memory, meaning that her leadership and oft-mentioned sword skills are 100% her own doing. (After the enchantment is broken, Elsa mentions wanting to learn to swordfight before she was kidnapped, but the elitist weapon master refused to teach a girl, so she had to learn on her own.) However, we do have to wait until Dragon Fire to find out what happens to Elsa after returning to her (seemingly boring) place as the Baron’s daughter…

Baba Yaga is the primary antagonist of the game. Unfortunately, it’s obvious the game falls into the “beautiful = good, ugly = bad” trap, with our antagonist being an ugly ogress. While it’s clear that she is the willful cause of everything bad that happens in the story, it’s also clear that everything she does is for her own gain first and foremost. In that she is a step above most fantasy antagonists, as a character: she has some motivation, rather than just being evil for the hell of it. The Baron slighted her first, so she put a curse on him. The hero’s first encounter with her allows him to strike a deal; luckily she needs mandrake more than she needs to kill him.

This brings us to the interesting streak of gray that runs throughout the series, from the beginning. One of the three classes the player can choose is the Thief; as a thief, you can, in fact, break into villagers’ houses and steal their belongings, then sell them at the Thieves’ Guild. And yet you still end up a hero at the end of the game. More and more unhonorable and unheroic options are opened up to the player as the series progresses, and is even tracked by the Honor stat introduced in the second game. Other characters further demonstrate that things aren’t black-and-white: the rescue of the baron’s handsome but arrogant son, for example, reveals that the “evil” Kobold likely had a good reason for imprisoning him.

To sum up, So You Want to Be a Hero? is, for the most part, typically unfeminist fantasy fare, though it does show signs of wanting you to think a bit about your actions; we’ll see in future segments how the series matures and grows in complexity, and how well the series does in its portrayals of various cultures, both real and in myth.

1. I read this in an interview with Lori Cole, and I really wish I could find it again. She used centaur as an example of an alternate race, but human races and gender were not mentioned, as far as I remember. Naturally, I would love to see a QFG-style game with robust character selection/creation options. Well, I would love to see more QFG-style games period, but…

(… with informative links! Last updated: 6/1)

[Edit 16 Oct 2009: It has come to my attention that this post contains a factual error, which has now been corrected, and more content has been added. All changes are in italics, with the date.]

As someone who is completely in favor of games as a recognized art form, and who will be attempting to critique games with that mindset in the near future (I swear), I feel compelled to call out sexism in video games when I see it. And nowhere in video games is it more blatant than in GTA IV.

First, some facts:
– I am not in favor of having the game banned or otherwise censored. Free speech and all that.
– No, I haven’t played the game. But the things I bring up here have been confirmed by people who have played the game, or by gameplay footage. Along with that, I can only actually point out things that I HAVE confirmed happening, so there very well may be more.
– I am well aware of the style and history of the GTA series.
– I do not think GTA IV will cause healthy, balanced adults or teens to go out and rape women/shoot cops/whatever.
– I do not think the game is completely void of redeeming qualities. For example, the graphics are very nice.

The game world of Grand Theft Auto IV is an environment of misogyny. The most grievous evidence of this is the sexualized violence against women, though other details contribute. Together, the evidence suggests a deliberate attempt to create a world that devalues women and reinforces misogynistic attitudes.

Sexualized Violence Against Women
In GTA IV, the player character can pick up prostitutes, have sex with them, and then kill them. Even if the sex isn’t rape, which hasn’t yet been confirmed as something that can occur in the game, murder just after sex is still sexualized violence. In GTA IV, the player can only do this to women. There are no male prostitutes and the player cannot have a boyfriend. The only characters the player can commit sexualized violence against are female ones [Edit: This is incorrect, though the point stands: there is one exception. See below.]. That is a misogynistic environment.

(Added 10/16/09:) One oversight from when I originally wrote this post was leaving out the case of one mission where you take a gay man out on a date in order to assassinate him, which is the one exception to my previous statement that only women are victims of sexualized violence in the game. (Chalk it up to straight privilege.) Since homophobia and misogyny are so deeply connected, it’s not surprising that the one man the player can commit sexualized violence against is gay. Source. Thanks to Kateri for pointing this out to me, and for the link.

Further, the game presents the mature subject matter in a very immature way. Suggested further reading on this point: “Mature vs Mature” — Man Bytes Blog.

Lack of Female Characters with Depth
The only major characters in GTA IV are male. The only female characters in the game are nameless Liberty City inhabitants, prostitutes, and random enemies [Edit 10/16/09: This is incorrect, though there still aren't any female characters of importance and/or depth. See below for more thoughts on the female characters in GTA IV.]. This is a serious flaw in a work of fiction. There is no reason to have no major female characters with as much depth as many of the male characters apparently have.

Edit 10/16/09: Two people who have played GTA IV had this to say on Twitter about the female characters in the game. I am quoting them and linking to their tweets with permission.
From @fyreball13:

The statement that women are faceless and nameless is a gray area. There are two women you interact with often, one being Roman’s cousin* [see correction below], another being a girl that is working for the police and the third being a woman who deals drugs.
*One is Niko’s cousin Roman’s girlfriend/wife. She does help a fair bit, but neither are MAJOR players.
However, the MAIN characters that Niko hangs out with etc. are all male and the female charcters seemingly disappear after they have moved the story along, usually introducing you to a man who can give you newer missions.

From @stillgray:

Most, if not all of the male characters (even the “likable” ones) are misogynists in GTA IV.
The moment you step off the boat in GTA IV, your cousin Roman goes on about easy American women and denigrates those from home.
The whole intro sets the tone for the rest of the game. We know where the developers stand on views of gender.

Other Details
There exists an internet cafe called Tw@, pronounced “twat.” Twat is “vulgar synonym for the human vulva, vagina, or clitoris, and is used as a derogatory epithet” (Wikipedia). It’s not clever or satirical to name a place after a derogatory term for female genitalia. It’s immature and contributes to the atmosphere of misogyny.

Also, a female fast food worker asks the player character if he wants a handjob with his burger. Because clearly a female character cannot exist unless there is the possibility of some sexual interaction. The immaturity paints games as something for young teens.

Update: Via Feminist Gamers, an interesting comment by Cola on Feministing about a certain mission in GTA IV, quoted in part (full comment here):

“Just as I was starting to think Niko was really great, I realised he was a moralising hypocrite. Oh, and then he hit a woman he was kidnapping for trying to get away and referred to her as ‘the bitch.’ Then he hit her again to get her to look at him so he could take a picture of her gagged face to send to her father.

It was really hard to keep playing after that. This woman was portrayed, in contrast to the protagonist, as selfish, shallow, and bitchy. I had nothing but sympathy for her, because she was justifiably scared and angry, but she was being cast as this shrieking whore (she hit on Niko before he kidnapped her).”

Clearly the portrayal and treatment of women in this game leaves a lot to be desired.

The fact that this game is receiving nothing but the highest marks from game reviewers and is being hailed as the greatest game ever made upsets me. Is this really something we want to hold up as gaming’s finest? (I can’t help thinking back to the analysis of No More Heroes I linked to last post, and how NMH is a direct satire of Western GTA fans.) I realize the game does technically impressive things, but what is it saying with that technology? Isn’t that just as important?

General Reading, or People Who Put it Better Than I Do
“GTA discussion… over there” — Feminist Gamers (with a link to Feministing)
“Some GTA IV Questions” — Man Bytes Blog
“I’ve Decided That It’s Simple After All” — The True Confessions of an Hourly Bookseller
“How Can Grand Theft Auto Transition from Base Entertainment to Art?” — Latoya Peterson, Cerise Magazine (May 2008). Fantastic article, highly recommended.
“Grand Theft Auto IV” — Scholarly Gamer. A general (but interesting and thorough) critique of the game, but contains some concise examinations of the misogyny and homophobia in the game.
“Oh, right… Grand Theft Auto is coming out…” — No Cookies for Me. (How did I miss this the first time around?)
Edit 10/16/09: Added this post by Thomas Cross:
– Blog Banter: Quitter! — Shouldn’t Be Gaming (Tom describes why he stopped playing the game.)

Common Defenses
“It’s just a game!”
No. Games are creative expressions just like books, movies, and television, and are thus open to critique.
Suggested reading:
“The Problem with That Line ‘It’s Just a Game’ — Are Our Games Our Fantasies?” — MTV Multiplayer
“It’s Just a Game” — Feminist Gamers

“But you kill men, too.” Or, “Why is killing a prostitute worse than killing a pedestrian?”
The problem is not just the killing. I do not think you shouldn’t be able to kill female characters in a video game. The problem is the sexualized violence that is directed only at women, as well as the greater misogynistic atmosphere the game reinforces through other details and the lack of any female characters with depth. The rampant violence is NOT equal-opportunity.

“But sexism is a problem in this game/movie/any and all other media.”
Yeah, it is. But right now I’m talking about GTA IV.

“There are no incentives to killing prostitutes.”
Yes, there are. You gain health back by hiring them and you get back the money you spent after killing them. That’s more incentive than mowing down pedestrians.

“It’s not part of the story. Rockstar isn’t promoting doing this sort of thing.”
Except that they are promoting it by allowing it to happen. Liberty City is not a real world, it is a deliberately crafted piece of fiction; things just don’t happen. Everything in the world and everything that happens has to be deliberately allowed by the creators. Isn’t it unrealistic how there are no children at all in Liberty City? That’s because the game would definitely get an AO rating if the player were allowed to kill children. Developer choice.

On this point, see also: “On IGN’s Grand Theft Auto IV Video” — Cruise Elroy