Deconstructing Weak-Ass Arguments about gaming on the Internets #48

If you are as nerdy as me, you have no doubt gone about the web and read a plethora of girl gamer blogs, sites that have four posts on them, (most of which are copy and paste Etsy rummages from the excellent Wonderland) the latest post is about four months old, the comments boxes are largely empty and the only thought out article is one about “There are no strong female characters in video games”. Today I’ll be arguing that this is a bogus statement.

This argument isn’t new but the release of Super Princess Peach prompted a revival in the “computer games femmes are often portrayed as weak argument” by male and female gamers alike. Now it seems that any female gamer wanting to say something on the internets has to have written something like this in order to demonstrate that they really care or have something of worth to say about it.

Personally, given the choice I will play as a female character most of the time. They tend to be more interesting and less generic than male characters but I’m not making a statement about anything. My playing as a female character is no more interesting or noteworthy than the fact that in FPSs I’ll play with grenades or a grenade launcher more than any other weapon. It’s just the way I play.

As for strong female characters, (I’m not going to be so insidious as to say role models), some of the greatest games of all time have decent female leads or main characters: Rebecca, Claire, Ripley, Regina, Jade, Samus, Garnet, Koudelka, Nadia, Jill, Heather, Joanna, Lara and D’arci Stern are a few that spring to mind. At this point it’s customary to bring looks into the argument and say something about how female characters are only viewed as strong because they are sexy or they conform to the “Hollywood pedalled ideal of big tits, small waist and eyes as big as the moon”. Well that is true but it isn’t specific to female characters. Look at male characters. With minor exceptions most are generic hotties, which look scarily like the Diet Coke boy from the TV ads.

The female characters often tend to be more interesting/strong across games too; in as much as you can be a strong or interesting character in a game where zombies have taken over the world is the central premise. Men are often one dimensional characters also. By interesting I don’t mean, they have 20+ pre-recorded Bruce Campbell soundbites. Cases in point: WARNING SPOILERS

Harry Mason: Spends most of the game asking himself idiotic questions “Where’s Cheryl”. “What is it?” Oh yeah, he also dies.

Leon: Leon spends most of Resident Evil 2 trying to play the hero and protect and escape with Claire/Sherry/Ada, much to his frustration. He even asks himself at one point “Why does no-one listen to me”. Ah, diddums. Oh and even then Ada saves his life at least 4 times.

Chris: Yes! At last a decent 3 dimensional male character. He gets to be able to take more bites to the face but Jill can use a lock pick and Rebecca can play the piano. Wow Chris, you are a valuable asset to the S.T.A.R.S team.

Steve (Code Veronica): Dies.

Cloud: Is properly emotionally repressed and emotionally immature. The bit where he is in a wheelchair and can’t say anything is hardly noticeable.

Squall: The original …… boy who is so backward he can’t even answer Quistis when she hits on him and who takes something like 100 hours to even hint to Rinoa that he might be interested in her.

Gordon Freeman: Captain charisma himself. I think he was Squall’s role model when he was growing up.

Kurtis Trent: (Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness): Dies

Pig Boy from Beyond Good and Evil: Is literally a PIG. Yes, the symbolism is pixel deep.

Sam Fisher: They call him bland……James bland.

Frank West: See this brilliant piece of writing here. You should be able to do that in the game. Just because you’re a man doesn’t mean you have to fight things. More cowardice should be allowed in video games. I know I wouldn’t go into the mall why should I be forced as a man?

Crash Bandicoot: Ok, sticking with the animal theme. He’s next to mute where as Coco is both intelligent and can speak.

Phoenix Wright: Wouldn’t be able to solve a single case without the help from his numerous female colleagues. Those both alive and dead.

Mario: The original male protagonist. 281 games and still the best he can come up with is “It’s a me! Mario”. Also, he’s slightly chubby as well so I might get on my high horse and denounce Nintendo of being hardcore militant feminists. What kind of ideal do they give males who use videogames as their sole source for influence and role models to aspire to??

Pikachu: (specifically the one from the TV show/Pokemon Yellow).Well, I’m not convinced the Pikachu is male anyway. I’m sure that Pokemon purists can quote lines from the games/series to say otherwise but I’m not going to believe what fictional characters say of other fictional characters. Pikachu has a women’s voice. There is no point here.

Snake: The original grunty man’s man. We’re busting no stereotypes with Snake. The only time he shows any emotion other than testosterone is when he’s in his box in Snake Eater.

Link: He might be an exception had he been instilled with any kind of character whatsoever. As it stands he shows the same joy at saving the Hyrule/Zelda etc. as he does the first time he picks up a rupee. I think Drawn Together’s interpretation of Link might be the most accurate.

Zangief: Well there is an exception to every rule I guess.

Ironically, the only game that lets me play as an anaemic, evil, foul-mouthed, short of breath, lazy, weedy geek male (your average male) is GTA San Andreas. Aha! Oh, but of course you play as a male so we lazily lump that in the sexist bin with Tom Clancy’s latest Big Balls in Big Balsiztan 2: Cocking Anti American Evil in the Wrong ‘un With Our Huge Army Wangs Like Real Men. (BBiBB2:CAAEitW’uWOHAWLRM).

I can understand some of the frustrations of MMORPG players who want their female characters to be on the other side of slutty. However, busty, leggy, naked females have been a key part of fantasy as a whole genre since the beginning. Without busty, leggy, naked females who knows where the fantasy genre would even be these days. Without thousands of prepubescent geeky teenagers getting their cheap thrills from the box art of D&D there probably wouldn’t be a WoW today. Getting rid of the injustice inherent to the system might be a tough nut to crack.

So in summation, I’ve barely started really but I think it’s more balanced thought than some other authors have given the subject. We can all pick and choose examples to use to unfairly support some bias or agenda we might have. In all honesty I think it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Either way computer games, blogs and the internet is for nerds so whatever, nerds. I’m off to take three guys in my butt whilst getting suffocated with big fat wet front flaps smothering my face whilst playing golf on a skyscraper on my friend’s secret island in the sun with my millionaire friends and my 18 supermodel girlfriends whilst drinking champagne from poor people’s empty skulls and ‘dry hump dancing’ as Elton John puts more money in my thong, so enjoy struggling on the third boss nerds. Fucking nerds.

P.S. Note to pseudo-academics, feel free to steal these examples and use them in your latest pathetic study of ideas of gender in video games or some other such pop culture twaddle because I know you can’t be bothered to do any real research but I’m fed up of reading “academic” publications on videogames that draw solely on your experience of that time you played Myst whilst you were in college and what you read when you googled “Girl Gamer”. Just make sure that the next time one of your students is giving you head for extra marks, get him/her to call you Cunzy1 1 x x

Hey- Low!

So All-Star and TGAMer, Chuff_72, our eye on Xbox Live reports that yesterday:

"Well I got home yesterday, and everyone in the world was logged into Crackdown waiting for the Halo 3 Beta to go live (it was supposed to at 2pm) and for some reason it wouldn't, so I went online and it was basically carnage! There were people on Bungie.net threatening to sue and one dude said he was gonna hang himself! Sooooo funny, I love people I do! All Bungie were saying was "sorry" so it left all these retards crying like little girls… Anyways they have apparently fixed it and both the Dr and I set it to download this morning, ready to go tonight - I will have a full TGAM Special on it tomorrow… probably."

Which reminded me that there have been a couple of low blows to the Halo community in recent days. A lot of people rolling their eyes because there's a new game and it's going to so popular but no-one understands games anymore. It's not all about the twitching it's about really 'getting' the game by laming it up on World of Warcraft with 7 million other losers.
It's interesting the polarisation of gamers. MMORPG players tend to want to cyber other players pretending to be women, they don't like fighting and they are happy to be rewarded for clicking the mouse button on enemies. They hate graphics and like to chat and think that they know gaming because they've only played one game in their whole life. FPS players on the other hand are all about reflexes, skill, training and talent. For them everyone else is rubbish, they are the best. It doesn't matter that most of the games are identical and within two weeks everyone is using glitches, cheats and mods to get the cheap win. Just look at it! It's so shiny and slick. Only big bad boys with bouncing balls dare to play this kind of game. Or 12 year old american fucktards.

Anyway, in conclusion it doesn't matter because you are all a bunh of nerds. Whilst you are wanking over pictures of Super Mario's anus I'm going to be doing coke off of twenty real life women's snatches whilst completely drunk on champagne and moonshine and driving a ferrari and getting round the clock blow jobs whilst dance humping super models as we laugh long and loud at how pathetic all you nerds are playing you videogames at the same time you're in your basement dinging level 2. Fucking nerds. Get a life losers.

It is like the desert

Yeah it's like the desert! I'm sad at not being part of what we could now call 'this gen' and I think that all the players have had an ample chance to win my, an avid gamer's, attention. I have been singly just utterly unimpressed by the PS3 post launch (we all know about pre-launch). Gears of War and Dead Rising just don't justify spending that much ££££. Sorry guys you've had a while to get me onside but not convinced. Which means..... FTW. Why you say? Well it's affordable, it's not so geeky, it's fun (allegedly), I can play the entire Resident Evil back catalogue from 0-4 (that's six games people), both super smash brothers, it can talk to my DS, Crystal Chronicles, Pokemon, I know more people with a Wii than any other console (lot of non gamers too), I can play Pokemon Channel every day without finding all the relevant GC cables etc. I might get fit? Oh and virtual console has games that I might want to play (don't give me that shit about Geometry Wars either).

Downsides: The Gamecube +1 graphics, currently 4 games released difficult to get hold of.

PROJECT GET CUNZY1 1 A Wii STARTS TODAY. Wii fund= £3

A new Resident Evil DS?

Yes, yes there is but it isn't Resident Evil Deadly Silence, it's Resident Evil Douche Simulator! We have insider information from someone currently testing the game. You'll be able to douche some of your favourite characters from the series racing against the clock to 'fresh that fem'.

It was revealed to us that there will (surprise surprise) be unlockable characters. One of which is Zombie Female 3 from Resident Evil 2. Capco said:

"she has green and bloody Douche-juice"

Of course she does Cacpom. Of course she does. Expect to see it hit shelves in August and probably stay there for two days before being replaced with Sponge Bob Squarepants meets Catz: Barbie Princess Army Men.