The supreme court wasn’t just copying Fire Emblem when it ruled in favor of same-sex marriage today. Gay unions have been around for quite some time in video games. Let’s look back at marriage equality’s rich history in the virtual world.
Same sex marriage options in gaming are a relatively recent and welcome addition. It is very important that gaming companies are acknowledging that not every person in their consumer community is a white, heterosexual, male gamer. While some of the same-sex marriage options in gaming are still slightly problematic in some ways (due to some fetishization of same sex relationships such as some games only offering a same-sex option for lesbian pairings and not for gay couples), it is undeniably a step in the right direction! This article is a brief history of how same-sex marriage options have gradually become more available in various video game franchises.
I picked up a copy of Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Fates, the day it launched and I was surprised that Nintendo had actually included two marriage options for the same gender!Â
It was definitely a limited, but welcome addition to one of my favorite JRPG series, and I hope they expand this feature in future installments. Many people in the Fire Emblem fan-community were quite pleased that Nintendo had granted them the opportunity to allow their own sexual orientation to live through the player character by including the two bisexual marriage options, which allowed them to immerse themselves further into the story.Â
There Was a Bounty Hunter from the Depths of Space...
Today I’ll be doing a post on one of my favorite video game characters, Samus Aran from Nintendo’s Metroid. Metroid as a series is a very mature and dark series which contrasts Nintendo’s typically lighthearted family-friendly franchises. Metroid focuses on the bounty hunter Samus Aran’s quest to save the galaxy from extraterrestrial threats. The first game in the franchise came out in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. During the 1980s all video game protagonists tended to be male characters so what made Samus truly stand out from the rest is the fact that the mighty Samus Aran, a ruthless and callous bounty hunter, is actually...A WOMAN.Â
(Art by Breloom-Da-Bassgod on DeviantART)
Beneath her signature Varia Suit is a woman who is just as capable of saving the world as Nintendo’s other male protagonists. When the game came out, many people referred to Samus as a male due to the fact that Nintendo avoided hinting at her true gender to leave it a surprise for players that cleared the game and were given the image of Samus removing her helmet. This was revolutionary at the time of Metroid’s release because playing as a female character was unheard of!Â
Samus Aran was the first female protagonist that players assumed the role of during the 1980s and she definitely left an impact on players when they cleared the game and realized that they had been playing as a woman this whole time. However, this is where my criticism comes into play...players are rewarded for their speed at beating the game...by getting to see Samus in less and less  clothing. Yay pixelated boobs! :DÂ
Now, Samus as a protagonist is a complete badass through and through. She has to trek through countless hostile environments on various planets across the galaxy ALONE. She is a very stern and solemn character due to her intense training from a very young age after being orphaned at birth. She is incredibly tough...so why is it that we as players are rewarded by degrading such a strong woman? Unfortunately, this trend continued with the franchise for many of its future installments.Â
The faster the clear time, the more you get to ogle at Samus. This is pretty upsetting because while Samus is a beautiful and strong woman, she is highly sexualized to keep male gamer’s satiated. Even Samus’ latest rendition primarily features showing off her Zero-Suit variant which has her in a skintight bodysuit. Now, the issue I have most is with a lot of the Metroid fandom who tends to just look at Samus as a sex symbol  and a “piece of ass” rather than the badass that she actually is. Nintendo helps this negative outlook flourish though when they decide to reward players with Samus taking off more clothes as you rush to beat the game.Â
In the most recent entry of the franchise, Metroid: Other M,  Samus also underwent a change of character to be portrayed as “more feminine. I was enraged when seeing Samus; destroyer of the Space Pirates’ crime ring,  defeater of Mother Brain and Kraid, conqueror of her arch-nemesis and murderer of her parents, Ridley, following the orders of some man’s orders. She is a lone wolf, not some man’s puppet! She wasn’t even allowed to use her own Varia Suit without the commander’s approval...like what? Now, the writing of this game is unanimously hated by most of the fans but to me it is a horrific example of trying to belittle such a strong character into nothing more than some blond-haired, blue-eyed doll that confines to male orders.Â
Regardless, I really love Samus Aran. She was the first attempt to include women alongside male leads in gaming and it was incredibly impactful. She is pretty much the reason that strong female characters even became a trend in a few of today’s games. Despite the sexism, Samus is strong and will continue to conquer the galaxy one Metroid at a time.Â
Battlefield 1 isn't aiming for total realism, so why are it's developers rolling out that same tired argument to justify removing female characters?
I’m still mad about this. If Call of Duty and Titanfall 2 think it’s a no brainer to add female characters in than EA has no excuse. It’s even worse for Battlefield 1 because, as the article points out, they could have highlighted the exemplary service of women during the First World War since this is the first major AAA title to take place during this time period, but DICE and/or EA said no because “it wouldn’t be believable to boys”. Yeah, THAT’S the part of the game that’s hard to believe. It certainly isn’t the ridiculous abundance of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, the tanks that don’t actually crawl at a snail’s pace like they did in real life and trench warfare tactics being practically non existent. Oh and the fact that there were actually women involved in the war. After the game came out, I started doing a lot of research on the first world war because I don’t know as much about it as I do on the second world war. I learned a lot since the game came out, and that was mainly because of the many surprising details in the game that prompted me to want to learn more. And I think the ability for a historically based game to do that is amazing in that it actually does honor the memory of those who fought by getting younger generations to learn about why they fought and how. But leaving out an entire group of people for MARKETING reasons is just the most scumbag thing to do. You are dishonoring their memory and being outright disrespectful to those who sacrificed so much so that we can all live in the world we live in now.
As a historical title, they have an obligation to portray such a bloody period of time, where men AND women gave their lives, with dignity and respect. How can they say this game is dedicated to the memory of those who participated in the war (which it literally says in the campaign) when they purposefully cut out some of the most important people in it? Women not only made progressive contributions for future generations of women in the military and medicine, but they saved countless lives, they manufactured almost everything that was used in the war, including guns and artillery shells, and were honored by many for their actions including by their male peers.
Now nobody is really surprised by this action considering EA is the producer. Gamers have long since known EA to be an evil company. They have done horrible things not only to gamers but to their own employees, other developers, hell even the popular John Madden NFL series is basically a huge rip-off of a smaller developer’s game. You don’t really need to try so hard to find out some of the things they’ve done. Basically if a company needs to say to consumers “we’ve changed our ways and we’re not the evil company we used to be” (which they literally did) then they still do stuff like this, then that’s kind of a red flag for anyone who isn’t aware of how evil they are by now. Although I did expect better from DICE. From what I have read online, there are conflicting reports of whether it was ultimately DICE’s decision to remove women from the game or EA’s. If it was DICE then I am sorely disappointed. At first I was excited when I heard a developer say “Screw realism, we’re adding women in the game because we’re long overdue.” Yes, yes you guys are overdue, though that’s not really the best reasoning since women were actually in the war. Then they went back on that decision, basically saying that authenticity doesn’t matter when it comes to “important” things like the guns and vehicles and gameplay (everything about the game pretty much) but putting women in the game? Oh no! That’s not historically accurate! Our male gamers would NEVER believe that! You know, even though it would be one of the few historically accurate things about the game.
The developers may even read these kinds of posts and say, “Well you can play as a woman in the campaign!” Yes, you can play as a Turkish woman in the campaign. For about an hour or so. Plus she’s the only woman in the game. Also for some reason they kind of imply she has a thing for Lawrence of Arabia which is in itself problematic.Â
This was really a disappointment for me on multiple levels. DICE, despite it’s connection to soul-sucking company Electronic Arts, has made some popular AAA titles. While games such as Call of Duty, Titanfall 2, and Grand Theft Auto V, games that generally share the same player-base as Battlefield, allow you to play as a woman in multiplayer as if there wasn’t even a discussion about it, Battlefield has yet to emulate them in this. Even when given a platform on which to implement this, the First World War where women’s contributions have had such a deciding factor in future generations of women across multiple levels of social progress, they still do not deliver. I didn’t say they cannot  deliver, I said “do not”. This was a decision that they made for a very bullshit reason that not only disrespects gamers, but it disrespects those for whom this game was dedicated to. I feel bad for the developer mentioned in the article who brought this to light because when I searched her name, everything that came up referred to her as a “former coder” which I assume to mean she was fired after her posts were publicized and DICE and EA started receiving criticism for it, which at this point shouldn’t really surprise you.Â
Once again we return to the Metal Gear Solid franchise as an example of women’s objectification in the gaming community. When we began this project the first image that popped into my mind of a woman being exploited in the gaming community was Quiet from Metal Gear Solid V. All you have to do is take one look at Quiet’s design and you realize that she is literally just put into the game to give the player some eye-candy to fawn over. Dressed in little more than a bikini, Quiet serves as a skilled sniper and the companion character to the player, who assumes to role of Snake. For those who are unaware, the Metal Gear Solid franchise is an action-adventure stealth game that revolves around militaristic themes. These games were directed and produced by Hideo Kojima from its beginnings until the release of  Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Quiet is one of the main characters in this game and it is quite disappointing that her appearance takes the form of a bikini-clad sex symbol. Now, by no means am I saying that Quiet’s physical beauty demeans her strength and formidable power as a military unit, but I am saying that her lack of clothing seems to strip those aspects from her when the game is played by misogynistic white, heterosexual males who simply gawk at her rather than admire her physical abilities and prowess
There are plot points in the game that are given to explain and “justify” why Quiet dresses in this manner but it really does not do much to defend something this extreme. Without getting too confusing and convoluted, like the plot of this entire series, Quiet has been introduced to genetic modification that forced her to breathe through her skin a la photosynthesis. This need to breathe through her skin is what is used to explain her practical nudity throughout the entire story. Yet, if one looks at the character known as The End from MGS3: Snake Eater, he is completely covered in military tactical gear from head to toe. This man is afflicted with a very similar modification to Quiet, yet he is fully clothed. So why is it that Quiet must wear near nothing while the End can wear full gear? Additionally, this justification does not hold much water when Quiet is placed in extremely sexual and suggestive positions, strips down and rolls around nearly naked in the rain, and the player can spy on her when she is showering.Â
Also, Kojima himself has been quoted with saying that Quiet’s design was used to sell more copies of the game through the “sex-sells” ideology and he said that the players are the ones that are buying into this image. Something else that bothers me is the fact that Quiet, as her name implies, cannot speak. Now, she is unable to speak due to some vocal parasite that will bring about her death should she speak any bit of English, but to me this further cements the fact that she is just there for players to look at. I feel quite disappointed that such a strong woman as Quiet is has been degraded to little more than a pair of breasts with a sniper rifle. Additionally, Quiet falls in love with the male protagonist which pushes her into a trope of damsel. It seems though that her appearance has been intended from the beginning of her conceptualization. In her concept artwork I was only able to find one sketch of her actually wearing clothing (see the image on the far right).Â
Now that we know what booth babes are apparently for, lets talk next about this pervert for a moment. The guy in the photo up top, the one with the oh so subtle shirt, is Hideo Kojima. He is a game director who, until recently, worked for Konami Entertainment gaming company, and has worked on many games, his most popular series being the Metal Gear franchise which spanned over a dozen games from 1987-present. Now before I completely bash this guy for being a lecher, I want to point out that as a game director he is very good at what he does and the popularity of his games (which are very good) speak for themselves. Personally the Metal Gear series is one of my favorite games series of all time that I’ve been playing since I was very young. HOWEVER just because his games are good doesn’t mean he doesn’t throw in a few, well more than a few... actually quiet a lot, of instances of sexual objectification and exploitation. In fact he takes it a step further, and rather than just catering to a predominantly male consumer base, he caters to specific sexual fetishes as well.Â
EXHIBIT A (See second photo) - This is Paz. This is a screenshot of her from Hideo’s most recent game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015). She’s a character from a previous game (MGS: Peace Walker, 2010) who made a return in this one, and what she’s wearing in the photo is all you will see her in. Now you might be thinking, “how old is she?” First of all I would like to point out that that is not a question that should even have to be asked in a situation like this. But despite the fact that it looks like a primary school student is being sexually objectified, Hideo justifies it by having her actually be 34 years old when you meet up with her in this game, with her being 9 years younger in the last game she was in. She’s apparently spy who was hired specifically to play the role of a primary school student because of how she looks. In this game however, she is suffering from a combination of post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative disorder which is making her think she actually is a primary school student (which in itself is messed up that he’s using very serious mental disorders as a narrative tool to justifying her sexual objectification) Clever of ol’ Kojima eh? (No, not really. That’s fucked up). Sadly this is something not only prevalent in some games, but the sexual exploitation of certain fetishes like loliconism is also seen in anime and other forms of Japanese media. And this is certainly not the only instance of Hideo doing something like this. There are multiple examples of sexual objectification of women and the female characters in the MGS series, and there are so many I can’t possibly fit them all in this post without losing your attention.Â
We already determined why exploiting sexuality to sell games is wrong, and now we know it exists to a much creepier level. So why did I tell you about this other than to make you see photos you didn’t want to see before but now can never forget? Because it needs to be understood just how deep this issue goes. The Metal Gear series is widely known as one of the best video games series of all time and certainly one of the longest running. But even it isn’t free of the problematic behavior that grips so many developers in the industry as a whole. And while other popular developers like BioWare strive to make their games more inclusive by adding more diverse representations of women, minorities and lgbt in their games, it’s struggling to put a dent in the normalization of behaviors that has already been ingrained in so many gamers because of games like Metal Gear.
Okay boys and girls! Let’s talk for a second about something that vexes me greatly about the gaming industry. Now first of all, I love games. No one who knows me would ever deny that. I’ve been playing games for 18 years and I plan on playing games on my deathbed when my last future clone body has reached the end of genetic purity and I can no longer be cloned. Yes, that is a long time. But I digress. The picture you see above is of what are called “booth babes.” Yes that is a real term used to describe a real profession done by real women. “What is the purpose of this job?” one might ask. Well its very simple: they exist to sell games. Often games that have absolutely nothing to do with anything related to women, sexuality, or the ridiculous outfits they are often made to wear. Now exploiting sexuality to advertise something is hardly anything new, but that doesn’t mean its an okay thing to do because it reeeeeeeeeeally isn’t. To the industry’s credit, not every developer uses this tactic, but you still see it now and then whenever you go to any convention where companies want to show off their games. Now onto why it’s not okay: “By exploiting sexuality to gain popularity, they’re alienating other women and reinforcing destructive stereotypes that make objectifying women the norm.” (- Leigh Davis, HAWP) In other words, the more companies do this, the more they’re catering to an already male dominated industry, and the longer this goes on the harder it’s going to be to dismantle the idea that sexualizing women in games is normal.Â
     My roommate has this poster on his wall and as I was reading through it I noticed the fourth one from the bottom says, “All women wear revealing clothes and have great bodies.” Now I know that’s a satirical way of pointing out something that occurs frequently in games, but everything else on this list are things that occur so frequently, they are considered fundamental things that all gamers know about almost instinctively. So the whole, women wear revealing clothes and have great bodies thing says a few things that I take issue with: 1. That female characters have been sexualized and objectified through their apparel in games for a ridiculously long time now. 2. Somehow with all the technological advancements made in gaming and how far gaming has come in terms of carving out their own place among popular media, as well as the social advancements made in the US and other countries since the industry’s resurrection in 1984, objectifying women in games is still somehow a thing that people think is okay because it’s been happening for so long. 3. Despite the somewhat recent surge of female protagonists in games, this statement still made it on the list, which tells you that having a female protagonist is one thing, but having a non-sexualized female protagonist with well rounded character traits and personality within an narrative that empowers her rather than throws her into the same misogynistic tropes seen in other games, TV, film and other popular media is something else entirely.
I want to see an end to the normalization of hyper-sexualized and objectified female characters in games. Unfortunately however, many companies do this as a way of selling their game, (Which I’ll be covering in another post!)Â
This short video quickly and efficiently portrays the frustration some, if not most women feel with video games. In a lot of games the women’s armor is nearly always different than the mens, or an entirely new article of clothing. A large portion of the gaming community is frustrated with the way women are portrayed in video games, and their articles of clothing are usually the worst. It wouldn’t make sense to see a girl wearing a chainmail bikini top on the battle field, so why is it allowed in video games?
This article highlights the overwhelming amount of sexism in video gaming through visual charts and statistics. Not only does this article discuss the video games themselves but also the industry as a whole. Many positions in game developing companies are held be men with very few if any females being head developers on projects.Â
Even though this image is meant to be comedic it truly highlights one of the most prevalent issues in video games; a lack of diversity among protagonists.Â
A lot of the best-selling franchises feature white, almost-always heterosexual, male lead characters that the player assumes the role of. This was especially common in the early 2000s, and thankfully game developers are beginning to include a bit more diversity in protagonists of their games to make playing the games a bit more personal for gamers. Even if it is not intentional, by having such a lack of diversity among its playable characters certain games and franchises are creating a barrier between the player and the game that removes the immersive aspect of video gaming. Not every person that plays video games is a 30 year-old, brown-haired, white heterosexual male...so why is that the most popular choice for the primary character of the game?
Sadly this is all too true. Not only have I witnessed and even experienced this first hand, just knowing that this phenomena is so prevalent that it gets its own Cyanide and Happiness-style comic strip just goes to show that gamers and people within the gaming industry know this exists to an undeniable extent. And if this is so widely known then steps should be taken to stop this behavior because right now there are still women in gaming who either being tested on their gaming credibility by other gamers, being objectified for being a woman that plays video games, are outright shunned because of a false belief that women only play video games to exploit their sexuality, or being either harassed, threatened or ignored by other male gamers because of some weird notion that for whatever reason women aren’t as good at video games as men. This is also a great source of shame not only to myself as a gamer, but also to the gaming community as a whole. That an art form as unique and as wonderful as gaming, with titles that can deliver heart-wrenching stories, fast-paced excitement, and just an all around fun time for you and your friends can be this exclusionary of a community really upsets me, because telling someone they can’t experience a game for whatever reason just isn’t what gaming is about.Â
For our project we are focusing on examining the discriminations against player’s gender, race, and sexuality in the video game community. We will also be focusing on the ways in which female characters are portrayed and exploited within video games in comparison to the male counterparts. Also, we will examine the lack of diversity and amount of representation of different races in video games. The gender and sexuality of gamers also comes under fire and leads to biased views on their capability as a gamer.
      For our blog’s design we chose a more satirical approach as a statement against the demographic of gamers that likes to make damaging comments about gamers who are not white, heterosexual, males. We have found a couple blogs that focus on impossible ideals of women and discrimination in videogames but we want to try and make our blog focus on the intersectionality and multifaceted forms of discrimination that incorporate not only one’s gender but also their race and sexuality. We will not only critique the video games that profit off of discrimination but also discuss those that succeed without resorting to such tactics.
