Your Money Vs. Tropes in Video Games

  Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.  It's a capitalized, as it's a proper noun.  It's totally a thing.  Kind of a strange thing, to be honest.  Here is a mirror, because I don't think it deserves ad revenue.  For a pretty good reason, I believe.

  It's the first of a series of videos by Anita Sarkeesian, someone I briefly touched on (not like that) my previous post.  She's quite an interesting woman, a self-proclaimed critic of popular culture.  However, her scope of criticism is fairly narrow, so to cut the fat I'll say that she analyzes sexist attitudes and makes both blog and vlogs about them for a larger website, Feminist Frequency.

  I don't like ad hominem, so I'm not going to say anything about Anita Sarkeesian.  There's a wealth of information available about her and her plight online, it's really only a Google search away.  I won't lie and say that there aren't issues I take with her, however.  Mainly, that she has disabled comments (and ratings, but meh) on her videos.

    Let's talk about a certain game, first.  It's a mouthful, Super Robot Wars: Endless Frontier OG Saga.  It's one of the more niche-y niche titles released for the DS, part of a broader series (Super Robot Wars, or Super Robot Taisen for the weeabooishly correct) that has seen few releases stateside.  The first thing you'll notice is how well endowed the specimen to the left of this paragraph is.  That's Nanbu Kaguya, one of the (mostly) female protagonists in this game.  It's aware of how heavy set her chest is and references it frequently--both the game and other protagonists.  Rarely, if ever, is she actually called Kaguya, most prefer to refer to her as the "cow lady".  How endearing.

  I don't feel Japanese RPGs have had much success this generation, which is what makes the title she's from even more spectacular.  Borrowing a battle system from Namco x Capcom, it goes past the player navigating menus and performing systems of juggles and tag combos in battle.  Battle against loli witches and busty mermaids, to be precise.  It's something that's remained ignored due to the massive amount of fan service.  If you're a white nerd, this won't really be much of an issue (it certainly wasn't for me).

  Now, to consider more of the game.  The story is a mess of nonsense, rife with corny dialog and ambitions no greater than providing a reason they exist in the same world as KOS-MOS, the blue-haired android from Xenosaga.  There are also titties.  Big ones, flat chests, the gamete is covered almost in totality.  Something you won't play when other people are around, no doubt.  The question is, how much of this is a detriment to the game?

    Maybe it's just my privilege speaking, but not much I think.  Games have, for a the most part, adhered to this philosophy that stories only serve the purpose to move the player forward.  To be honest, there's not much I remember of the story in Endless Frontier.  There were some gates, and I fought a bunch of Gundams and a buxom fox merchant lady.  I didn't really care.  I'm pretty positive Majesco didn't want me to care, at least not too much.  The gameplay was compelling enough to continue forward, the story was secondary, and this is a scenario that time and time again has worked for the titles people place amongst their favorites.  Who would've ever called Devil May Cry's story telling or character exposition Shakespearean?  Definitely not someone trying to sell you a Devil May Cry game.  Why would anyone ever buy Bowser's Inside Story for a closer, more personal look at the game's antagonist and his motivations behind constantly capturing Princess Peach?  Perhaps he's just fond of cake.

  However, every once in awhile, a fresh face comes around.  A character that posits a new idea, a game that does something different.  A much younger and edgier me was enjoying a murderous romp through Unreal Tournament 99 when American McGee's Alice was released.  Being a fan of the Lewis Caroll story from my childhood (and having read it and Through the Looking Glass) multiple times, I immediately sought out a copy.  Platformers were rare on the PC, and all of the game that I had seen spoke volumes of the detail given to the world of this game.

  Truth be told, the game was an average platformer at best.  The visuals (of course at the time) were outstanding, and Alice's cold, disconnected back-and-forth between the Cheshire cat was lyrical the way Grimm's Fairy Tales were, but with a distinctly sociopathic undertone.  Fast forward to today, and we live in the wake of the sequel, Alice: Madness Returns.  When it was released, it was free money.  Now that it's been out for quite some time, the verdict on the game seems to be much similar; the combat, though better, the game itself suffers from a rushed production cycle, something symptomatic of many would-be great games this generation.

  It's a damn shame.  It was a beautiful title no doubt; the movement of Alice's hair and the visual design of this game are all things of beauty.  A clever juxtaposition via Alice's tools of warfare, common house-hold utensils as a kitchen knife, tea-pot and pepper shaker.  In essence, Alice was battling horrifying monsters with the tools women were imprisoned in the kitchen with before the fifties.  As a game, and as as a character, it oozed smart sensibilities that were biting and poignant, making the fact that the game's massive list of cut content all that much worse.  Strangely enough, the game's publisher EA has launched their Hate Is Not a Game campaign, championing themselves as supporters of the LBGT movement.  Apparently, they didn't have it in their budgets to realize one of the more often-forgotten icons of early gaming.

  Which is ultimately the problem.  When it comes to video games, it's quite difficult to judge them on the same merit as movies and books.  They're interactive, and thusly player input requires an impact on story-telling.  When you watch a movie or listen to a folk song, the story is information you are being explicit shown and told, your interaction is minimal.  Most games design characters as much as necessary to fit in with the visual aesthetic of their universe, which is something that isn't innately bad, but frequently this results in the AAA titles that dominate the industry.  Games graced with never-ending budgets and long production cycles.  They're built for mass appeal to a very core demographic, either an installed base in the case of Zelda, or males age 18-25 in the case of Gears of War.

  The problem is that we're stuck in this limbo of determining whether or not video games are entertainment for consumption, or the budding art-form people love to claim they are.  When I chain-saw a locust in half in Gears of War, I'm inclined to think that video games are in no way art.  I have instagibbed millions of people with a flak cannon, never once thinking what I was doing was anything more than an over-the-top, gore-infused exercise in total domination.  Then, I play games like Pathologic and I'm not so sure anymore.

    There are games like Lollipop Chainsaw, games that riff on the idea of traditional female protagonists with quite interesting results.  Then, there are titles like Pathologic, which I can't be too sure are "fun" enough to be even considered a game in the first place.  One thing they do have in common is that they're experiences that last with me long after the game is over.  Their worlds and atmospheres become imprinted into my senses, the thick fog of Pathologic and the ridiculous sound of hearts popping out of zombies that you mercilessly chainsaw one after another.  Were they made to ultimately turn a profit?  Maybe.  Did they?  Not entirely.

  In the end, that is ultimately the issue.  There's this double-speak that exists where people want the writing in video games to improve past being simplistic situations commonly explored in myth, television and film, but it's something wanted in games that are, in the end, built for mass appeal.

  What is it that people want out of a character in video games?  When you consider Makoto, what sticks out in your mind: fighting to prove the worth of her dojo and fighting style, or kara-canceling, lightning-fast knuckles flying at whiplash speed across Oceanic Rim?  Though Zelda herself is one of Anita's particular cases of the Damsel in Distress trope, what I remember the most about Windwaker was fighting Ganon at her side, not leaving her behind because the road ahead was too dangerous.

  When examining characters at their most basic relations to the stories they're featured in, it can almost always be typically boiled down to the idea of the mono-myth, an idea popularized by Joseph Campbell.  It's that no new story has been told, and that stories retold are constantly giving new paint on the idea of what a hero is.  The idea of coming "full circle", acquiring a boon that transforms the hero into an elevated and idealized figure.  Video games, perhaps more than any form of art or entertainment, apply themselves to this formula in totality, seemingly not even trying to hide it the way post-modernism does.  That's because a game ultimately wants the player to succeed.  Even Dark and Demon's Souls will see you joyously howling over victory after multiple humiliating deaths.

  In the end, a larger issue is at hand here.  It's one that has been unfortunately hijacked by Anita Sarkeesian and turned into a not-so-biting expose of pop culture, when pop culture is not what defines video games as a medium at all.  She says in her video that video games are becoming an important part of the sociopolitical landscape, and while that is undoubtedly true, the way games have changed over the ages only seems like slow progress because the market is seemingly kept afloat by people who just want to shoot other people in Call of Duty.  While this is not my demographic, it's not one that I'll say is without merit, as when I was young that was me.  As I grew older, however, I yearned to find something more unique.  Something more than just gunning down opponents.

  Well, mostly.  At the end of the day, wanting things like this to change; wanting more intelligent characters and a better grade of story telling is not something that's going to come from the offices of EA.  Capcom aren't going to revolutionize the way we see story telling and character design any time soon.  It's going to be smaller titles, games so rough around the edges that their appeal will be very limited.  Wanting Nintendo to feature Zelda as the protagonist of a Zelda game radically changes the landscape of a title with an install base many developers would kill for, it's something Nintendo won't be doing.  Not because they don't care about doing away with gender constructs, but because they know what their fans want.  Not to rescue the princess, but to explore dungeons and solve puzzles as the Hero of Time, Link.

  Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games is part of a broader issue that is being ignored, and going about it in a very non-constructive manner.  It's unfortunate that the negative buzz has martyred her, but the entire issue has become a dramatic cavalcade that seems to have eclipsed her point altogether.  Maybe, though, people will learn that when they pay for Gears of War over Alice: Madness Returns, they're investing in what they want to see more of.  Then we can really start to break some ground with this issue.