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Warum Spiele auch unbequem sein dürfen

Veröffentlicht: 11.07.2012 | von: loess | Rubrik: Blog

“Der Spieler soll sich schlecht fühlen.” Jörg Friedrich vom Spec Ops: The Line-Entwicklerstudio Yager wird dieser Tage in nahezu jeder Besprechung des Spiels mit diesem Satz zitiert, der so völlig aus dem Rahmen zu fallen scheint, wenn es ums Thema Videospiele geht. Es wirkt ein wenig so, als verbiete der Begriff “Spiele” allein schon eine Assoziation mit Aspekten, die über den bloßen Unterhaltungswert des Mediums hinaus gehen. Spielen hat vom Klang her etwas kindlich naives, selbst “erwachsene” Spiele bedienen allzu oft nur die infantilen Freuden am Kaputtmachen und sind nicht viel mehr als die hintergrund- und folgenlose Ballerei auf dem Spielplatz. Ein Videospiel soll ja schließlich Spaß machen. Und auch wenn dieser in Spec Ops: The Line dank bewährter Shooter-Mechaniken nicht zu kurz kommen soll, gibt es diese Momente, in denen das Spiel die Rechtmäßigkeit dieses Spaßes in Frage stellt, Zweifel an den eigenen Handlungen aufkommen lässt und sogar manch einen Spieler dazu bringt, erst einmal den Controller beiseite zu legen. Es ist nur konsequent, dass irgendwann auch endlich mal ein großer Titel die unbequemen Folgen der oft gedankenlosen Befolgung von Spielanweisungen aufzeigt, aber kann das wirklich gut gehen? Will man sich nun wirklich auch noch beim Spielen schlecht fühlen?

Deprimierende Siegesfeier

So neu ist die Idee, in einem Spiel auch mal anstrengende und unangenehme Passagen einzubauen, natürlich nicht. Erst vor ein paar Jahren konnte mit Heavy Rain ein anderer aufwendig produzierter Titel einem durchaus die gute Laune rauben und deprimiert zurücklassen, doch war es auch mehr interaktiver Film als klassisches Videospiel. Es ist einer dieser Titel gewesen, von denen man sich zunächst eine Revolution des Mediums versprach, weil er eine gänzlich andere Spielerfahrung bot als der normierte Rest, der sonst im PS3-Laufwerk ratterte. Doch die Revolution blieb aus. Videospiele sind abseits der experimentierfreudigeren Indie-Studios nach wie vor auf pure Unterhaltung getrimmt, genau darum bricht Jörg Friedrich mit seiner Aussage nun wieder eine Diskussion los, die in wenigen Wochen Feuilleton und Massenmarkt nicht mehr interessieren werden. Wenn Spec Ops: The Line aus den Verkaufscharts verschwunden ist, kommen Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 und Medal of Honor: Warfighter, die außer dem dämlichen Doppelpunkt voraussichtlich leider so gar nichts mit den gewagten Ansätzen des Yager-Spiels gemeinsam haben werden. Es ist irgendwie auch undenkbar, das ein CoD-Titel jemals zum Reflektieren des eigenen Handelns anregen kann, das soll es auch gar nicht. Aus wirtschaftlicher Sicht ist ein durchs Spiel ausgelöstes Unbehagen ein Schuss ins Knie, das hat das Medium mit anderen gemeinsam. “Antichrist” gucken weniger Leute als “Transformers”, im Radio läuft Rihanna und nicht Mars Volta und “Mondscheintarif” haben sicher auch mehr Menschen gelesen als “Im Krebsgang”. Leichte Unterhaltung hat immer die Nase vor schwerer Kost, was auch vollkommen okay und nachvollziehbar ist, nur hemmt diese Einsicht ein vergleichsweise junges Medium wie das der Videospiele in seinen Entfaltungsmöglichkeiten. Stumpf mag nach wie vor Trumpf sein, aber irgendwann hat auch mal der hartgesottenste Kirmes-DJ die Schnauze voll von David Guetta und will etwas hören, was ihn in irgendeiner Weise noch berührt. Dass auch Videospiele nicht immer knallen müssen, sondern durchaus in der Lage dazu sind, den Spieler auf emotionaler Ebene zu erreichen und somit einen nachhaltigeren Mehrwert gegenüber purer Explosionsorgien zu bieten, haben sie längst bewiesen. Shadow of the Colossus nämlich. Oder auch Alice: Madness Returns. Was wäre die Games-Branche nur ohne ihre Doppelpunkte?

Wann kommt die Sonne?

Jetzt bin ich aber sicherlich der Letzte, der nur noch elaborierte und unbequeme Indieproduktionen zockt und die Banausen verurteilt, die “Charts spielen”. Die Forderung, dass jedes Spiel jetzt irgendwie verkünstelt und emotional fordernd daherkommen muss, wäre meinem Anliegen sogar gänzlich abträglich. Für den kommerziellen Markt ist das Plumpe zu wichtig, es ist vielmehr der Grund, warum das Medium überhaupt erst in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen ist. Ein bisschen zumindest. Jetzt wäre es dann aber auch mal an der Zeit, die neue Aufmerksamkeit der nicht zwingend gamesaffinen Medien, wie  Spiegel, ZEIT und die RTL 2 News, für eine Zurschaustellung des großen Potenzials zu nutzen. Und da darf man auch dem Sommerloch ein wenig dafür danken, dass es Spec Ops: The Line derzeit schafft, die Wahrnehmung von der rein stupiden Ballerei um ein paar wertvolle Facetten zu bereichern.

Sand im Getriebe der Spielebranche

Die puren Unterhaltungsprodukte unter den Videospielen bieten aber auch die Möglichkeit, mit der durch sie gewonnenen Finanzmasse auch einmal eine Risikoproduktion einzugehen. Damit meine ich nicht etwa die Umsetzung des gleichnamigen Brettspiels, die gibt es nämlich schon, ich fantasiere eher ein wenig darüber, wie schön es doch wäre, würden die großen Studios nicht allein die Gewinnmaximierung im Auge haben, sondern einen Teil des Geldes in mutige Projekte stecken, die vielleicht nur eine kleine Zielgruppe bedienen, dafür aber mit neuen Möglichkeiten und tieferen Spielerfahrungen aufwarten können. So wie die Einnahmen durch Madonnas Plattenverkäufe mal die Verträge für dutzende unbekannte Bands ermöglichten oder die großen Kino-Blockbuster das Arthouse-Kino refinanzieren (neben den staatlichen Fördermitteln, von denen die Gameswelt nach wie vor größtenteils nur träumen kann). Gerade im Indiebereich entdeckt man immer wieder, wie viel Luft nach oben eigentlich noch vorhanden ist, wie viel Spielraum das Medium bisher noch brach liegen lässt und welch emotionale Bandbreite durch die gegebene Interaktivität angesprochen werden kann. Erst kürzlich hat Journey mit allen Konventionen des Mediums gebrochen und war trotzdem für viele womöglich die Spieleoffenbarung des Jahres. Außerdem hat es bewiesen, dass auch ein solch ungewöhnlicher Titel nicht zwingend einem Minusgeschäft gleichkommen muss. Auch Spec Ops: The Line ist zumindest als Zwitter von bewährter Ballerkost und emotional fordernden Passagen derzeit wohl alles andere als ein kommerzieller Totalausfall.

In CoD gab’s auch einen Elefanten!

Vielleicht traut sich also in Zukunft, mit Blick auf diese positiven Erfahrungen, doch mal eines der großen Entwicklerstudios, zumindest gelegentlich die ausgetrampelten Pfade ihren großen Elefanten zu überlassen und dafür einigen Jungtieren neue Wege offen zu halten. Sollen die Aktionäre ruhig weiter auf ihren alten CoD-Tieren reiten, während man so ganz nebenbei den entdeckungslustigen Spielern einen wundersamen Streichelzoo voller neuer Ideen offeriert. Dass eines der Jungen dann auch mal wild ist, beißt und einem so gar nicht behagen will, das ist natürlich ein reales Risiko. Auch dass Spieler vor negativen Gefühlen zurückschrecken und sich einem Titel abwenden ist im Bereich des Möglichen. Es ist eben nicht immer alles Spaß. Und es darf nicht immer nur Spaß sein. Denn sich schlecht zu fühlen, wie es Jörg Friedrich propagiert, kann manchmal eben tatsächlich besser sein, als vor lauter “Spaß” so gar nichts mehr zu fühlen.

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Spec Ops und die Sache mit dem Antikriegsspiel

weltraumer.de

Ich hatte mich vor einiger Zeit (eher oberflächlich) schon mal mit dem Thema beschäftigt, ob Shooter denn Antikriegsspiele sein können (hier nachzulesen). Ich war für mich damals zum Schluss gekommen, dass es aufgrund der interaktiven Natur des Mediums per se nicht möglich sei.
Im Gegensatz zum Film, wo das Antikriegsgenre etabliert und anerkannt ist, machen Spiele den Konsumenten zum handelnden Akteur, der selber Entscheidungen treffen muss, die im Idealfall Einfluss auf die Handlung nehmen. Allerdings nur im begrenzten, von den Entwicklern vorgesehenen Rahmen. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung oder gar Hinterfragung mit meinen getroffenen Entscheidungen fällt schwer, weil ich mir stets darüber bewusst bin, dass ich so gehandelt habe, wie die Macher das für mich vorgesehen haben.

Obwohl der Text schon älter ist, gewinnt er durch Spec Ops: The Line wieder eine neue Aktualität. Der Shooter wird allenthalben für seine ungeschönte Darstellung des Kriegs gelobt, häufig als erstes Antikriegsspiel bezeichnet. Als ich daher meinen Blogeintrag auf Twitter mit Spec Ops in Verbindung brachte, wollte Manu wissen, ob sich meine Meinung denn nun geändert hat:

Nachdem ich das Spiel durchgespielt habe, muss ich sagen: Der unverblümte Sexismus, den das Spiel zur Schau stellt, ist unerträglich. Wir brauchen dringender denn je ein Genderdebatte für Games. Und…ach halt, falsches Thema.

Neuer Versuch: Nachdem ich das Spiel durchgespielt habe, muss ich sagen: Nein. Spec Ops: The Line ist ein hervorragender Shooter, der mich schockiert, verwirrt, wütend, zynisch oder konsterniert auf das Gesehene reagieren lässt. Krieg wird als entmenschlichendes Chaos dargestellt, das schnell der Kontrolle aller Beteiligten entgleitet und eine Eigendynamik entwickelt, an deren Ende nur Verlierer stehen. Insofern ist Spec Ops holistisch als Unterhaltungsprodukt zu sehen, das sich das Prädikat “Antikrieg” durchaus redlich verdient hat.

Aber: Betrachte ich im Detail, mit welchen Stilmitteln und in welchen Momenten der Entwickler Yager die beschriebenen Gefühle hervorruft, dann muss ich feststellen, dass dies eigentlich ausnahmslos in den Zwischensequenzen geschieht. Grausame Szenen, bei denen ich als Spieler Schlucken muss, werden permanent durchbrochen von Spielpassagen, in denen ich zu fetziger Rockmusik hunderte Gegner über den Haufen schieße. Deren tote Körper meist auch alle recht schnell wieder vom Schlachtfeld verschwinden. Statt mich permanent durch von mir produzierte Leichenberge waten zu lassen, räumt das Spiel (aufgrund technischer Limitierungen?) immer schön vor mir auf, bevor ich im Level weiterlaufe (bis auf die eine, so vielzitierte Szene). So verstärkt sich bei mir nur der Eindruck, dass die Gegner keine Menschen, sondern einfach anonyme, inhumane Hindernisse auf dem Weg zur nächsten Filmsequenz sind.

Nur verwundete Gegner krümmen sich stellenweise mit Schmerzen Boden. Ich kann sie entweder qualvoll sterben lassen oder brutal exekutieren – was Spec Ops mit zusätzlicher Munition belohnt! Die Mechanik überlagert die Geschehnisse. Warum sollte ich Munition verschwenden, um dem Gegner einen Gnadenschuss zu verpassen, wenn ich stattdessen bitter nötige Inventargegenstände fürs Einschlagen von Köpfen bekomme? Wirklich “antikrieg” wäre es gewesen, wenn mich Spec Ops am Ende des Spiels mit der Frage konfrontiert hätte, “War’s das wirklich wert? Für ein paar Gewehrkugeln hast so du so schnell und bereitwillig deine Menschlichkeit aufgegeben?”. Hat es aber nicht.

Es sind also nicht die Spielanteile von Spec Ops, die es “antikrieg” machen, sondern die Filmanteile. Die Macher bedienen sich eines anderen Mediums, dem des Films, um die Sinnlosigkeit des Krieges zu zeigen.
Man darf an dieser Stelle andere Meinung sein; nämlich der, dass man ein Spiel natürlich immer in seiner Ganzheitlichkeit konsumieren muss, die formale Trennung zwischen spielerischen und filmischen Elementen daher unzulässig sei. Wenn ich aber feststellen muss, dass sich die beiden Anteile in ihrer Wahrnehmung und Wirkung sich so offensichtlich beißen, komme ich nicht umhin, Spec Ops als Kriegsshooter mit Antikriegs-Filmpassagen zu bezeichnen.

Das macht den Titel aber trotzdem zum aufwühlendsten und lobenswertesten Versuch, sich dem Thema aus der Spielebranche anzunehmen, der sich angenehme vom bräsigen, gewaltgeilen Patriotismusbrei der Konkurrenz abhebt.

weltraumer.de

Militainment: Militärisch-popindustrieller Komplex

videogametourism.at

Militainment: Militärisch-popindustrieller Komplex

Miltainment mit Antikriegsfilm-Amspruch: Spec Ops - The Line

Modern Warfare, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Battlefield und wie sie alle heißen: Ermüdend viele große Blockbuster des AAA-Gamings besschränken sich heute darauf, US-amerikanische Soldaten in staubigen Dritte-Welt-Ländern beim Abknallen böser Terroristen abzubilden. Der vom Berliner Studio Yager entwickelte und auf den ersten Blick wie die vorgenannten aussehende Third-Person-Shooter Spec Ops: The Line tritt aktuell an, den Status quo etwas zu verändern, und was ich bisher davon gesehen habe, ist vielversprechend. Anstelle eines Reviews ein kritischer Rückblick auf die ungesunde Verwandtschaft zwischen Entertainment und militärisch-industriellem Komplex. 

Es ist - das hat sich auch in den letzten Wochen anlässlich der Gewalt- und Sexismusdiskussionen wieder bestätigt - schwierig, als Spielkulturinteressierter kritische Worte zu Gewaltdarstellung in Games zu äußern. Zu oft bekommt man Beifall von denen, die auch ohne eigene Argumente oder Erfahrung a priori gegen die angeblich amok-induzierenden “Killerspiele” wettern. Von Spielerseite selbst wiederum wird Kritik reflexhaft mit dem Lieblingsargument “Ist doch nur ein Spiel” abgeblockt.

Drum eins vorweg: Nein, es geht hier nicht darum, der Frage auf den Grund zu gehen, ob das Spielen von Military-Shootern die Spieler gewalttätiger macht - alle Untersuchungen sagen bisher das Gegenteil. Es geht nicht um die Frage, ob das Klicken der Maus mit dem großen Wort “Töten” überhaupt in Verbindung gebracht werden sollte - einen Gegner im Spiel zu “töten”, ist moralisch definitiv unverfänglicher, als Eier aus Käfighaltung zu kaufen. Es geht nicht um die Frage, ob Kinder negativ beeinflusst werden - denn diese Spiele sind, wie etwa Pornografie, ohnedies zu Recht meist erst ab 18 Jahren erhältlich.

Ein Kritikpunkt, der von all diesen bekannten und stets aufs Neue stattfindenden Diskussionen unberührt bleibt, ist vielmehr ein gesellschaftlich-kultureller. Es ist die Tatsache, dass Popkultur - und somit auch Spiele - als Werbezweig der globalen, großteils US-amerikanischen Rüstungsindustrie genutzt wird. Und die Verkaufsrekorde zeigen:Militainment rules.

Battlefield 3

Militarisierung der Zivilkultur

Bereits im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg kooperierte das US-Militär mit der Traumfabrik Hollywood, um die Bevölkerung patriotisch auf den Krieg einzustimmen. Erst zu Zeiten des Vietnamkriegs kühlte das Verhältnis wieder ab, doch unter Ronald Reagan, zu Zeiten des kalten Krieges und des “Reichs des Bösen”, kehrte mit Filmen wie “Top Gun” oder “Rambo 2” fast reine Militärpropaganda auf die Leinwände zurück. Aktuell nutzt das Pentagon Blockbuster wie die “Transformers”-Reihe, um Militär und Rüstungsindustrie zu bewerben. Die interaktive Animation“Operation Hollywood” gibt einen sehenswerten Überblick.

Die “Einbettung” von Reportern in kämpfende Truppenverbände, die konstante Flut an (kontrollierten) Bildern soll seit den Kriegen des 21. Jahrhunderts den “guten”, präzisen Hochtechnologiekrieg populär machen - der von George W. Bush ausgerufene “War on Terror” hat dabei für die nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges verzweifelt nach neuen Absatzmärkten suchende Rüstungsindustrie den entscheidenden Vorteil, dass er wohl kaum zu Ende gehen kann. In der medialen Dauerkriegsberichterstattung sowie in der Populärkultur ist Krieg alltäglich und allgegenwärtig, wird die meist männliche Faszination für Waffen und - eben - die “Modern Warfare” gezielt geschürt.

Modernste Militärtechnologie wird in Blockbustern wie Transformers ebenso unhinterfragt glorifiziert wie andere, zivile Konsumprodukte, etwa Autos oder Lifestyle-Gadgets. Interaktive Medien bieten hier lediglich weiterreichende Möglichkeiten: America’s Army, der vom Pentagon produzierte und äußerst populäre Team-Shooter, wird dezidiert als Werbemittel und Rekrutierungsinstrument genutzt, Kuma War lässt seine Spieler reale Ereignisse aus den Nachrichten im Egoshootersetting nachspielen und Warco wiederum soll als Kriegsreportersimulation die Entstehung realer Fernsehbilder aus Konfliktregionen darstellen.

Modern Warfare 3

Postmodern Warfare

Besondere Faszination gilt stets der Authentizität, dem “Realismusgrad” der dargestellten Konflikte - allerdings nur in Bezug auf die Technologie, die militärische “Hardware”, die atmosphärische Erfahrung des High-Tech-Kriegers des 21. Jahrhunderts. In anderen Bereichen ist’s mit dem Realitätsanspruch nicht weit her: Zivilisten fehlen traditionell auf den digitalen Schlachtfeldern - auch hier betritt Spec Ops: The Line zumindest teilweise Neuland.

Im Vorjahr argumentierte Patrick Bach, Produzent von Battlefield 3, dass durch das Leeren der Kriegsschauplätze von Zivilisten den Spielern die Möglichkeit genommen werden sollte, diese zu massakrieren - was nur zu medialer Aufregung führen würde. Somit “simuliert” das ambivalente Genre der virtuellen Soldatengeschichte trotz aller Realitätsbeteuerung nur ein zensiertes, steriles Bild realer Konflikte. Da diese Konflikte zusätzlich vorwiegend in weniger entwickelten Erdteilen stattfinden, sitzt die sarkastische Bemerkung Gus Mastrapas in seiner Satire “The Future History of Games Journalism” umso besser, wenn er ein Call of Duty: Shooting Brown People III herbeifantasiert.

Während es im Medium Film den Sinnspruch gibt, dass jeder Film, der realistisch vom Krieg erzählt, ein Antikriegsfilm sei, ist eine solche Differenzierung zumindest in Bezug auf die aktuelle Generation von Shootern hinfällig. Die kontroversiellen und mäßig erfolgreichen Ansätze, die Infinity Wards Call of Duty-Reihe in diese Richtung zumindest in der Kampagne zeigte, sind auch schon wieder lange her. Als 2009 Atomic Games mit Six Days in Fallujah tatsächlich ein Spiel ankündigte, das realistisch von den Kämpfen im irakischen Fallujah im Jahr 2004 handeln sollte, machte Publisher Konami nach ersten kritischen Medienreaktionen einen Rückzieher - anscheinend traute man sogar im eigenen Haus dem jungen Medium einfach nicht zu, auch differenziertere Sichtweisen zu ermöglichen. Spec Ops: The Line, so viel kann verraten werden, setzt durchaus erfolgreich dazu an, diesen Umstand zu verändern: Es ist möglicherweise das erste Spiel, das bewusst mit Mitteln des Antikriegsfilms im Spieler Abscheu und Skrupel angesichts der eigenen Taten auslösen will.

Da ist die klassische Frage nicht weit: Macht das dann noch Spaß? Spiele, so der allgemeine, aber durchaus hinterfragenswerte Konsens, sollen Spaß machen, aufregend sein, Unterhaltung bieten. In Verbindung mit dem vordergründigen Anspruch der Military-Shooter auf möglichst großen “Konfliktrealismus” ist allerdings genau das auch problematisch: Die Waffen mögen realitätsgetreu nachgebaut sein - in der Darstellung des Krieges selbst aber herrscht pure Beschönigung und Verharmlosung.

Spec Ops: The Line: Schmaler Grat zwischen Spaß und Abscheu

Military-Shooter  sind ein Mosaikstein in einer von Kriegsbildern ohnedies überfluteten Populärkultur, von TV-Nachrichten mit ausführlichen Kriegsreportagen über Hollywood-Produktionen bis hin zu Kinder- und Erwachsenenspielzeug. Abgesehen von America’s Army sind diese Titel logisch nicht direkt von “der Rüstungsindstrie” finanziert, doch sie schwimmen mit auf der Welle des allgemeinen Militainments. Dass ein riesiger miltärisch-popindustrieller Komplex mit Filmen und Spielen, mit seiner Ästhetik und Sprache, mit seinem Behaupten eines immer größeren “Realismus” letztlich den realen Krieg als Pop-Konsumprodukt verharmlost, ist ein Faktum, das hin und wieder durchaus auch von Spielern selbst hinterfragt werden sollte. Die US-Dokumentation“Militainment Inc.”beleuchtet diese Verknüpfungen zwischen Militär und Games-Industrie. 

Die Werbemillionen, die die Faszination am virtuellen Krieg auf Leinwand und Konsole am Leben erhalten, verfehlen ihre Wirkung nicht. Das ist aus den oben genannten Gründen bedenklich, aber auch aus banal spielerischen: Inhaltlich und spielmechanisch beschränken sich die Topseller trotz ihrer Qualität nämlich seit Jahren darauf, durch Grafikpracht (Battlefield 3) und immer aufwendigere Inszenierung (Modern Warfare 3) von der spielerischen und ästhetischen Innovationsarmut abzulenken. Inhaltlich ist sowieso sogar maximal C-Movie-Niveau angesagt; das ganz harte Macho-Gehabe der Hauptfiguren in der Kampagne von Modern Warfare 3 nahm der unnachahmliche Charlie Brooker im Guardian dann auch letztes Jahr gemeinerweise zum Anlass, den Titel spöttisch “the most homoerotic tale ever created in any medium, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood videos” zu nennen.

Es ist eine angenehme - und längst überfällige - Überraschung, dass sich mit Spec Ops: The Line ein lange für unmöglich gehaltener Ansatz wacker behauptet. Hier ist der Beweis: Spiele können vom Krieg erzählen, ohne in Hurra-Patriotismus oder Verharmlosung abzugleiten. Deshalb werden - und sollen - die Military-Shooter ohne diesen Anspruch nicht verschwinden. Aber es ist ein wichtiger Schritt, einen anderen Ansatz so eindrucksvoll verwirklicht zu sehen.

Eine gekürzte Version dieses Textes erschien letztes Jahr anlässlich des Releases von CoD:MW3 und BF3 auf fm4.

Verfasst von rainer sigl am 3. Juli 2012 - 16:03

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videogametourism.at

Penny Arcade Sells Out: For whom the Kickstarter tolls

mediumdifficulty.com

Penny Arcade whipped up a tempest of reaction with its Kickstarter, titled “Penny Arcade Sells Out.”

People like cool things. People like to hand money over to fund cool things. This is the premise behind Kickstarter. I think most people would have been fine with this ten years ago when Penny Arcade was a struggling upstart just trying to stay afloat.

The trouble is that the Penny Arcade of today is a thriving Internet-based business with so much influence that they can shift the dialog in the gaming community with a single tweet. They run conventions that rival the legends of E3 and GDC. These are no lightweights. Penny Arcade is as influential in the world of gaming as any legendary newspaper was in the heyday of the medium.

Penny Arcade is not necessarily undeserving of a spot on Kickstarter, but it wasn’t needed. There’s no objection to using Kickstarter to fund new webcomics. Kickstarter even gave them permission. There’s no conflict of ethics or policy here. We would be ok with this if it were ten years ago.

But this isn’t ten years ago. This is ten years now, and you know what Penny Arcade is without looking it up. You’ve probably even clicked one of their ads, which are carefully selected by the webcomic’s proprietors. They have a power over their advertisers not granted to fledgling webcomics.

So why did they do this?

Kickstarter was not, as far as I’m aware, in dire need of the substantial commission it would receive from a successful funding. And people are not, as a matter of principle, against giving Penny Arcade money to continue operations. People do this in the form of print purchases all the time.

So we’re ok with it, conceptually. But we’re not dealing in concepts. We’re dealing with a real example of a webcomic that grew and thrived on its own merits, and even funded itself on the same model in the past.

The problem is that they don’t need this now. They’ve already demonstrated a capacity for independently creating something that’s functionally identical to Kickstarter in their Child’s Play Charity, which has raised almost four million dollars this year to be donated to hospitals in the form of games.

So Penny Arcade is in no danger of failure, and they already have the technology and mind share to handle this on their own. The issue is not a matter of deserving, but a matter of necessity.

Kickstarter’s reason for being is to fund new and innovative projects, not enable existing businesses to transition to new business models. Penny Arcade’s creators need a better reason than they’ve offerd for using Kickstarter over any of the myriad general purpose donation solutions, or even something made in-house.

A return to their roots as a donation-fueled enterprise is great, but why Kickstarter?

Michael Robinson writes about games and technology at Digital Scofflaw

mediumdifficulty.com

Fighting to the top

theverge.com

The crowd is going insane. People are leaping into the air as though the floor is charged with electricity, screaming, yelling, cheering like they’re about to burst. On the stage, Ryan Hart finds himself buried under lively bodies that aren’t sure if they want to hug him, kiss him, or plunge a hand into his afro before never washing it again. He reaches out an arm to shake his opponent’s hand, but he can’t see where he’s reaching; there are too many people on top of him. If one more person from the crowd jumps in, this could get dangerous.

Moments earlier, the stage was occupied only by London-born Hart and Japan’s most well-known Street Fighter player, Daigo Umehara. No one dared come close. No one dared touch either of them. The two fighting game players were poised with the focus of fighter jet pilots. The buttons were their triggers, their decisions the result of a tangled web of calculations that few could understand. The crowd watched intently, sometimes forgetting to breathe. They watched as the fighter pilots of Street Fighter 4 performed the most complicated of air acrobatics, one-upping each other until someone stumbled and a jet came crashing.

That day, in London, Ryan Hart (pictured, below middle) outperformed and outmaneuvered his top-ranked Eastern opponent on home soil. That day, the UK won a kind of fighting game Olympics. Their very own had beaten a player everyone thought to be unbeatable. The crowd erupted. Everyone went wild. The world was electric.

Sticky TOC engaged! Do not remove this!

A fighter is a dancer

It’s been two years since Hart’s victory against Umehara at the Super Vs. Battle 2010 in London. In his career as a fighting game player he has broken and currently holds three Guinness World Records: one for most number of wins against a human opponent in four hours (169 wins, no losses), one for the most number of video game tournaments won (more than 450 worldwide), and one for the most countries travelled to win tournaments.

Earlier this year I met Hart in the Australian city of Melbourne where he and other top players converged for Shadowloo Showdown, an annual fighting game tournament that gives players a chance to test their skills in the lead-up to Evolution (EVO), the world’s largest fighting game tournament that takes place in Las Vegas in July.

Hart has just arrived from Venezuela where his sponsor, Western Wolves, flew him to compete in a South American Tekken Tag tournament. After Shadowloo Showdown he will fly to Scandinavia to compete in Street Fighter, Tekken and King of Fighters before heading to South Korea for another tournament. He’s a social media manager, a Japanese tutor, a drummer in a jazz band and an amateur breakdancer — Ryan Hart is a man in demand. If there is a mold for a stereotypical gamer, Hart doesn’t fit it. So when I meet him, I can’t help but ask: Why? How? What compels someone to pick up a fighting game and play it at the level of an Olympian? How does one even begin? Why fighting games? Why bother?

What compels someone to pick up a fighting game and play it at the level of an Olympian? How does one even begin? Why fighting games? Why bother?

“I started playing fighting games during Street Fighter 1 in the early ’90s, and I entered my first serious competition in 1994,” says Hart who, at 33, has been sponsored to play professionally longer than any other fighting game player. “I didn’t do very well, but the experience showed me the game had a level of depth that I had never seen before. I was so sure my own community was the best there was; then we went to a new area and found that we were nothing.

“That left me with one of two options: I could quit the game because I was just playing for fun and I didn’t want to get to that level of complexity, that hardcore element, or I could try and get to the next level.”

Hart’s curiosity led him to choose the latter. On weekends he would take the train to Central London to play at arcades. Competing against real players, he would take notes, go home and practice against the game itself. When he began attending tournaments in the late ’90s, he did so unassumingly. He wanted to compete; he wanted to see what other players were made of. It wasn’t until he won his first tournament against top-ranked players that it occurred to him that he was better than the average player and this was something worth pursuing.

“I just wanted to win as much as possible,” says Hart. “It wasn’t an arrogance thing; it was a challenge for myself. It was a self-test to see if I could perform under pressure, and I found that fun. I enjoy the psychological elements of competing with an opponent. You’re battling yourself. We all have personal tests no matter what we do, whether it’s video games or a driving test or buying a house. This was one challenge I was happy to overcome.”

It’s more than just a challenge, though. Professional athletics is a challenge. Qualifying for a medical degree is a challenge. Judo rolls are a challenge. There’s more to fighting games than the challenge that draws Hart to playing at a professional level.

“I understand that people who don’t really have much experience with fighting games will look at what’s happening on the screen, see these pixelated characters fighting and wonder what it’s all about. They probably find it really boring because it looks like there’s nothing behind it,” Hart says. “But there’s actually a lot of depth that goes into each move that you see on the screen. It can get into an area that can be described as rather geeky, but this is our passion — this is our sport — and we love it.”

It’s this depth and complexity that tickles people like Hart into wanting to pursue it beyond casual play. To the average player and onlooker, Player 1 is throwing kicks and punches, fireballs and combos, and 90 seconds later someone wins. For Hart and his fellow high-ranked players, every move seen on screen is the result of a myriad of thoughts and considerations that flash by before they even press a button. Hart tells me it’s about knowing the game and knowing people so well you can predict your opponent’s moves. It’s a psychological mind game where one player tries to predict the other’s strategy. It’s no longer about whether you can pull off a move; it’s about predicting what move your opponent is going to pull.

It’s no longer about whether you can pull off a move; it’s about predicting what move your opponent is going to pull.

“Another example I can give is as a dancer, I know that when you first start dancing it’s really difficult to just concentrate on what you’re doing without just thinking about yourself,” he says. “You’re concentrating on whether your body is looking a certain way because you’re not quite there yet. You’re still getting used to what you’re doing. When you’ve advanced, you’re no longer concentrating on what you’re doing; you’re just focusing on what’s around, the environment. It’s the same in games.”

Once a player understands the moves and the combos and can pull them off every single time without resorting to button mashing, then they can start dancing.

“The difficulty of playing fighting games is it’s all in real time. It’s not like chess where you have time to think while your opponent has their turn and you can look at all the pieces and picture a scenario to set up for them. In fighting games, everything’s happening right there and now, so you have to react right away.

“That’s where your reactions come in. That’s where hand-eye coordination comes in. That’s when being patient and waiting for the right moment comes in. That’s where you can use aggression to attack your opponents. There are all these elements — you could even call some of them emotions — to express yourself in the game. That’s why it’s interesting to so many millions of people, because everyone can have their own way of playing.”

What have you done for me lately?

I meet Ryan Ramirez (pictured, far right), a Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter player from the U.S. sponsored by Complexity Gaming.

“That guy,” I am told by Chee Seng Siow, one of Shadowloo’s event organizers moments before being introduced — “that’s Filipino Champ.” Siow points at Ramirez, who is walking around the tournament space at Shadowloo Showdown, watching others play. His face gives little away. It’s difficult to tell if he’s impressed by a player, worried, surprised or nervous. He mostly looks bored.

“Champ is probably one of the best Marvel vs. Capcom 3 players in the world. You definitely want to talk to him,” Siow says.

As I make my way towards Filipino Champ, who is mostly known by his gaming handle, Siow stops me. “One more thing,” he says. “He’s known for being a bit arrogant. He can trash talk really well.”

“Oh,” I say, unsure how to proceed.

“But he can back it up. He might be arrogant, but it’s because he can be. He has the talent to back it all up.”

“OK.”

I quickly understand what Siow means. Not two minutes into my chat with Filipino Champ, he openly admits that he’s always been cocky and arrogant when it comes to his ability as a player. He’s an outspoken character who fires off words without worrying about what others will think. Here is a confident human being: confident in his thoughts, confident in his words and, as Shadowloo will soon see, confident in his game.

“I always believe that if I really put effort and attention and my heart and soul into something, I know I’m always going to be good at anything I do,” he says. “That’s the kind of person I believe I am. I may be bad right now if I, say, play soccer, but let’s say I put the next five years of my life into that. I think I could be pretty decent and competitive.”

“You need determination and you need to take losses in your heart. You have to care. I care … I put so much time into it that if I lose, it’s really disappointing.”

Competitive is a word that comes up a lot in our conversation. It’s not enough for Filipino Champ to be good at something; he needs to be the best. He says where many players would be thrilled to be placed in the top 16 or top eight at a tournament, anything less than first place would be a failure for him. To be the best in the world, he says, a player needs to consistently play the best in the world.

“You need determination and you need to take losses in your heart. You have to care. I care,” he says. “When I lose, I care because I put so much time into it that if I lose, it’s really disappointing. When I come home I ask, ‘Why did I lose?’ I watch the video of the game over and over again and I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve identified why I lost. Then I tell myself, ‘Next time I’m going to win.’”

Filipino Champ believes he is the best in the world at Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and there are few people in the fighting game community who would outright disagree. There’s some fierce competition in the fighting game space: his rival and friend Justin Wong also competes in MvC3 and, as far as household names are concerned, Wong is probably the most well-known fighting game player in the world. Then there are lesser known players who often unexpectedly rise to the challenge at fighting game tournaments, snatching titles from veteran players. Tournaments like Shadowloo are very much like the Olympics — everyone goes in with their favorites, but no one knows who will win gold. Like the Olympics, there is also no definitive ranking system that determines who is the best in the world. An athlete may win a gold medal, but that does not mean they are the world’s best.

“There’s no point system to it,” says Filipino Champ, who admits that when it comes to fighting games, surprise victories do happen. But if a top player is beaten by a beginner, what happens then? Do rankings change?

“Fighting games is like ‘What have you done for me lately?’” he says. “Lately I’ve pretty much been winning every tournament I’ve entered. I’ve been all over the place, so I didn’t just call myself the best in the world; a lot of people did. I didn’t believe it until I started seeing the results.”

A player can win EVO, and they would certainly gain attention for it, but unless they can keep play at a high level and consistently win tournaments against other top players, then their EVO win will not count for much. It becomes a game of who can do the most in the most impressive way as consistently as possible.

Filipino Champ is clearly a passionate man who doesn’t let go of things as soon as he latches onto them. So well has he performed as a professional fighting game player that it has become his full-time job. He runs streams from home where thousands of viewers can subscribe and watch him play online. The streams have so many subscribers that Champ doesn’t need a day job — his fans are paying for the chance to watch and learn from one of the best. So I ask him: If he really believes he can be great at anything he puts his mind to, why fighting games? Why didn’t he choose to pour his heart and soul into soccer or StarCraft, Call of Duty, or any other game that can be played competitively?

“It’s different,” he says. “I’m a very social person. I like to go out. I like to party. I like to meet new people every single day, and I actually get to meet new people and see their faces when I play fighting games.

“In StarCraft, it’s not like that. You play in the house every day. You stay online every day until there’s an event where you can come out. In fighting games, it’s not like that. I don’t think of myself as a gamer because this is my job. It’s a job that I like to do. I don’t just sit at home playing games, eating chips, and getting fat. I compete and I get paid for it. I’m a normal person. I love what I do. I love that I’m my own boss.”

He pauses. His eyes are impassive but his attitude is clear: “You got a problem with that?”

Technical masters

Fighting game tournaments attract people from all walks of life. Rame Jeboo, an IT technician who is also running the Tekken tournament at Shadowloo Showdown, points out the different kinds of people who turn up to tournaments, fighting sticks in hand, ready to give it a shot. On one side of the room, he looks at a few businessmen who have turned up to Shadowloo after work, still in their suits. To the other side he points out a lawyer, and at the back, one of Australia’s top Street Fighter 4 players is a tradesman. There are 500 people at Shadowloo Showdown with more than 20,000 people watching the tournament through online streams. At a bigger event like EVO, there are thousands of attendees with millions of people watching online. Of these thousands of competitors, only a handful will make a name for themselves, and the general consensus among fighting game enthusiasts is it takes something and someone special to make it to the top.

“There are some people who simply excel at gaming — I’ve seen some people come into the scene and six months later they’re a top-level player, while others have been in the scene for years and they’ve stayed at a mediocre level,” says Jeboo.

“Determining a top player really depends on the game, but for example in Tekken a top player would have to understand the game on a level where they can perform the best move in a possible situation to maximize damage or to maximize what they’re going to do next. Everything is a mind game. You have to outsmart and outmaneuver your opponent.”

Jeboo says successful players have a combination of practice and brains. Any player needs to practice so that they know all the moves and can execute them every single time. There is no room for fumbling or hitting the wrong button. But there’s also a lot about the game that can be studied, such as frame knowledge. The human eye can see perfectly at 25 frames per second (give or take) — anything less than 25 frames appears to stutter on the screen. A good player will understand this and then go further and understand how many frames are required for certain moves. Advanced players can evaluate what to do based on their knowledge of frames – if their attack requires 15 frames and they need five frames to recover, their opponent might take the opportunity to attack them during their recovery period. With this in mind, they can determine what is the best move to do in a specific situation so that their opponent cannot hit back. The average player or viewer may only see two characters having minor seizures on the screen, but a high-level player will recognize the smallest actions as the result of a complicated thought process.

“Everything has a tactical advantage and disadvantage in the game,” Jeboo says. “In Tekken, there are ‘pokes’ [when a player performs a weak punch or kick without hitting the enemy], and sometimes people will throw them out to bait an opponent. It’s a bit like fishing. If you throw out a rod and slowly reel it in, you’re baiting out the fish to make it think it’s a moving worm. It’s all about outmaneuvering your opponent.”

“I’ve seen some people come into the scene and six months later they’re a top-level player, while others have been in the scene for years and they’ve stayed at a mediocre level.”

“You can know all the moves, you can know all the combos, but if you can’t put them into use, what’s the point?”

Aside from understanding frames, top players also need to understand what all the moves are, how they can be used, and when they should be used.

“You can know all the moves, you can know all the combos, but if you can’t put them into use, what’s the point?” Jeboo says.

“Just because we only use our fingers in fighting games does not mean our knowledge has to be any less than any other game or sport. For example, in Tekken there are more than 40 characters, but let’s say there are 40. And let’s say each of them has a minimum of 100 moves — they have more than 100. Now multiply 40 by 100 and you’ve got 4,000 moves.

“I can tell you how to do those 4,000 moves in the game, whether they’re high, mid, low, and most of their frame data. This definitely takes study. What people see is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Daniel “Berzerk” Chlebowczyk is a product manager at Madman Entertainment. He is also one of Australia’s top Dead or Alive players who has followed the achievements of some of the world’s most well-known fighting game competitors. He says the top players are incredibly focused and can always do something unexpected.

“Everyone’s seen a game of Street Fighter. They know what happens when you sit down and play a match,” Chlebowczyk says. “You may have seen a match between Ryu and Ken or any permutation of characters over and over, but you haven’t seen Justin Wong’s Rufus against Heavy Weapon’s Sagat.”

It’s the small things that make the difference at the top level. Anyone can mash buttons or execute the most basic of moves in the same way anyone can pick up a violin and make noises, and most people will be able to identify those noises as coming from a violin. The top players don’t just hit the right notes — they’re virtuosos.

“There are small situations — small interactions between moves, and at a high level that’s what makes all the difference,” he says. “Any good sports person has to know what they’re capable of, know how to deal with pressure, and [know how to] deploy their tactics. They need to know when they’re being fooled into doing something predictable by their opponent and change things so as to not open themselves up to something worse.”

Chlebowczyk says there’s a point where the game turns into an unspoken psychological interaction between players. It’s a human interaction, a mind game, and that’s why it’s challenging, thrilling and so much more than just a game.

Creative geniuses

Justin Wong (pictured, above right) is without doubt the most intimidating player at Shadowloo Showdown. To non-fighting game enthusiasts, walking around the tournament floor with a hoodie and backpack, he could be mistaken for a college student. To the fighting game world, he’s the child prodigy who never lost his shine. Wong began playing fighting games at his local arcade when he was 12. After consistently beating everyone he played against, he was invited to tournaments where he left a trail of defeated opponents behind him. At 14, he won his first world championship. When Street Fighter 4 was released, he won the GameStop national tournament, beating more than 100,000 players from around the United States. He has competed in hundreds of tournaments, won EVO multiple times, is sponsored by Evil Geniuses, and shows no sign of slowing down. He’s been playing at a professional level for 12 years. He’s a fighting game veteran, and he’s only 26.

Over the Shadowloo weekend, fans approach Wong many times for photos and autographs. A few tournament attendees even ask him to sign their $200 gaming sticks. Despite his high profile, he doesn’t brag often. He’s focused, articulate, and quietly confident.

“I started playing fighting games because I couldn’t afford a console at home,” Wong says. “My local arcade back at home in New York was called Chinatown Fair and they had games like Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, and I just played for fun. It was like 50 cents to play. I would play from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and I didn’t really lose often so I spent maybe three dollars a day.”

He would put in hours over his summer vacations, on weekends, and after school. This level of dedication in his early years paid off. Wong says he doesn’t spend much time practicing now — most of the moves have been committed to muscle memory, all the lessons he has learned from earlier iterations of fighting games have carried over to newer titles, and he has played against so many people he has become a kind of mind reader when it comes to matches. Like Ryan Hart and Filipino Champ, it’s all about the psychological mind game. When these players pick up their gaming sticks, they’re not thinking about hitting the right notes or executing the perfect technique. They’re conducting an orchestra.

“I play well because I don’t crack under pressure,” says Wong. “The reason I don’t crack is because I don’t care if I lose [and] I don’t care if I win. I just do it for myself, not for the people around me. A lot of players want to do well because they want the people around them to praise them. That’s a step right there where you’re thinking about ‘if’ you crack. ‘If I crack, what will people think?’ If you’re thinking that, you will crack.”

There are no ‘ifs’ for Justin Wong. Winning is always the goal, and winning is always an option, even when it seems unlikely.

The other thing he attributes to his success is creativity.

“In a match, after the first couple of seconds or based on what character the person chooses, I can tell what kind of game plan the opponent is going to use because I’ve seen so much and there’s so much familiarity,” he says. “You have to be creative. You can’t be predictable. Back in the day before there was YouTube you couldn’t scope out matches; you just had to create your own stuff. I think a lot of people now lack creativity because they’re just waiting for someone to make the video and then they’ll watch it and study it instead of coming up with anything themselves. They close the creative part of their mind off.

“That’s why I played against the computer when I was younger. The computer may not be the best competition, but it’s still given a certain amount of information to show you what a character is capable of.”

Ryan Hart says it’s the ability to be creative that draws him to fighting games, and only by being creative can a player perform at their best.

“Inside of what can be done combo-wise, there are millions of combinations you can do. There are only six buttons on Street Fighter, but whether you do the move standing or crouching or close or far from the opponent, these all have different properties,” Hart says.

“You can’t be predictable. Back in the day before there was YouTube you couldn’t scope out matches; you just had to create your own stuff.”

“All these things are about what you put into the game to create those scenarios and that’s why it’s interesting,” Hart says. “I think if it wasn’t for the creativity, it wouldn’t be that interesting. Just the fighting doesn’t interest me. If I wanted a fight, I’d watch UFC. But the fact that I can be interactive with a person psychologically and have this area where I can play around with the passion I have in the game to create a way of fighting that I find interesting is really appealing.”

It is this creativity, this technical ability, and the determination to succeed that has landed all these top players sponsorships. Like professional sports, sponsorships can range from companies covering travel costs and meals to paying players’ salaries so that they can compete full-time. Hart’s team, Western Wolves, receives sponsorship from Mad Catz, the arcade stick maker. Justin Wong’s sponsor, Evil Geniuses, is supported by Intel, Monster Energy Drinks, Sapphire Technology and a range of other hardware companies.

Over the weekend I meet Yuko “Choco Blanka” Kusachi (pictured, upper left), one of Japan’s top-ranked players who is also sponsored by Evil Geniuses. After being noticed at Japanese gaming tournaments for her ability to beat even the strongest players using Blanka, she is now paid to fly around the world competing in tournaments. When she’s not competing, she’s a bartender in Japan.

Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi (pictured, left) is another sponsored player at Shadowloo Showdown. A rising star of the Japanese fighting game scene, Tokido’s sponsorship allows him play fighting games full-time, devoting eight hours a day to every fighting game played at a competitive level. Justin Wong is sponsored to play full-time. Then there’s Bruce “Gamerbee” Hsiang from Taiwan who is the first fighting game player to ever be sponsored by hardware company AverMedia. Hsiang was flown to E3 this year to play fighting games in front of a crowd of thousands.

It’s the olympics

The room is packed with more than 500 fighters. Some came to compete, some to be spectators. It’s late in the night. It’s the final match of Shadowloo Showdown 2012, the finals of Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition. The two finalists sit at their arcade machines, focused like fighter jet pilots, fingers tapping away frantically as the crowd watches, almost forgetting to breathe.

In the final moments, the crowd erupts and the room is electric. Who are these people? What are they doing? Why are they cheering?

These people are the world’s best virtual fighters — virtuosos of their field, conducting symphonies of high kicks, low kicks, Hadokens and dragon punches. This is their Olympics — a chance for the best to shine and for their world to celebrate their skill, their performances, their creativity. They’re playing at a level that few will ever achieve, they’re passionate about the games, and they love what they do. This is a celebration. Why the hell wouldn’t they be cheering?

These people are the world’s best virtual fighters … This is a celebration. Why the hell wouldn’t they be cheering?

Image credits

Polygon, Namco Bandai, Capcom

theverge.com

I was a Teenage Sexist

unwinnable.com

Editor’s Note: This post originally contained a screen-grab of the repellent game Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. We have since removed the disturbing image, and we apologize for not alerting our readers to graphic content in advance.

———

I raised my hand. Professor Wiman nodded at me.

“I can’t stand female poets,” I said loudly, “because they constantly write about women’s issues instead of normal things.”

My words hung heavy in the air. Wiman blinked and moved on, and I slowly realized I’d said something strange.

Worse, though, was the way a classmate in front of me whirled in her seat. She fixed me with a glare, startled and shocked and fire and ice all at the same time.

Until that instant we had been friendly acquaintances. I think she’d assumed we were kindred. I wore my hair short, just as she did. We were both flat-chested, bony, utterly androgynous. And also I’d always been kind of a brat. So I think she had me mistaken for a fellow feminist. I was not.

Now she stared at me in abject horror. Finally she turned to face forward again, her spine perfectly straight. She never spoke to me again.

A year later, in a bar on New Year’s Eve, I presented my theory as to why comediennes aren’t funny: “They do these minority jokes where you’re supposed to go ‘it’s so true,’ and it’s like, look, you aren’t in the minority; you’re half the world’s population.”

Upon my announcing this, the dude whooped and slapped me a high-five. “Nailed it!” he cackled.

Yep, I was one of the guys.

———

I was always one of the guys. Most of my friends, always, have been guys.

I’d usually regarded girls with suspicion. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, too: every day in junior high a group of girls stole my gym shorts and drenched them in the sink.

It was absolutely my fault. From the get-go I wasn’t very well socialized. My birth-dad never let me watch television commercials, and so I spent my earliest childhood with videogames and G.I. Joes and Barbies, none the wiser as to gender norms, wholly inept at differentiating boys from girls. My childhood aspiration was to become Rambo. Not a man, not a woman, not a mother or an astronaut: only that mythical creature called Rambo.

Then I’d moved to smalltown Texas, a far cry from our old poverty-stricken apartment complex in Seattle; meanwhile, my elderly, Midwestern, adoptive parents enforced bizarre, gendered, midcentury rules of behavior. I wasn’t just socially tone-deaf – I was culturally mangled, off-kilter in some nondescript, Caucasian way.

My best college friend used to make this joke, “I’m as good as white, good as white.”

He was South Asian but from the ‘burbs; I knew his joke made me uncomfortable, but I could never pinpoint why. For my own part, I’d internally subscribed to a similar mantra: “I’m just as good as a man, as good as a man.”

Feminists? Ugh. Please. What insufferable people. How about battered husbands? What of fathers’ rights? Or feeding and sheltering the poor? Come on. Invent a real social cause, already.

———

I was always about business. I never paused to wonder whether I were being taken seriously, even, because right up through college, I was. Professors applauded my refusal to use “humankind” as a substitute for “mankind,” or to say “he or she” or “they” in lieu of “he.”

I remember the first time a man told me he was coming to my home to rape me to death. I was 20 years old. I could not understand why he hated my Internet diary so much.

“He misunderstands me,” I remember thinking to myself. “I’m not the type of girl he thinks I am.”

———

My friend and colleague Cara recently directed Twitter to a fascinating study. It claims that self-identified feminists are less hostile toward men than other women are.

Now, the math is squirrelly, the testing pond much too small, but the idea rings legit. Here’s the theory behind the study’s assessment: women who subscribe to traditional gender politics are often none too happy about it, and they might resent other people as a result.

———

Immediately after graduation I moved in with a young man. While he was away at work I was in charge of cleaning, laundry, planning dinner. There was a tacit contract between us. We were both Protestant, after all – church-goers, nearly! – and we did that thing where you conflate “tradition” with “morality.” I was dutiful and cheery.

Without spending too many more words on the tension of that relationship dynamic: oh, I was resentful. Was I ever.

———

My inch-long hair and combat boots had never hurt my romantic life any; we had all been teens in the 1990s.

What I mean is, in the ’90s androgyny was a style rather than a marker of sexual preference. Watch any episode of 90210! Cuffed T-shirt sleeves are everywhere! Everyone wore bleached denim and CK1!

Guys understood me. I liked Kevin Smith movies! I was a great wingwoman! If I wore a dress, I did it reluctantly. I only ever felt genderless and murky – the soul of a “man,” I always thought, where “man” maybe just means “normal.” Like, you identify with the male heroes in books and movies and songs, because storybook heroines, excepting the spunky ones, are prissy wimps who like ballet and horses. Yep: I was a carefree kid, an unladylike tree-climber.

See? That seems all right! I was an ordinary tomboy!

But it was way more insidious than that. I often ignored other women’s opinions, basing my judgment entirely on how they were dressed. I scoffed at girly things. I considered myself an exception to the lady-rule, all thanks to my easygoing manner, my coarse sense of humor, my swaggering sense of self.

Feminists have their own term for my anti-feminist leanings: “internalized sexism.”

I was a teenage sexist. I was a misogynist.

———

There’s a riddle I read as a child, and I didn’t understand its meaning until long after college:

A father and son are in a car and, as they are crossing some railroad tracks, its engine stalls. An oncoming train smashes into the car. The father is killed instantly; the son lives, barely, and is rushed to a hospital. The doctor enters the room, sees the child splayed on the table. “I cannot operate on this child,” the doctor says; “this child is my son.” How? How can this be?

I recently reminded some friends of this riddle.

“I used to know this one,” a friend said, and then she sat, struggling to remember the riddle’s answer.

“Oh, no,” I said to her. “You see? You see how deeply rooted it is?”

———

I’d received the phone call at the art gallery (I was working in the gallery when I wasn’t writing reviews for Electronic Gaming Monthly). It was 2006; a job had opened in California.

It was a community management position at a gaming website – a role that, at the time, was always delegated to a female. I was flattered, and since I was easygoing and boyish, I figured I’d be good at it. When I accepted, my new employer made the happy announcement.

I remember the first Internet reaction, posted by a semi-anonymous user: “Hotness fail.”

Feminists? Ugh. Please. What insufferable people.

The next reaction – a penis crudely MS-painted into my mouth – was harder for me to parse.

Then, in response to something I’d written in a discussion thread: “She’s like Einstein with a vagina!” Followed by: “You see where you’re wrong, don’t you?”

Wha – ooohhhhh.

Everyone wants to be liked, and I was sad that I wasn’t. But it was worse than that – I hadn’t even done anything yet.

“Should I move to California?” I asked my boyfriend. I unpacked a box. Then I repacked it.

———

“Is this stuff normal?” I asked my friends quietly. I took an informal survey: “Do people act like this all the time?”

“It’s the Internet,” my friends said helplessly.

“They’re probably just kids,” my boyfriend added.

I checked their ages. They were not kids. Not all of them were even male.

I didn’t want to leave Chicago.

———

But I did move, figuring I’d prove the Internet wrong with my own competence, or at least by being a rad girl. I reasoned, too, that I couldn’t live with myself not knowing what lay in store at my dream job.

I felt like the Internet had started following me around in real life.

The complaints eventually became predictable. Ugly, fat, lesbian, secretly a man, a bad spokesperson for the entire female sex, and the occasional – and distressing! – “I’d pee in her butt.” (And, just as a fun, friendly reminder that some people are breezily racist, “Jewish,” lobbed here as an insult.)

Oh, sure, I was initially confused. I am heterosexual, I am not Jewish, and certainly nobody has ever peed into my butt. I didn’t think I was that ugly, that fat, and worst of all I was so naive I didn’t always realize I was being sexually insulted.

My support system encouraged me to ignore all this, but I never quite toughened up.

Instead the opposite happened: sustained daily over two consecutive years, and compounded with my parents’ failing health, I broke. I completely cracked.

By Spring 2008 I was in therapy. My therapist told me, alarmed, I needed more therapy.

Humiliating. It was so humiliating, how weak I had become.

———

When people meet me for the first time, they must assume I’ve always had a big chest.

All my life I had been able to pass as credible, as a sexless peer, as a scrappy pixie. My childhood doctor is still flummoxed as to how I instantaneously grew boobs at the ripe old age of 24. This abrupt new development drastically changed how people responded to me: after all, I very suddenly was possessed of the chest of a bimbo.

If nobody else were around, men did this new thing on the street: they’d turn and say foul things. I felt sick. Or, I felt worse than sick – I felt like the Internet had started following me around in real life.

———

Feminists and others have coined another great term, “gender dysphoria.” That’s when you feel one way inside, but your body dictates that people react to you as if you were somebody else.

Those dissonant experiences can be impossible to reconcile, and sometimes people deliberately change their bodies to match their feelings. Other people try to change their feelings to match what their bodies are projecting. Maybe for some people the answer is in the middle, something more liminal.

Of “sex,” “gender,” and “sexual preference,” gender is the one that is fake. Gender varies from culture to culture, from era to era; it’s the one you get to put on and take off, like fingernail polish or a skirt. It’s the construct advertisers use to market one type of doll to girls and another type of doll to boys.

———

It seems to always happen this way, doesn’t it?

Girls – the ones we think of as “cool” – don’t trust other women, women who play by gender “rules” that the rest of us cannot quite understand. The most important things those women can seemingly do are spend money on clothes and appeal to the opposite sex.

Meanwhile, we ourselves don’t feel particularly female. We only feel like people.

It’s a tough fall. People intuitively detect that attitude, go out of their way to remind you that you’re not fooling anybody. You are a woman, and you will only ever be a woman.

When enough strangers say enough sexually charged things to you, it demands you completely reconsider yourself. Who do you think you are? Who are you supposed to be? You are a stranger in your own body.

I am 30ish years old, and my life is divided into two dramatically uneven halves: before 2006, and then the six years after.

“I know you wish I’d known you ‘before,’” my good friend Dave once told me, “but I like you now.” How terribly kind of Dave, that liar.

———

Lately someone accused me of “girl-on-the-Internet syndrome.” He could have leveled a lot of valid criticisms at me, given what I’d written; this particular blow, however, struck me as hollow.

“I have been on the Internet since 1993,” I replied. “I got over being on the Internet long before I ever got over being a girl.”

———

Do you remember when one games journalist — one of the best, and happenstantially a female — pleaded that we recognize her as a person? Like, as just an ordinary, normal human being? It was heartbreaking.

I remember reading that column and thinking about how, even if you actively work to not “prove your gender” to others, there is an enormous faction that will conversely work to remind you that you are a woman, and “just” a woman, every chance they get.

I have been on the Internet since 1993. I got over being on the Internet long before I ever got over being a girl.

They might even say it benevolently: “Why, she’s my favorite female games writer!”

———

I don’t think embracing feminism has to be difficult, but it sure was for me.

First, I had to make peace with being a woman.

Next, I had to make peace with being terrible at being a woman.

Then I had to be okay with my experiences not being unique, since the same stuff – variations on a theme, if you will – is shared by a whole lot of people, many but not all of whom are women.

Finally, I adjusted my expectations – not lower, but higher. Feminists are optimists!

I am half-serious when I call myself a “bad feminist.” I’m still working on my longstanding bad attitude, for instance, and on all the ways I’ve hurt myself with my bad attitude.

I’ve also hurt others. In the course of my young adulthood, I’ve stood by some pretty injurious bullshit. Maybe my ethics are fueled as much by guilt as anything else.

———

A lot of my favorite people are rigorous anti-feminists, but in the nicest possible way.

These folks really do treat women as peers – academically, professionally, personally, romantically – and many of these right-headed people shy from any sort of “battle.”

These anti-sexists always turn a polite, blind eye. Why keep picking fights? Diatribes are no fun. Stop whining and buck up, you! If your vagina (or whatever you have there, since not every woman or feminist is privileged to have one) is the worst you can complain about, it’s gonna be one easy ride, sister! Or mister. Whoever. Whomever.

And many of those well-meaning, anti-sexist people are the very same good people who are the most surprised by the backlash Anita Sarkeesian has encountered, I suspect.

I’ve watched this unfold with an awful, wry type of schadenfreude. I’m an ex-community manager, here! If anything I’m mystified by others’ surprise. Was this type of thing really so invisible before?

No, of course it wasn’t. We were just too happy to ignore it, because it’s never been “this bad” or “this flagrant.”

It didn’t surprise the average girl-on-the-Internet, I guarantee, because the average girl on the Internet is required to either defend her very existence, or else disappear.

The Internet hates everyone.

Maybe the “average guy” doesn’t witness all this, though, because he is so nice. What kind of monster says such things? Not I, he reasons.

———

I get it. I do. The Internet hates everyone. And you can’t fix everyone. It’s easy to be a pessimist, or else it’s easy to feel like enough has changed (or too much has changed so please hush already).

Moreover, the Internet condemns any dissenting opinion. Consider the higher-profile videogame critic: should he score a game a point too low, here come the superfans, wishing him cancer and AIDS. We turn a blind eye toward those superfans. “The lowest of the low,” we nod, “the vocal minority! Don’t feed the trolls.”

What we mean is, That’s not me. I know I am a good person. Those people aren’t my problem.

———

You don’t have to be an outspoken feminist on the Internet to be harassed or bullied, although I’ve heard it helps.

Sometimes you can just be a lady on the Internet, though. Sometimes you can make the audacious mistake of being anything less than invisible. Being a member of half the sum total population is inexplicably enough to make you an easy target on Xbox Live. Good God, imagine what the Internet would be like if you were actually different from other people somehow!

You don’t even have to be on the Internet! You can just walk down a city street alone, even during normal business hours!

No, it doesn’t happen only to girls – everyone gets harassed or attacked sometime. But it does happen especially to girls.

Even speaking as an ex-anti-feminist, I just cannot understand how that idea is controversial.

———

Anita Sarkeesian offered to apply the same lens to videogames as she already affords other media, like film, television, music. There is mainstream cultural validity here. “Gamers” maybe ought to have been excited by her very interest.

Chillingly, the people who have abused and threatened Anita Sarkeesian are not anomalous, are not sociopaths. They are ordinary — albeit anonymous — masses of people, admitting online what they’d like to say aloud. They are not all little boys. Many are adults. Some are women.

Feminism is all about the masses. We are, every last one of us, complicit in fostering an environment where this kind of vitriol is “normal,” where that kind of hatred toward any one person, or any grouping of people, is permitted to perpetuate and fester.

“It’s the Internet,” we shrug. “These things happen,” we tell one another helplessly.

What does it take to get us to notice that wrongheadedness? Evidently, we react only to ire and hatred – hatred that is utterly out of proportion with Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter itself, hatred that finally oversteps into criminal behavior.

And that aloofness-until-some-breaking-point isn’t subcultural; it’s super cultural! Everybody! Everybody is responsible! It’s like voting!

Feminism is on your side! Feminism is for everybody!

———

I read a lot of Internet, and I am beginning to think there might be some fundamental misconception about feminism floating around.

Feminism isn’t only about correcting social inequality and wage disparity. If that’s all feminism is, I was a feminist way back when I believed you could cut your hair short and behave just as boyishly as you liked, getting ahead on your balls alone. Don’t cry, emo girl! You live in a boys’ world, so be a man!

Instead, feminism – and other types of social justice, I figure – acknowledges that there is an invisible pattern of experience that comes along with being, very visibly, something else.

You don’t have to think of ladies as “victims” – I’d prefer you didn’t – and you don’t even have to think of some experiences as “baggage.”

But feminism does ask you, as an ethical human being, to objectively reexamine certain standards of behavior, which themselves are often based on an internalized, invisible set of shared beliefs and values.

Feminism isn’t about holding another sex in higher esteem than the male sex. Rather, it’s about anti-sexism.

It’s about making sure your child doesn’t grow up believing she is somehow subhuman.

And if someone ever makes your child feel like he or she deserves abuse, you better hope that kid is confident and surefooted enough to fight back.

———

I wrote this piece over a week ago. A lot has happened since then. For one, Anita Sarkeesian became the subject of a face-punching sim. That actually made me grin in recognition: in the olden days you could slap a Spice Girl, watching her face blister and bruise and swell until, finally, the abuse her pretty face could take somehow maxed out. In my day I slapped a lot of Spice Girls. (Update: On second thought, having now seen a screenshot from the Sarkeesian game for the first time, Slap a Spice Girl seems downright twee in “comparison.”)

I’m sorry this column is so long. I tried to shorten it, I really did. I’ve excised three long passages already: it’s difficult to articulate what it feels like to be a woman, one who doesn’t feel like a woman, but who obviously is a woman, who doesn’t want to ever pick between being a “cool lady” and a “high-strung” one.

———

I remember when, in 20th Century American Poetry class, a girl turned and fixed me in place with an inscrutably steely look.

What a nag, I must have thought in that interminable moment. What a bitch.

I was insulted only because she’d thought I was her friend. How stupid, I probably said to myself.

I misunderstood her glare, and then again, I didn’t misunderstand at all. She had only acknowledged me with startled disappointment, really, and that alone was enough to insult me.

———

Jenn Frank likes to draw centaurs. Follow her on Twitter @Jennatar.

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The PA Report - The reality of the OUYA console doesn’t match the hype: why you should be skeptical

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The reality of the OUYA console doesn’t match the hype: why you should be skeptical

Ben Kuchera / Thu, Jul 12, 2012

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There is a reason that the press around the newly-announced OUYA game console is based almost exclusively around the amount of money being raised by the product’s Kickstarter, and that reason is simple: There is very little else to report on. There is almost no information about the state of production hardware, and in fact nearly everything about the system seems to be in flux. The Kickstarter page contradicts itself on some points, and many of the images and statements seem to be intentionally misleading.

While there are many aspects of the OUYA game console that are attractive, there are many more reasons to be skeptical about what’s being offered.

The system doesn’t actually exist, at least not yet

The Kickstarter page states there is a single working prototype of the hardware. Everything else, from the digital distribution platform that will sell the games to the internal components that will make up the final product are in the first stages of production. That’s an uncomfortable reality for a product that’s supposed to hit the market by March of next year.

“We have a functional prototype, and we have almost completed our industrial design (the shape and materials of the product you see here),” the Kickstarter page states. “We know the hardware specifications, and are working with electrical and mechanical engineers to test the performance of the hardware. We have begun work on the user interface and software. We’ll pull all these pieces together and test how they fit, while we finalize the product.” There isn’t a finished design for the external case, and work has only begun on the interface and the software that will power the hardware, not to mention the challenge of creating the online store that will sell and deliver the games.

Creating a robust, stable platform to offer for-pay game downloads is a complicated undertaking, and according to the Kickstarter page work has only just begun on that aspect of the project. The specifications seem to be in place, but testing can be a long and tricky process, even with known components. There are only eight months between now and the stated ship date of March 2013. That would be an aggressive timeline if we were talking about Microsoft or Valve, much less an untested startup. I asked specifically about the ambition of this product, and my misgivings about the goal of a March launch. “We continue to march toward that date,” I was told via email. No further details were given.

There are more basic problems, such as the lack of a final controller design. The video on the Kickstarter page shows a few mockups and models, but only one side of what looks to be a production controller has been shown to the public. I asked about this as well. “That design is not final,” I was told. “We are in a prototype phase and exploring several options.” That’s why they can’t show a finished controller; there isn’t one. No one knows what it will be, or how it will look. When a product makes such a big deal out of the fact it uses a standard controller to interact with games on the television, it’s unsettling to have so few details about how that controller will look, much less operate.

The one side of the mock-up controller they’re willing to show you

It’s likewise important to note that the company refuses to confirm the existence of a single game that will run on the OUYA hardware. I asked if they could confirm a single game for the platform. “Not at this time,” I was told. “We are obviously talking to developers behind the scenes but feel that its too early to announce.”

But wait, isn’t Minecraft a game that will run on the OUYA? “Mojang has committed that Minecraft (and their other games) will be on OUYA,” the Kickstarter page stated. The next sentence, however, makes it very clear that there is not the case: “But only if we prove that we can make a great product (that’s our job) AND enough people want their games (that’s your job). Show them with your numbers that you want Minecraft on OUYA!” In other words, there is no commitment being made, and no reason to believe the game will ever come to the platform. If the console sells well and consumers seem to be interested in the product, Mojang may offer its games on the platform. That’s a very big “if.”

The promotional video states outright that Minecraft is coming to the system, which is, at best, misleading. I’ve contacted Mojang for clarification, and will update the story with any comment.

Another problem is the fact the OUYA does little except further fragment the Android market, although I was told that’s not an issue. “There will be only one chipset for OUYA and a totally standard one at that,” I was told. “This is the best way to develop Android for TV.  We will work hard to make it as standard as possible.” I’m going to be blunt: That’s a ridiculous answer, and it’s akin to claiming the Kindle Fire doesn’t count as market fragmentation as long as you only develop for the Kindle Fire.

The OUYA will use a controller when most Android games are designed for the touch screens of phones or tablets, which is a problem. Games are either going to have to be designed from the ground up for the OUYA, or ported from other Android devices that rely on touch screen controls. Unless the hardware sells a few million units very quickly, neither option is going to be attractive to smaller, or even AAA, developers.

The definition of free-to-play given on the Kickstarter site is so broad that as long as it has a demo, it’s considered free-to-play.

It’s selling a dream, not a solution

“I’m skeptical of why people are so excited about OUYA,” Antichamber developer Alexander Bruce said. “If you want to develop a game for consoles with less gatekeeping than PSN or XBLA, I’m pretty sure that’s what XBLIG was supposed to be for, but people aren’t exactly going crazy over selling their games there. If openness is your main concern, I’m not sure what is stopping you from targeting the PC and selling games directly through your website. I personally believe that until you’ve got a high quality game on your hands, where you sell it or which gatekeepers you have to get past aren’t your biggest problems.”

I spoke with Robert Boyd, who has released retro-styled RPGs on both the PC and the Xbox Live Indie Channel, and he has harsh words for the system. He’s the sort of developer OUYA is trying to attract, but he doesn’t buy any of the system’s strengths. (Disclosure: Zeboyd Games developed On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, which is a Penny Arcade title)

“My main problem with the OUYA is that it’s selling a dream: ‘The Console for Indie Developers,’” he explained. “It’s primary selling points are that it’s cheap and developers can make games for it without buying expensive development kits. However, you can already get all that with a cheap PC and unlike the OUYA, the install base for the PC is already massive.”

He also rejects the idea that an “open platform” is the secret to independent success. “The reality is harsh; we’ve seen what happens with open platforms. Look at Xbox Live Indie Games, where very few developers were able to make a living off of it and now the platform is dominated by knock-offs of popular games and wannabe Japanese softcore porn,” he said. “The Apple App Store has been more successful than XBLIG, but even there, you either get in the top 10 and make a fortune or you ‘die in obscurity.’ And the Android is even more open than Apple’s and yet how many success stories do you hear for Android developers? Not many.” Keep in mind all of these platforms have an installed base many times that of the OUYA.

“It’s hard enough to make a living as an indie developer on a popular platform like Steam. Even on popular platforms, there are many games, both indie and otherwise, that fail to sell enough to support the developer. However, trying to make a living on a niche console like the OUYA feels like an even bigger gamble,” he continued.

OUYA is actually making these problems worse with its marketing. “Finally, the creators of OUYA are actively encouraging both free-to-play, all games must be ‘free-to-play’ although their definition is very loose and includes demos and purchase for full version, and hacking. Trying to get a significant portion of an audience like that to actually pay money for a game and not just spend all their time on free emulators for old arcade and video game systems could prove challenging indeed.”

The OUYA console will likely be the Android platform with the lowest installed base, and it will require the most work to get games looking good and playing well compared to the Android handsets and tablets that make up the majority of the market. Why retool your existing Android games to use a controller and look good on your television when you’re targeting an untested platform? Piracy will also be a major concern, due to the fact that rooting the device will be made as simple as possible. Developers already wrestle with pirated and cloned games in the Android ecosystem, and the OUYA prides itself in being open and hackable, both in terms of software and hardware. That’s attractive in some ways, but it also makes it very easy for piracy and other shady activities to thrive.

So not only is there no finished hardware, no service at the moment, no controller, and no games—although we’re being asked to take their word that they can create each of those things in eight months—but focusing development costs on an incredibly risky platform with a small installed base and features that make piracy all but given makes no sense for most developers who release games you’d like to play. It’s an environment that not makes little sense for commercial development, in many ways it’s actively hostile to people hoping to create games for it.

The OUYA may find a home for people interested in hacking, piracy, and fun homebrew projects, but most details about the project point to an ecosystem that, if launched, will make very little sense to support commercially.

The hype doesn’t match the reality

The entire system hangs on the ability that you want to play ported Android games on a cheap system, with an unseen controller, on a television screen. While many developers are willing to provide quotes about how great the OUYA could be, so far no one is willing to put their money where their mouth is and announce projects for the hardware. No one involved in the project has experience launching products even close to the complexity of the OUYA, in terms of either gaming hardware, software, and services.

At least, we don’t think so. “There are plenty of other people involved, but some of them would get fired if we tell you who they are,” the Kickstarter page stated. That doesn’t inspire confidence, and if any of these individuals works at a company that owns their extra-curricular output, which is a sadly common state of affairs, the legal mess could become quite deep.

It will be great if the OUYA is a high quality system that finds success, despite the fact it’s worth throwing some cold water on the hype. The more homes developers can find for their games, the better for everyone.  Still, the challenges the system faces and the fact the OUYA doesn’t have a single game to promote should make you cautious, not excited. There is nothing wrong with taking a step back from the hype and waiting until the system is released commercially and has a robust catalog of games to enjoy. Until then? Caveat emptor.

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Interview: Anita Sarkeesian, games, and Tropes vs. Women -Destructoid

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Interview: Anita Sarkeesian, games, and Tropes vs. Women

1:00 PM on 07.02.2012   |   Stephen Beirne

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It must have been an exciting experience for Anita Sarkeesian during her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Kickstarter project. Broadcast under the name of her hosting site, Feminist Frequency, where Tropes vs. Women originally gained internet popularity, the proposed gaming-centric season of the video series easily met its funding total of $6,000 after only one day. This was testament to the demand for a high-quality critique of the medium through a feminist lens.

Within the third week of funding, an opposing force also made itself known. In response to Anita’s YouTube video for the project, a significant number of differently-minded gamers decided to validate recent feminist critiques of the hobby by flooding her with torrents of misogynistic abuse, bubbling over to various social websites, her host site, Wiki page, and more.

Their indignation quickly backfired: news of the harassment advertised Tropes vs. Women in Video Games even further, generating a phenomenal level of sympathy and support Anita’s way. Despite every stretch goal having already been met, funding soared by $100,000 from the wallets of almost 6,000 contributors in the final five days alone.

As the dust settled, I had the pleasure of talking to Anita about her investment in the medium and what we might expect from her upcoming videos.

Destructoid: How did you first get into gaming as a hobby and in what way would you describe your relationship with the medium?

Anita Sarkeesian: Because my dad was a networking engineer I basically grew up surrounded by computers and started playing PC games at a pretty young age. I also spent a lot of time with the NES and the SNES but what I remember most is the Game Boy. At around ten years old I begged my parents to get me one, this took some serious persuasion on my part because 1) my parents believed it was a toy for boys (at the time I didn’t realize how gendered the marketing was, I mean, it’s called Game ‘Boy’ after all) and 2) my mom had heard all the nonsense about how videogames are dangerous and would rot my brain. In the end, though, they gave in and I remember the sense of victory when I unwrapped it on Christmas morning. After that, the Game Boy and I were inseparable.

Today, I would describe my relationship with gaming as complex, to say the least. There are a handful of truly amazing, artistic, creative and engaging games out there that I absolutely love. On the other hand there are so many more where I, as the player, am forced to choose between the ultra violent, emotionless space marine or the male fantasy style sex object. This is especially frustrating because there is an incredible amount of potential for the industry to push the envelope and create gaming experiences which employ more immersive storytelling, complex character development, and innovative gameplay.

It’s deeply unfortunate that there exist quite a lot of great games marred by their poor representation of women. Have you played any games that you absolutely adored in spite of their failings in that regard, or perhaps some instances where you are willing to overlook such discrepancies simply because you fell in love with the game?

Many of the games I would want to list are a little too complicated to explain in a short paragraph so for brevity’s sake here are a few of the more obvious examples that spring to mind from games I’ve played recently:

Rayman Origins is one of the best platformers I’ve played in years. It was a fun, challenging, and gorgeous game but I was frustrated that I had to repeatedly save the “busty” Nymphs in Distress. On the indie side of things, I really enjoyed Bastion, but the only female character in the game doesn’t have any depth (to put it mildly); basically, her whole characterization was “The Female.”

This week I’ve started playing Gravity Rush and I’m really loving it, though I have to say it’s a little ridiculous that our hero Kat flies and tumbles through the city at tremendous speeds, lands upsidedownways on various building or structures and fights Nevi monsters all while wearing high heels and without any armor (or even pants). Can you imagine what her knees are going to look like? Someone needs to get this woman some protective motorcycle gear and a pair of hefty boots!

I really appreciate the gameplay and some of the complexities of the Assassin’s Creed series, but I’ve been regularly disappointed with the female characters for a whole host of reasons that we don’t have the space to get into. I am, however, looking forward to Assassin’s Creed: Liberation for the Vita which is (finally) going to feature a woman, so we’ll see how that goes *fingers crossed*.

You’ve been making videos for a while and have shared insights into various subjects that have on the most part eluded mainstream critics. What was it that inspired you to start a video series about the negative portrayals of women in the first place?

Like many people I’m a fan of TV shows, movies, and videogames, but it’s always a bit of a double-edged sword for me because while the production quality or game play could be amazing, there’s often a deeply sexist or even misogynist undertone to some of the stories or characters. It’s no secret that, at least in the videogame industry, the majority of games are not made with me in mind, so it’s really hard to be a fan of these mediums and yet see that much of it can seem actively hostile to women.

I started Feminist Frequency because I wanted to take a look at gender representations in mass media through a sociological lens and have a conversation with my generation about why being critical of our media entertainment is important. The work that I do emphasizes and focuses on patterns in the media because it’s not just one or two movies or games that are the problem but rather the repetition of sexist characters and narratives over thousands of movies, games, comics, and TV shows that play a role in amplifying, reinforcing, or normalizing regressive gendered myths.

Are there any games that you’re especially looking forward to experiencing for the first time and researching as part of the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project?

There are a handful of older generation console games I missed when they were originally released that I’m interested in playing such as the Persona series, Primal, and also Knights of the Old Republic 2 (which I’ve heard has an intriguing take on the female villain). Because of my Kickstarter campaign and ensuing firestorm, I haven’t yet had a chance to sit down with Diablo III, so I’m looking forward to that as well.

How many games would you say the project will have you going through for source material? Do you intend to keep a quantitative record of the tropes under scrutiny in order to support your qualitative analysis?

I’m going to have to research and play through literally hundreds of games. I don’t have a final list yet since we’re still in the research phase and we are adding new titles every day, but the scope is already very extensive.

When planning this series, I did preliminary research to identify the character tropes which seem to be repeated most often, so while I’m not going to be able to discuss every single example that has ever existed in gaming for each trope, I am going to keep an extensive running list of how many characters fall into one or more of these gendered stereotypes and archetypes (which will include data on playable vs. non-playable female characters, protagonist vs. sidekicks roles etc).

In response to all the online threats and racist/misogynistic harassment a few weeks back, your Kickstarter project saw an incredible influx of support. What do you plan to do with all the money excess of the final $50,000 stretch goal?

My team and I are talking about how we can expand the scope of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games and Feminist Frequency project more broadly given the influx of additional funding. It’s important to us that the backers are the first to be updated on the project’s evolution, but what we can share is that the issue of harassment both in the gaming community and on the Internet in general has, unfortunately, become intertwined with this Kickstarter campaign, so we’re definitely going to include a substantial additional component to this project that will directly address the epidemic of misogynist, racist, and homophobic online harassment.

Over the past three years, I’ve been dedicated to making Feminist Frequency videos whenever I could, but it’s still essentially been a passionate side project between freelance jobs. Now with the extra funding, it’s an exciting moment for me, because my team and I can now commit full-time to Feminist Frequency and to producing an even bigger and better collection of engaging, in-depth and critical videos that will hopefully contribute to the already ongoing conversation about women’s representations in videogames.

In relation to your attitude when you discover that you have been the victim of this kind of online bullying, how do you normally cope with that realization?

First, I have amazing and incredible viewers and supporters who are an endless source of encouragement and inspiration. I also have a small crew of friends that I go through the comments and messages with so we can laugh at some of the absurdity (while still understanding the increasing severity of the situation). We also document as much of the harassment as we can and then share selected bits of it online to illustrate how serious, threatening, and pervasive Internet harassment can be.

To be completely honest, we also pass around clips of our favorite Star Trek captains standing up to interstellar bullies. This one with Captain Janeway is a favorite of mine.  During this particular tidal wave of harassment, a few supporters sent me over this wonderful video that I’ll admit I’ve watched about ten times already - Thank You Hater!

What do you hope to achieve in the grander scale of things by tackling the misrepresentation of women in popular culture? For example, how would you say misogyny in the gaming industry relates to the gender-divided wage gap in the US?

With Feminist Frequency my goal is to promote media literacy and give viewers some tools to look more critically at the pop culture we all engage with. My hope is to clearly present the issues surrounding women’s problematic representations as a systemic issue by identifying the harmful recurring patterns that we see repeated over and over across all forms of entertainment. Part of this work for me is also to remind people that they aren’t alone in any misgivings they might have about sexist characters and narratives. Many of us (people of all genders) have had enough and want to see real change in the entertainment industries. Ultimately, my video work is one small part of a community of people working towards a larger cultural shift with the end goal of there being more media and entertainment that represents women as full and complete human beings rather than as sex objects or shallow stereotypes.

In terms of the real-world connection, we like to think that the media exists in a vacuum and is somehow not connected to our larger cultural ecosystem. We also like to believe that the media has no effect or impact on us whatsoever, that we are somehow invincible to its embedded myths and messages. The truth, however, is that the media does play a big role in helping to shape individual and society-wide values and belief systems. It should be noted however, that it is not a direct one-to-one cause and effect relationship. The impact of, say, misogyny in games is often subtle and complex in the ways that it works to replicate sexist ideologies and reinforce pre-existing stereotypical notions about women in our larger society. Sometimes I put it this way — think of popular culture like the air we all breathe — it’s in everyone’s interests to make sure that air is not polluted with toxic sexism, racism, or homophobia.

————————————————————————-

Many thanks to Anita for taking the time to talk to us. The first episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games should be freely available in the upcoming months. In the meantime, you can check out past videos in the Tropes vs. Women series on Feminist Frequency.

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GamesMarkt - News - HD-Remakes: Geldschneiderei oder Denkmalpflege?

mediabiz.de

München, 10.07.2012, 14:39  GamesMarkt | Produkt

HD-Remakes: Geldschneiderei oder Denkmalpflege?

Publisher haben überarbeitete Neuauflagen von alten Spielen für sich entdeckt. Fast monatlich erscheinen neue HD-Remakes. GamesMarkt forscht nach, welche Probleme bei der Entwicklung auftreten und was sie wirklich kosten.

Eine Auswahl an HD-Remakes

Eine Auswahl an HD-Remakes  

“Wer ‘Silent Hill 2’ oder den dritten Teil kennt und halbwegs was von Videospielen versteht, dem sollte es von der ersten Sekunde an auffallen: Das hier ist ein Copy&Paste-Job der übelsten Sorte, eine Beleidigung für alle Fans von ‘Silent Hill’ und eine reine Abzocke des Herstellers!” Ein enttäuschter Kunde macht auf Amazon.de seinem Ärger über die “Silent Hill - HD Collection” richtig Luft. “Fans sollten die Finger von dieser Ausgabe lassen, und alle Interessierten, die die Originale noch nicht haben, werden in der Regel beim nächsten Gebrauchthändler fündig.” Harte Worte, die zeigen, dass Überarbeitungen von beliebten Spielen keinesfalls auf uneingeschränkte Gegenliebe stoßen.

Neuauflagen im Monatstakt “Silent Hill”, “Splinter Cell”, “Beyond Good & Evil” oder “Devil May Cry” - kaum ein Monat vergeht, ohne dass ältere Spiele in einer überarbeiteten Version erscheinen würden; mal als verpackte Sammelbox mit mehreren Spielen, mal als Download über Xbox Live und das PlayStation Network, aber stets mit dem Zusatz “HD” im Titel.

Auch Filme werden überarbeitet, hier “Star Wars”

Auch Filme werden überarbeitet, hier “Star Wars”  

Neuauflagen sind keinesfalls eine Erfindung der letzten Jahre. Man denke beispielsweise an “The Twin Snakes”, eine überarbeite Version von “Metal Gear Solid” für den GameCube, die acht Jahre nach dem PlayStation-Original erschien. Die Dichte an HD-Remakes hat in den letzten zwei Jahren aber merklich zugenommen. Die Spielebranche ist mit dieser Art der Zweitverwertung keinesfalls allein. Musik- und Filmindustrie haben schon lange bemerkt, dass sich mit einem Produkt erneut Geld verdienen lässt, wenn man es mit Labels wie ‘Digital neu abgetastet’, ‘Nachkoloriert’ oder ‘Jetzt mit neuem 5.1-Sound’ vermarktet. Besonders der “Star Wars”-Schöpfer George Lucas ist hierfür berühmt-berüchtigt. Er lässt seine SF-Saga in regelmäßigen Abständen bild- und tontechnisch verändern, drehte teilweise sogar Szenen nach.

Dienst am Fan oder am Neukunden? Wie an den “Star Wars”-Überarbeitungen scheiden sich auch an den HD-Remakes die Geister. Fans wie der zitierte Amazon-Kunde laufen oft Sturm, weil die Originale nach ihrer Ansicht verfälscht werden und sie Geldschneiderei wittern. Andere freuen sich hingegen, dass sie Spieleklassiker auf aktuellen Konsolen nachholen können. Und das für kleines Geld, denn die Neuflagen kosten im Regelfall um die zehn Euro, Boxen mit zwei bis drei Titeln werden für rund 30 Euro verkauft.

Wang Xu, Project Manager Ubisoft Shanghai

Wang Xu, Project Manager Ubisoft Shanghai  

Wer ist also die Zielgruppe von HD-Remakes, Serienfans oder Neukunden? “Beide. Fans bekommen neue Grafik, Achievements und manchmal sogar neue Level für aktuelle Hardware”, sagt Wang Xu, Project Manager bei Ubisoft Shanghai. “Neue Kunden werden von der Bekanntheit der Klassiker angezogen. Sie sehen die Chance, aus erster Hand zu erfahren, warum ein Spiel so beliebt ist.” Xu ist als Projektleiter für etliche Neuauflagen der letzten Zeit verantwortlich: “Splinter Cell Trilogy”, “Prince Of Persia Trilogy” und “Beyond Good & Evil HD” wurden unter anderem in der chinesischen Niederlassung von Ubisoft entwickelt. Der französische Publisher ist besonders aktiv, wenn es um die Überarbeitung des eigenen Katalogs geht.

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Silent Hill 2

Publisher: Konami
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Auslieferung: 26.03.2004

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Auslieferung: 03.03.2000

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The State of Games 2012

theverge.com

What is the state of the games industry? It’s a question we’re asked regularly not just by colleagues but friends, family, and acquaintances whose knowledge of video games begins and ends at Angry Birds.

The State of Games series is our effort to present a comprehensive, yet concise take on the people who make, sell, and buy video games today. From developers to gamers, indies to AAAs, the editorial staff packaged must-know info into easily digestible features. And for those lovers of Angry Birds, we covered mobile games, too.

We also paired each section with a case study, providing an opportunity for those with first-hand experience in the industry to share their two cents. People like indie game designer Nathan Vella and Epic Games vice president Mark Rein speak to the state of the iPhone and next-gen consoles. We didn’t just cover where games are today, but where they are going tomorrow.

This is an in-depth and accessible look at what The Economist says will be “the fastest-growing and most exciting form of mass media over the coming decade.” This is Polygon’s The State of Games 2012.

Major Updates

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