Richard's Online Journal
Writing A “Girls In Games” Article
I am the Alpha and the Omega; leftie and rightie...
At some point in your writing career, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll think it’s a good idea to write one of these articles. If you’re a guy, that is. By and large, female writers have better things to do with their time than obsess over their gender while playing a game, and tend to be into gaming because they like — how can I put this? Oh, yes, playing games, rather than out of a burning need to practice amateur sociology.
But never mind that. Here’s your ten-step path to success.
1. Be A Warrior For Righteousness
Yes, you, sir — damn near all these things are written by sirs, any that aren’t can be discounted as a statistical glitch — are a champion of chivalry! Once knights rescued damsels on horseback, in shiny silver armour — now you can get the same effect by complaining about Lara Croft’s chest. Which brings us to…
2. Evidence A: Lara’s Chest
This is your introduction; your jumping off point. How you tackle this thorny issue will affect the whole tone of your cutting article. Refer to “Lara’s chest”, and you sound debonaire and suave, aware of the connotations, yet subtly removed from them. A sly reference to “Lara’s boobs” and you’re with the everyman; casual, yet aware. “Lara’s assets” show you as a dispassionate observer of life’s rich tapestry. And “Lara’s back! And her front too!” translates literally as “I am a man with no sense of humour.”
Discussion of character should be avoided at all costs; fighting the objectification of female game figures by ignoring irrelevant details like personality, background, stance, objectives, voice work, dialogue, relationships, and all that other junk, in favour of obsessing over breasts. You know. The important things.
3. Break Down Gender Gaps
It’s important to set the tone for your feature, and make it welcoming for any girls who happen to pick up a copy. Don’t worry that the tone is inevitably aimed at guys, and full of words like ‘we should’ and ‘female gamers are’. You can compensate by putting your words on a lurid pink background, and covering it with hearts and lipstick kisses. Puppies are optional. Pictures of attractive game groups like the Fragdolls are not. Find the photos with the tightest T-Shirts, preferably on a very cold day, and express your shock and outrage via the magic that is ‘the sardonic caption’. This should not stop this being the largest image on the page, preferably re-used throughout. Similarly, rather than using words like ‘gamers’, make sure to say ‘girl gamers’, or better yet, simply ‘females’. Nothing says enlightened cosmopolitanism like talking like a Ferengi.
If you absolutely have to put a picture of a regular female gamer, a thumbnail or something is perfectly acceptable. In no circumstances may you begin with anything other than a physical description, moving onto the actual ‘gaming’ part only as time permits — in much the same way that no write-up of Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell ever goes without a discussion of his latest hair-style, or the pertness of his ass.
Wow, that’s not saying ‘us and them’ at all!
Oh, and always express at least some level of surprise — if only by feeling the need to point it out — at female gamers being able to play as well as the menfolk. You don’t need to hide it. As we all know, the railgun is powered by testosterone, but the memo about moving a mouse being entirely unrelated to one’s collection of reproductive organs has yet to circulate properly. Speed it on its way with some vague talk about multitasking. And something about asking for directions, because jokes aren’t sexist if applied to men.
4. Women Are Interchangeable
Seriously, all the same. If you’ve got a quote from one, you’ve got one from all of them. “Women don’t like violent games.” “Women like constructive experiences.” It’s just like all us guys loving football, muesli, Leonard Cohen and fart-jokes. Any evidence to the contrary, such as this example from Pro-G, is clearly the result of freakish brain-parasites at work; most probably cooties.
“Women are more interested in good games,” says McShaffry. “And women are less interested in crap.”
“I binge read Heat when I go to my friend’s house,” says Krotoski.
Needless to say, this means that because games aren’t appealing to women, girl gamers are mistaken about enjoying the games they play right now. They just don’t realise it yet. Your article may just be what they need to stop kicking your arse with Christie in DOA4. Remember: only ever deal in absolutes. Absolutes are always 100% accurate.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Should you actually be of the female persuasion while writing your article, this rule counts double. Feel free to bring down the hammer on incredibly specific examples of What Women Don’t Like, safe in the knowledge that nobody will ever dare argue or have a contrary opinion. Just like when Mary Whitehouse was alive.
5. It’s Not Enough To Just Dislike Something
No, you might think it is, but really it’s not. You’re not allowed to find, say, Elexis Sinclaire tacky and embarassing, not without adding “and demeaning” or “and exploitative” or “and sexist” or “and insulting”, or something else which takes great offense on someone else’s behalf instead of your own.
And under no circumstances wuss out by trying to be rational, like WomenGamers…
It is not our wish to impose one view of what a female character should look like, sound like, etc. We hope you will share YOUR IDEAS about female characters, and what you would like to see in future games. Hopefully, part of what WomenGamers.com is helping to create is a greater range of choices in female characters. We are not looking to eradicate all female characters with huge boobs, as we realize some gamers enjoy them, but it would be nice if not ALL female characters had them! Get the point?
Honestly, they’ll be talking about gameplay next…
6. Cherry Pick Your Examples
Games like Leisure Suit Larry are perfect fodder for righteous scorn. True, some critics might point out that there’s nothing in there you wouldn’t see in a Carry On film — well, with the exception of Magna Cum Laude, which not only absolutely is misogynistic shit, but actual shit as well — and the Carry On films are pretty popular with everyone. And that the series had a pretty strong female following throughout, due to being a harmless comedy designed to get laughs rather than get players off. And that the jokes come from Larry being a loser, not a lover.
Oh, and that his real objective in most of the games isn’t getting a cheap shag — something which the game almost invariably presents as an empty experience, if it ever actually happens, and usually never actually does — but rather finding actual love and happiness; right down to getting married three times to at least two women who ultimately come to reject him despite his hopes, and constantly bumbling through embarassment after humiliation in the hope of acceptance, with almost all of his ‘conquests’ based on trying to be helpful and solve peoples’ problems in the hope of acceptance and later nocturnal reciprocation rather than directly pursuing perversion — unless a single guy who likes being around pretty ladies is automatically a pervert these days. And all that other ‘actually played the game’ yadda yadda.
It may help your argument’s credibility if you add a three-step walkthrough on reproducing asexually. Make sure to include screengrabs.
Good gracious! If you squint, that’s filth!
Alternatively, if you feel like playing devil’s advocate for a paragraph or too, The Sims should be held up as a counter-example, because it’s like a doll’s house, and girls like playing with dolls. And while obviously everyone grows out of The Hardy Boys or Just William or Winnie the Pooh, Nancy Drew is timeless. This is because girls never age, and have no interest in anything but childrens’ toys and high culture. At some point they magically move from Barbie to Dostoyevsky and all else is immature silliness. But since the closest we’re likely to get to the latter in computer games is The Brothers Kalashnikov, it doesn’t really matter.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of games, from adventures to RPG to platformers to strategy to beat-em-ups to quiz games to puzzle games couldn’t give the faintest stuff what gender you are should never be mentioned. There must be more Girl Games! Equality through segregation! It’s not patronising at all! No, it’s why all books, movies, magazines and even foodstuffs come specially wrapped in blue and pink paper, just so everyone knows what they should be paying attention to. Or, y’know, not. Don’t waste too much time checking or anything.
(For bonus points, say you’ve been playing Super Princess Peach and liked it; quickly adding that you had to take insulin shots to get past Level 5.)
7. The World Is Made Of Doom And Gloom
You’ve only got four pages to correct millions of years worth of gender coding, evolutionary development, and entrenched perceptions, and still need to shoe-horn in your manifesto, your clever idea for an all-encompassing game that will make the girls of the word go ‘Squeee!’ in unison, the boxout about accidentally testing the state of the world by playing a female MMORPG character on All The Cliches Turn Up At Once Day, and the follow-up anecdote, where you annoyed a lady-Quaker by delivering a lengthy lecture on sexism to the guy she put on Ignore several sentences back, resulting in the bomb going off and your team losing the round but winning the war… on sexism!
Defeating sexism, one mind at a time
With this in mind, everyone will understand that you didn’t have time to mention, say, Jeanette/Therese in Bloodlines, Annah/Fall-From Grace and Ravel in Planescape, SHODAN in System Shock, Zoe Castillo and April Ryan from the Longest Journey games, Nico from Broken Sword, Farah in Prince of Persia, Grace from Gabriel Knight, Rinoa, Cate Archer, Meche in Grim Fandango, D’Arcy Stern from Urban Chaos, Starcraft’s Kerrigan, Monkey Island’s Elaine Marley/Threepwood, Angel and Spirit and Flint and Rachael from Wing Commander, Realms of the Haunting’s Rebecca Trevisard, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, Syberia’s Kate Walker, Laura Bow, the unnamed heroine of Plundered Hearts, or the princesses of Tribes: Vengeance, or Quest for Glory’s Katrina, or Thief’s Viktoria… certainly, you won’t have the space for names like Sierra designers Jane Jensen, Lori Cole, Christy Marx and Lorelei Shannon, or to point out that Everquest’s oft-criticised art design was done by Rosie Cosgrove, or that Playboy: The Mansion was designed by Brenda Braithwaite, who also chairs the IGDA’s ‘Sex in Games’ sections and has a book coming out on the subject, or Emily Short’s legendary status in the interactive fiction community, or Dan/Dani Bunten Berry, the designer Warren Spector didn’t want to meet for fear of sounding like a dribbling fanboy…
After all, none of that stuff matters. It’s more important to highlight the glaring gaps in the industry than give practical examples of just how a wider perspective has actually helped — tiresome, irrelevant junk like how damn near every game that’s had the nerve to cover sexual topics on an adult level has had a female designer at the helm.
Don’t worry though: there’s always enough space to namecheck Custer’s Revenge. Some things are just too important to slip into obscurity, and if that doesn’t include a rape-based action game for the Atari 2600, I don’t know what does.
8. Everyone Really Loves Games
The only people who don’t are the ones who haven’t been fixed yet. Remember, getting a non-gaming girlfriend into Quake isn’t like you being cajoled to get into Mills and Boon — it’s like handing over the whole entire world of reading in one beautiful go! And nothing’s more fun than having someone read over your shoulder, especially when they keep complaining you’re reading the wrong way, or reading too slowly, or not appreciating the finer details of the articles you totally buy the magazine for. Which leads us neatly to:
9. The Industry’s Bottom Line Is Your Problem
Never make the thrust of your argument ‘girls should play games because they might find them fun’, or ‘sharing the fun with a loved one’, or anything gay like that. Serve up as much data as you can find on the financial side, of how many more copies of games the companies could sell, and what percentage of the market is going untapped. It’s not about the experience, or enjoyment, but the rampant commercialism. That XX% of the market isn’t merely a shame because many people who don’t play games, male and female alike, would have a great time with the hobby we love; it’s a worldwide travesty not seen since the dinosaurs disappeared.
This may seem an odd thing to focus on, but look at it this way: the bigger the industry is, the more features you can write about it being too commercial! Everyone wins!
10. Ignore Everything In This Post (Apart From The Bit About Lara’s Back, Because Christ…)
I have four feet, my bottom is bright green, and I live in an igloo on Saturn.