The Gamer's Quarter

[simplicio]

THIS IS NOT A GIRL GAMER THREAD.

I'm interested, due to what I've been playing and reading about recently, in gender roles/representation and its usage in games beyond the typical Croft-isms.

Rule of Rose appears, to me, to use sexual representation to implicate the player as being a part of the world objectifying and actively degrading the protagonist.

On a very opposite tack, Okami uses a non-human (and not visibly) female protagonist to both obfuscate and subvert traditional gender roles, gaming and otherwise.

I just read dhex's beef with Far Cry in the new issue, and dess' with Lost In Blue on dailyvideogame, but those representations both fall along more traditional, tired (heteronormative) lines. Anything more progressive going on out there?

[Shapermc]

Like Silent Hill 3? What about Etenral Darkness? Or Princess Peach? Tiat Young?

I mean, your asking for progressive from a medium that likes to get itself into a rut. They exist, but they aren't the mainstream for either sex.
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-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dhex]

i really gotta work on my farces.
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[Lackey]

[player 2]

That Tingle game?

Leisure Suite Larry?
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"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[dhex]

also: what about every game where you play as an animal? (i don't know if starfox is sexualized or whatever, having never played it, but it's certainly humanized)

unrelated:
http://www.aldaily.com/bwc.htm
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[OtakupunkX]

[player 2]

There's definitely machismo in Star Fox.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[Tablesaw]

[Lackey]

[dhex]

[dessgeega]

i gave the article my approval.

and i'm still really glad we ran it.

and i still think it's fabulous.
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[helicopterp]

[simplicio]

[dessgeega]

tiat young is one of the protagonists of the darius series (the descendent of tiat). i like it a lot when shooters have women protagonists, because the gendering is so subtle. for example, rayforce (which i totally had a dream about half an hour ago. i was being a total taito snob and explaining to someone why the game has four different names).

i wrote in the escapist about how i used to identify very strongly with samus, back when she was just a strong woman whose body we never got to see because of the suit. recently they took away her suit, and under it she's thin and long-haired and femmey. the child inside me feels totally betrayed.
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[simplicio]

but dude, the suit was pretty barbie-figured to begin with. so unless it's also the world's most powerful corset, I'm not sure what you were expecting. Then again, morphball, so I dunno. The long hair does get me though; why would you want ass-length hair when you're wearing a helmet your whole life?

Was Tiat Young's gender utitlized any more than Samus'? I'm not sure I've ever gotten anything feminine out of Samus, which is fine, as the series really seems to be more about the suit more than the person in it, and taken that way it's a good statement on gender equality, especially given the era of its original release.

[dessgeega]

[simplicio]

wasn't there a head on view of her ingame that was pretty ridiculously slim though?

[Lackey]

Not really, she's always had that huge shoulder/helmet arrangement. I'm also disappointed, I loved the all business Samus.

How do you "utilize" gender, or rather sex, exactly? Just in terms of novel approachs or for subversive/social engineering purposes? In any case it seems like the rubric has been narrowed down to female-masculine (a girl, but also-she's tough!), female-feminine (Princess Peach, I guess?) or female-neuter (Samus, pretty much). I don't have a handle on the relevance of these though. The non-human (wolf, animal, whatever) female thing is pretty neat though because it's like sex without gender; or they're the same thing at least.

(parentheses)
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[simplicio]

[Swimmy]

Silent Hill 2 is a good example of gender in games. James is very masculine in all the wrong ways.

Or what, does gender in games always have to be about the women?
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Lackey]

Harry in Silent Hill 1 is pretty motherly, or so I hear.
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[Tablesaw]

[Nana Komatsu]

Does No One Lives Forever qualify as a Croft-ism?

[Lackey]

Cate Archer seems to be a more self-aware character design.

Edit: this may not be true, it's been a long time since I've played a Tomb Raider.
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[helicopterp]

[dessgeega]

[Ketch]

[helicopterp]

Or a Trauma Center sequel based on the Hedwig and the Angry Inch universe!
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[GSL]

[dessgeega]

[Shapermc]

[Nana Komatsu]

[dessgeega]

hahaha yes

a cock in a frock on a rock!

(which has nothing to do with that actor but is still funny!)
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[a_plus]

I was going to post about the guardian legend! one of my favorite games.

sort of realated, but didn't syphon filter have a lesbian main character? I can only imagine it being treated tragically awful. Come to think of it, have there been any good GLBT representations in videogames?

[simplicio]

Certainly not that I can think of. Then again, I'm not sure I can think of any, barring Ultima 7's brothel. Well, that was handled pretty well, so +1!

What's the guardian legend?

[Six]

[a_plus]

six, yeah, that's the one.

simplico, ultima 7's thing was.. well. It wasn't so much a brothel as a single character. No matter what gender you pick in the beginning of the game, she will seduce you. It felt like the game assumed you were going to choose a male character and have hetero sex, but if you pick a female character, oops! Same storyline, and it turns out homosexual.
And the Guardian Legend!!! It's a game by compile (who did the puyo puyo games) that's half overhead vertical shooter and half overworld crystalis-y type game, with experience levels and upgraded weapons, and the protagonist happens to be female (or at least a female-assigned robot of some sort). More in-depth here and here. I fell in love with it the first time i saw its maps in an early Nintendo Power. Yuzo Koshiro music, too!

[simplicio]

Is my memory failing? I seem to remember hookers of both genders being available, but I played it nearly ten years ago now. Am I thinking of a different game entirely?

[a_plus]

I don't think there's any prostitution in either half of Ultima 7! Maybe you're thinking of Fallout?

[Six]

Wow, I just tried Guardian Legend. How come I've never heard of this before?

It reminds me a bit of Sigma Star Saga, except twenty years earlier and it doesn't suck.

[dessgeega]

my first experience in fallout 2 (after going through the incredibly shitty intro dungeon) was to spend a night at a brothel. the dungeon totally turned me off to the game (though i hear it gets much better) and this lady charged the total amount of money i had on me. so i spent it. i was surprised not only that i could go through with it (wasteland's prostitute "doesn't do girls") and also at how well it was treated (wasteland's prostitute gives you radiation cancer).

fear effect 2 is awful. i bought a cheap used copy because i wanted to see how a woman-woman relationship was treated (i joked with mr. mechanical that the old advertising campaign for the game was "buy this game women smooch in it!" and that's basically why i bought it). i only got one disc and it was so scratched that it eventually stopped working. the game was practically unplayable anyway, and i can't imagine mucking through all that just to get to scenes where we can see the relationship develop.

let's talk about how the ultima series gradually takes control of your character away from you as it goes on. exodus actually gives you four gender options for each character (male, female, other or none if i remember?). once you become the avatar, you pick between male and female, but the game never assigns you a face or a voice, and there's that whole big quiz at the beginning to determine your personality. in ultima 6 you have to pick a face, but there's a lot to chose from, in different colors and genders. ultima 8 (pagan) insists that you must be male, but doesn't assign you a face. and in ultima 9, the last episode, you have to be that white, blonde nordic dude from the cover of warriors of destiny. some avatar!

the guardian legend is the hotness.

in conclusion, invader is the most queer-friendly game ever designed.
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[simplicio]

[Lackey]

Neuter or undefined gender protagonists are great.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dhex]

[Nana Komatsu]

[Lackey]

[Dracko]

Somewhere, there has to be a game indulging in revenge fantasies and ostensibly classic drames about castration.

If there isn't, there should be.
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[dessgeega]

[Dracko]

If Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is the first punk game, would a Hothead Paisan one be, like, the first GLBT indie punk in-your-face one?

Because that would be awesome.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"