There But For the Grace of Gex...

"That's a weird way to spell Yume Ni-.." 
Shut up.  
"So is the Yume Nikki article just canceled now or...?"
It's still coming.  I thought this was just a little more important, okay?

I'd like to revisit a previous topic for a moment.  A few articles back I tried to untangle just what makes feminist game criticism so terrifying to some gamers.  The conclusion I came to was that it's primarily a fear of the unknown, of not knowing what shape games would take if the issues raised by feminist game critics were addressed, but I realize now that I was somewhat remiss.  I didn't actually do anything to allay that fear.  I did exactly what the critics I was criticizing do and pointed out a problem without actually working out a meaningful solution.  So let's dig a little deeper, here.

As I said in that previous article, it's overwhelmingly clear that a change needs to take place.  Game stories have grown too reliant on lazy, sexist stereotypes in characterizing female characters, and they're finding it harder and harder to get away with it.  However, I think the reality of what this means is a lot less severe than people might be picturing.   It gets built up as this massive sea change that's going to completely reverse what we think about game narrative...but it really isn't.  How do I know?  Because this has happened before!  Games evolve to reflect changing societal values all the time.  It's nothing new.  And if you don't believe me, just ask Gex.

 (Insert any line from any Austin Powers movie here)

If you've never heard of Gex, you're actually my target audience here because it probably means you're too young to remember him.  Gex the Gecko rose to B-List gaming popularity in an era when mascot platformers were the hot genre.  Every company wanted to make a Mario or Sonic of their own, but Gex was a little different.  Gex didn't just have "attitude," he was cynical.  He was ironic.  His games took the form of movie and television genre parodies, which he'd bounce and slurp his way through while making snarky comments in the vein of Mystery Sci-...eh...Rifftrax.  (Gotta remember the audience, here.)  Today, the idea of a character speaking and cracking jokes during gameplay is taken as a matter of course, but it was fairly revolutionary when Gex did it all the way back in 1996.

The reason I bring up Gex is that I was thinking about Gex 2 last night, as I do approximately every 45 minutes, and I remembered something a little...off about that game, so I went to YouTube to pull up some gameplay footage and jog my memory.

Here's what I found.  (If your browser doesn't allow timestamp links, it starts at about 36:15.)

I don't even...

I want you to drink this level in.  Just drink it.  Chug it so hard it sprays down your face and neck.  This is a real thing that got sold for money in stores.  What you're seeing here is apparently supposed to be a parody of Kung-fu movies, but instead it's just jokes about Chinese food, samurai (!?), and laundromats.  Also you're collecting kabuki masks as you fight...Chinese...dragons...and...Good lord!  I barely even know what to say.  This was actually considered an acceptable thing to make as recently as 1998. 

And the thing is, this isn't an isolated incident, either.  Late-90s video games had this weird obsession with using absurdly racist caricatures of Asian people for...comedy?  I'm not even talking about vague politics of cultural appropriation here.  Some of this was straight-up war propaganda levels of Not Okay.  Seriously, I feel like I should put one of those Looney Tunes racism warnings in front of this entire blog post now.

"What you're about to see was not okay then

and it's not okay now."

But the point of this post is not to just gawk in horror at all this nonsense.  (Okay, it partly is, because JESUS CHRIST!)  My point is that I want you to compare this with games today.  Do you see anything like this in modern games?

"Yes."

...

...Okay, yes, but not as much and not as flagrantly is the point I'm trying to make.  Society evolved and we realized this kind of thing was just lazy and gross, and so games changed with it.  But ask yourself, are games any different?  Are games any less for not indulging in these gross, lazy stereotypes and instead writing interesting and unique Asian characters who are legitimately awesome?  No!  Of course not!  Awesome things are great and now we have more of them!

My ultimate point is that the abandonment of sexist tropes and gender stereotyping in video game storytelling could be just as painless.  Games are better for having originality and creating deep and interesting characters.  Games are better for not being...the things I've posted above.  Games are better for not being allowed to rely on stereotypes to create their cast and world.

I love Gex 2, but if it ever got a remake I'd like to see that kung-fu level get a face-lift.  Drop the lazy stereotype humor and make it an actual, honest-to-god parody of kung-fu flicks like its supposed to be in the first place!  The game would be better.  The joke would work better.  WHY ARE YOU COLLECTING KABUKI MASKS IN A CHINESE-THEMED ST-....

 "We get it."

Okay, I'm sorry.

Look, some day we're going to look back on modern games' treatment of women the same way we look back on that Gex 2 stage today.  It's not a look of hatred or even derision, just a look of relief that we finally got over that cultural barrier.  And the games we'll have then will be even more rad than the games we have today, and we won't feel like we've lost anything in the transition.  Hell, most of us won't even realize there was a transition.  All we'll have seen was a slow progression of games improving, and leaving old hangups by the wayside as a natural extension of that growth.

So yeah, that's the future we're looking at.  That's the future people have been so afraid of.  Doesn't sound so scary to me.

Your Mistake Was to Underestimate My Power

This was going to be about Yume Nikki, but then something happened.  I played the demo for Bayonetta 2, and then other people played the demo for Bayonetta 2.  From there a discussion began, fueled by incoming reviews, and now it seems like a lot of people want to talk about Bayonetta.  I also want to talk about Bayonetta.

So let's talk about Bayonetta.

A Modern Witch

Oh!  If you don't know who Bayonetta is, go play Bayonetta.  Depending on when you're reading this, there may be a shiny new version out for Wii U that's getting rave reviews.  And honestly, I couldn't give her a good summary if I wanted to.  The reasons for this will become clear as we go, but for now, seriously just play Bayonetta.  It's an incredible game and well worth your money.

We all on the same page now?  Good.

Anyway, as I was about to say, there are a lot of divisive characters across the medium of video games.  "Love 'em or hate 'em" types you see as the subject of massive debates on forums.  Recently the topic has turned to Bayonetta, and how people feel about her.  Is she simply an empty shell of indulgent eye-candy pandering to the basest hormonal reactions of a traditionally male audience, or does her aggressively-open sexuality represent something more liberating, even empowering?  I obviously can't speak to whether or not she's empowering for female gamers, but I want to throw my hat in and say that I do consider her a progressive figure.

So yeah, let's talk about that Polygon review that's had Bayonetta fans up in arms lately.  In it, Mr. Arthur Gies gives Bayonetta 2 a scathing...um...7.5.  Okay, that on its own isn't terrible, except for the fact that the review itself implies almost the entire missing 2.5 is on account of Bayonetta's portrayal.  It's more or less what you'd expect.  She wears a skin-tight outfit, her clothes fly off when she attacks, the camera does a lot of loving pans across her body, etc etc.  And the thing is...yes, these are all true.  However, I can't help but feel this is an incredibly surface-level reading.  I don't blame Mr. Gies.  It's rare that a game character comes along with enough nuance that they have a point to miss, but yeah, he missed the point.  He missed the point so hard he triggered Witch Time.

There's a fine line between fighting against the objectification of women and simply demonizing female sexuality.   It's not a solid line, either.  A lot of debate when it comes to feminist theory centers around what makes a sexual portrayal of a woman "okay."  Setting aside how depressing it is that this is even something we need to debate in detail, in cases like Bayonetta's the question usually comes down to agency.  Does she have agency?  Is she in control of her sexuality?  Is what she's doing deliberate?  Is she audience seeing her as she wants to be seen?

And this, right here, is what makes Bayonetta interesting.  Unlike so many video game heroines who've grabbed at the eye from box covers across the ages, Bayonetta displays full agency over her own sexuality.  She teases deliberately.  She moves with purpose, aware of both the audience and the NPCs watching her.

You want an example?  Of course you do.

Take a look at how the demo to Bayonetta 2 opens.  One of the first shots we see is a tight close-up on Bayonetta's ass.  I'll admit, when I first saw this, I actually rolled my eyes a bit.  I'd gone through the first Bayonetta seeing the character as a queen of personal agency, and here the game was throwing me a gratuitous ass-shot out of nowhere with no context.

But pay attention to this shot.

Yes, please PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to this shot.

Within half a second, Bayonetta's hands appear at her sides.  They move slowly, deliberately up her body and the camera follows them.  Her hands disappear into her outfit for a second and then...POP!  Handguns!  Now, did you see what happened, there?  Bayonetta's hands guided the camera up.  She was in control of the camera the entire time.

"That's a hell of a stretch."

Not really.  Bayonetta gives winks and asides to the camera all the time in the first game.  Several of her special moves involve her grabbing control of the camera and striking a pose.  If she's not directly controlling the camera, you at least get the sense that the camera and her have made an arrangement, and you're not seeing anything she doesn't explicitly want you to see.

For reference, let's look at an example from the opposite...xtreme.

Yeah, I'm going there.

Dead or Alive Xtreme is a sad, pandering mess where a bunch of ladies in bikinis roll around in various locales for no reason and sometimes play terrible minigames.  This series is bad and we all know it's bad.  It's gross and we all know it's gross.   But what's the real issue here?  What separates this from Bayonetta?  (Aside from one having actual gameplay depth, I mean.)

The difference is that the sexiness of DoAX is apropos of nothing.  These ladies aren't trying to seduce or tease anyone.  They're not even ostensibly trying to be sexy at all.  Nearly all the shots are of them alone, simply lounging, and the player takes on a voyeur perspective as the ladies proceed to...do things while wearing bikinis.

 

Uguu~

These women aren't in control of their sexuality.  They seem barely aware of their sexuality.  They seem barely aware of anything, actually!  They literally just roll around and the player is given full control of the camera to ogle them.  Having watched some gameplay, not once did I get the sense that any of the characters were actually trying to seduce anyone.  This is just...their natural state I guess.  Ironically, if they'd taken it a step further and literally turned it into the lesbian dating sim it kinda half-pretends to be at times, it would actually be much more progressive.  At least the sexuality would be active and inspired by the women themselves.

Eugh!  Get me out of here.

Ah, much better.

So yeah, if DoAX is the standard model of sexualizing women in games (or an absurdly extreme example of same), Bayonetta represents a new model.  She's active, deliberate, and in-control.  She's sexy by her own design, and what the audience sees of her, she wants them to see.  Is Bayonetta pitch-perfect about this the entire way through?  Of course not, and I doubt Bayonetta 2 is either, but the tone of the work is so overwhelmingly positive.  I honestly can't think of another female character in a video game who portrays sexuality in such a refreshingly power-retaining way.  For her uniqueness alone, I think Bayonetta's a valuable and incredibly progressive character.

"But, if a player is controlling her, how does she have agency?"

There's actually a fascinating answer to that.  I don't have a link handy and it may well no longer exist, but for a while Hideki Kamiya, the director of the first Bayonetta, was doing a series of Let's Play videos wherein he played his own game and discussed some design decisions.  The whole thing was great and really enlightening on the thought process that goes into designing a character-action game, but what caught my attention was when he pointed out what happens if you make Bayonetta shoot a wall.

If you stand still and have Bayonetta fire full-auto at a wall, any wall, she'll start to draw little symbols with the bullet holes.  She'll draw hearts, butterflies, and even her own initial "B."  Kamiya said that this was to express that every action Bayonetta makes is deliberate, even if the player isn't acting deliberately.  Think about that for a second.  Even when the player is uselessly firing at a wall, Bayonetta isn't.  That she "has a plan for every bullet she fires" is along the lines of how Kamiya described it.

Sexual politics aside, if that's not the raddest thing you've heard today, I don't know what to tell you.  But yeah, she has agency independent of the player built right into the mechanics of the game.  Fucking awesome.

"You know, it's funny you bring up Kamiya, because if you think about it..."

Oh, no.

"...she's just a fictional character, so..."

Please, not this argument.

"...Bayonetta has no real agency.  She's always under the control of her author, right?  A man is still dictating her actions."

Okay, I hear this a lot and I really, really hate this line of logic for a whole host of reasons.  First and foremost, it pretty much invalidates 90% of character analysis.  If we can't view characters as people and judge their actions by the logic of the world they inhabit...what's even the point of fiction?  It's a hard-reverse of the standard "Death of the Author," making the intent of the artist the most important thing.  Only, it's not even really authorial intent, but perceived authorial intent based on things like the gender of the person creating the work.  This is the reason prioritizing authorial intent doesn't even work, because outside of very rare circumstances you kind of have to guess.  Most artists don't even understand their own work, after all.

Beyond that, if you take this reasoning much further you start getting into really gross arguments about who's "allowed" to write certain things, and who's allowed to decide who's allowed and who's allowed to decide who's allowed to decide who's allowed.  Yes, societal privilege is a thing and there need to be checks and balances in place to keep authors from getting too complacent in vomiting stereotypes willy-nilly, but this is entirely the wrong angle to come at that problem.

"Also, Bayonetta's character designer was a woman."

You know, I didn't even want to mention that, because it shouldn't matter.  But yes, it's true, Bayonetta's costume and design were created by a woman. 

 If anything, the modeling team made her 

proportions more reasonable.

What I will say is that this is what makes authorial intent particularly impossible to discern in something as collaborative as a AAA video game.  Bayonetta is a character "created by a man," but what about the woman who designed her look?  What about the woman who provided her voice?  What about the woman who did her motion capture?  What about the men and women who created her world?  How much authorship do they have?  Bayonetta didn't spring from Hideki Kamiya's forehead fully-formed, after all.

So yeah, that's the long and the short of my feelings on Bayonetta.  She's a character unlike just about any other in video games, so I'm not surprised so many people seem torn on what to make of her.  As that Polygon review shows, she doesn't work if you reduce her to a series of bullet points.  She wears a skin-tight outfit.  She gyrates.  She teases the camera.  On paper, she's the worst female protagonist you could imagine for a modern game, but through care and clever craft, she comes out as one of the best.

Look, I'd love to see more female protagonists in games that aren't sexualized at all, irregardless of agency.  I don't think the world needs (nor deserves) another Bayonetta, but I'm happy for the one we have and wouldn't trade her for anything else.

And so, Witch Time has ended.  Barring any further interruptions, I should be on-track to covering Yume Nikki next.  So stay tuned to see what topic distracts me next!

Talking Walking

Today I'm going to talk about the most divisive game genre in all of video gaming.

"Free-to-play?"

Okay, second-most.  I'm referring to "Walking Simulators," and that in and of itself is a rather loaded statement.  The term "Walking Simulator" has been applied as an insulting brand to a number of low-interactivity, story-based game experiences.  People being people, it has also since been "reclaimed" by game developers all too proud to advertise the story focus of their game.  Because, you know, once the insults start flying this has to become a massive war and we can't just step back for a second and realize there's actually a common point to what's going on here.

At the core of this controversy has been Gone Home, a story-based indie title about a young woman returning home from college to find her family mysteriously missing.  As she explores the empty house, she finds it covered in passive-aggressive notes they decided to write to each other instead of simply talking about their problems like normal people.  So begins her quest to piece together what happened.  No puzzles, no enemies, just a slow reconstruction of past events by completing the YA novella that is her sister's diary.  Yeah, in case you couldn't tell from the summary, Gone Home didn't really hook me, and it wasn't just me.  It was one of the most divisive games of last year, with some people absolutely swearing it was a landmark storytelling achievement for video games, and others going so far to say that it wasn't a game at all.

So why was Gone Home so divisive?  How to people manage to feel so wildly different about these "Walking Simulator" games?

Okay, first let's unpack the idea of "Walking Simulators" and define what they are.  This is tricky, because it tends to get thrown around quite a bit, often as a way to discredit games which people feel are overly lacking in meaningful interaction, but I would argue there is a workable definition we can pull from all this.

The way I see it, Walking Simulators are games that lack a core "loop" to their interactivity.  The reason a lack of combat is so noticeable to most people is that combat is a loop that is often employed to drive people through a game.  Simply put, the loop is the satisfying, tactile form of engagement that keeps you playing.  In a racing game, the loop is doing races, and you continue to play because you enjoy the races and want to race more.  In a game like Bioshock, the combat and collection elements are loops that keep you moving from area to area.

In most games, the loop is the carrot on a stick that leads you through the story.  Gone Home does things a little differently.  In Gone Home, the story itself is meant to lead you through the house.  The desire to learn more, find more pieces and understand what happened is the core of the experience.  Basically, the game does nothing to "trick" you into caring about the story.  Instead, the experience is predicated on you caring about the story enough to continue, more similar to a television show or a book.

And this, right here, is why Walking Simulators are divisive.  Simply put, if the story the game is telling doesn't hook you...there's nothing else in there to do so.  The game doesn't employ anything else as a vector for engagement outside the story being told.  If the story bores you or, hell, just isn't something you can relate to, the whole thing feels like a waste of time and there's nothing to keep you there.  On some level, it's easy to see why some people might have trouble classifying it as a "game" at all.  Interactivity has commonly been understood as the primary engagement vector for games.  It's not that Gone Home lacks interactivity, (because you do absolutely interact with it,) it's that the interactivity isn't the thing holding you there.  The interactivity is an excuse or conceit to deliver the story, rather than the other way around.

TANGENT:  It's interesting, when you think about it.  Games are kinda the only form of media that can pull you all the way through the experience on the merits of something other than the story being told.  A game can have an absolutely awful storyline, yet still send you away satisfied if the gameplay was solid enough.  I don't say this as a knock against the medium, but at the same time, is there really any mystery as to why we continue to put up with bad storytelling in games?  Maybe John Romero wasn't too off the mark when he said the story in a game is like the story in a porno.  I mean, that is the only other media I can think of where it's commonly something other than the story keeping your attention.

On the flip side, it makes sense that people defend Gone Home so strongly from critique.  If the game does engage you, that means the story resonates with you.  I've seen plenty of articles praising Gone Home that boil down to "I was also a punk-rock suburban lesbian teenager in the 80s!"  Okay, that's a bit extreme, but my point is that if you got into the game that means you either identified with the characters or could just empathize with their situation enough that the desire to learn more about them drove you forward.  In a Walking Simulator, the primary mode of engagement is, very directly, your emotions.  Therefore, it becomes easy to conflate a dismissal of the game with a dismissal of one's own feelings.  And that's when things get ugly.

"So who's right?"

No one.

"Eugh.  How did I know you'd say that?"

Look, the fact of the matter is that story-based games like this are going to inherently be divisive.  To appreciate a Gone Home or a Machine for Pigs, you absolutely have to be picking up what the game is laying down in terms of story.  It can't be helped that the Walking Simulator you adore is probably only going to appeal to a fraction of the greater gaming populace, no matter what it is or what it's about.  What we can do is recognize that this is a fact of the genre.  Don't hate on people for thinking Gone Home is a masterpiece and don't hate on people for thinking it's a boring waste of time.  Because, at the end of the day, it's both of those things...depending on who you are.  It's your personal experience with the game that matters, regardless of how it was received by anyone else.

"Wait, one more thing before we go.  In games where the focus is on interactivity, isn't the player telling his or her own story?"

Yeah.  That's a good and, perhaps, more charitable way of looking at it.  In a game like Skyrim the story you're really engaged with is the one you're telling by running your massive orc through a bandit camp with a flaming battle axe and no pants, not whatever those dragons and wizards are blabbing about whenever they grab your face and talk at you.  It should be no surprise that popular Let's Play channels tend to be so heavily personality-driven, when the player is the primary storyteller in most games, whether its explicit about that or not.

This is another way Walking Simulators potentially alienate those not on board with the story being told.  They represent a removal of story agency from the player.  Even if the protagonist is technically "doing things," it's all at the behest of the author and not the player.  Lowering interactivity lowers the potential for emergence and all that.

"Okay, now for balance's sake, say a nice thing about Walking Simulators to close us out."

What if I told you a Walking Simulator was one of my favorite games of all time?

There's a reason I picked the Halloween season to discuss this topic.  Coming up next, I'm going to talk about a game that's very near and dear to my heart, Yume Nikki.

Until then, pleasant dreams.