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The following is a guest post from Alis Dee:

Alis Dee runs a gaming blog at azeroth.me which, despite the title, is not always about World of Warcraft. She is a multi-ethnic white-passing bisexual Australian ciswoman. The following post has been edited slightly from its original incarnation at her blog.

Stylised in-game art of the six companions' heads, arranged in a hexagon.

(Spoilers ahoy!)

It’s fairly safe to say that Dragon Age 2 has been polarising, at best; considering the mechanical and the thematic changes it introduced over its predecessor, I suppose that’s hardly surprising. And while the “mainstream” gamer press has been busy debating the merits of dialogue wheels and sped-up combat sequences, a parallel conversation has been going around the social justice gaming blog (a-har) circle, in part spurred by DA2 lead writer David Gaider’s unexpectedly accurate understanding of the concept of privilege.

Hence this post. It’s about social justice (mostly). And where and how BioWare nails it, with examples.

Before we continue: Yes, I know there’s still a bit of fail in DA2. Its handling of mental illness isn’t awesome, for example, and the game is fairly white-washed (though not nearly as badly as it could’ve been, and it probably scores higher marks than nearly every other title out there). That being said, I think it’s almost easier to pick on what BioWare has done “wrong” that what it does right here, because the exceptional elements are integrated so well into the rest of the game that they’re easy to overlook, particularly for those of us who are used to our fail beating us about the face with its obviousness. It’s hard to see what isn’t there.

Here’s what I’ve noticed so far.

Meredith laughs at your feeble attempts at gender policing!

#1. Subverting the worst excuse.

You know the one. It’s like the medieval fantasy equivalent of Goodwin’s Law or something. The whole, “No this homophobia/misogyny isn’t offensive! It’s realistic! This is the Dark Ages and That’s Just How Things Were.”

Loki’s stitched lips how much do I hate that excuse. Because, you know; dragons and elves and wizards and whatever are totally realistic, but treating women like they’re people rather than property? Woah! Hold on there, Captain Outrageous!

Thedas might be medieval fantasy, but it’s explicitly more gender- and sexuality-blind than the Really Real World. For starters, Thedas’ Crystal Dragon Jesus religion is basically matriarchal Christianity, and yet BioWare hasn’t fallen into the cringe-worthy traps of depicting the Chantry as either a bunch of, a) ineffectual too-pure-to-live all-hail-the-earth-mother types, or b) ball-crushing misandrists. The Chantry is a human institution staffed by humans, with both the strengths and frailties that implies. It’s neither merely a caricature of male fear of matriarchal power, nor is it an author tract against the evils (or inherent goodness) of religion. Thinking about how the Chantry could’ve been portrayed is an exercise in appreciating how it is portrayed.

The Chantry isn’t the only example; women are not denied positions of power and authority in Thedas, nor does anyone at all — from rich nobles to poor street gangs — appear to think female leaders of any kind are in any way remarkable. Women in Thedas occupy every level of the secular, sectarian and military hierarchies, and historic instances of social injustice against women, such as the story of Ser Aveline, are shown as being exactly that; historic and unjust.

Similarly, since there is no lore justification for institutionalised homophobia in Thedas, it doesn’t exist; homosexuality is neither a taboo nor a fetishised “virtue” (a la the pederastic social structures of, say, Ancient Greece/Feudal Japan, or the woeful modern Magical Queer trope). Queerness, or the lack thereof, is treated as an apolitical personal quirk; where social pressure for heterosexual relationships exist, it’s shown to be based on pragmatism (i.e. the need for children) rather than any dogmatic belief in the inherent “wrongness” of certain sexual preferences.

If you wanted to be a real smartass, you could argue that a lack of both rigid gender roles and social stigma against same-sex relationships is the justification for Thedas’ apparent rampant bisexuality. Gender-blindness in Thedas is personal, as well as institutional, with its citizens thus more likely to form relationships based on the partner as a holistic package as opposed to just, a-ha, a “package” (in fact, if you can dig it out of Anders’ dialogue trees, this is exactly the reason he gives you). This also explains why (Almost) Everyone Wants Hawke; you are, after all, the most awesome person in the story by definition, so of course your companions are more likely to subvert their usual sexual leanings under the weight of your sheer win (and utter lack of negative social consequences for doing so).

Whether you buy that explanation or not, it’s still major props to BioWare for apparently putting some thought into their setting’s sexuality and gender expectations, rather than just copypasta’ing things out-of-context from the Really Real World.

I… don't think this scene bodes anything good.

#2. How to kill a hypotenuse.

From the Death of the Hypotenuse page at TVTropes:

Alice, Bob, and Charlie are in a Love Triangle. Alice loves Bob, but also has feelings for Charlie — or maybe she doesn’t, but can’t or doesn’t want to turn him down (maybe she’s even in a relationship with or married to Charlie while pining after Bob). However will she resolve this dilemma? Well, fortunately, she doesn’t have to — Charlie meets with a convenient illness, accident, or other such fatal situation, freeing Alice up to go after Bob without guilt. If Charlie is aware of Alice’s feelings for Bob, he may tell her with his dying breath that she shouldn’t mourn him too much, because he wants his beloved to be happy.

Sound familiar?

Feminists tend to hate the Death of the Hypotenuse situation when it appears in media since, well:

[W]hen we see [Aveline's] husband die in the opening chapter of the game, my immediate thought was “of course.” Not only does this serve to remove an obstacle that might keep her from being a party member, it makes her sexually available to the player–at least in spirit. While it has already been made clear that she isn’t one of the game’s romance options, the situation appears to follow a traditional formula of male fantasy, in which there are no male competitors for a woman’s attention.

Except Aveline isn’t interested in you. At all. In fact, she’s so not interested in you that she’ll go out of her way to solicit your assistance in obtaining the actual object of her affections; the resulting side-quest is both amusingly cute and incredibly, ahem, Hawkward.

There is one character whose hypotenuse you do end up murdering, however, and you (well, “you”) do it quite explicitly to set up this trope. I’ll give you a minute to guess, since you might not have noticed it at the time.

Figured it out?

Hands up who remembered why Anders is hanging around in Kirkwall as of Act I; sure, he has a clinic, but he’s only recently set up shop and it’s mostly just to keep him busy while he figures out how to rescue his ex-lover from the Circle. You know; the ex-lover you end up killing. And once those unfortunate former romantic entanglements are handily disposed of? Go nuts with the ♥s on the dialogue wheel!

It’s also interesting that Anders only mentions Karl was his lover if your Hawke happens to be a guy. Traditional formulae of male fantasy, indeed…

No serah, no mages her– damn I think our cover is blown, man.

#3. The Thedas guide to passing.

From elsewhere:

First up, we must address the nature of passing. Sometimes it is active (one chooses to pass) and sometimes passive (one is passed). Sometimes it’s an interaction of expectation and experience, habit and circumstance. One cannot untangle one’s own efforts to pass or to not from the point of the idea of passing. That is, whether one passes or not is dependant on the outside observer. The whole idea of passing hinges not on what the (non)passer does, but on the observer’s response to that person. There’s an extent to which one can control it — and people have developed quite some techniques — but it’s not always a matter of choice as to whether to pass or not.

Two things on this one, both of which I’ve heard criticised as being “bad writing” on the part of DA2, and both of which I actually think were very deliberate and done to illustrate roughly the same issue.

Part the first: Remember Feynriel, the “elf-blooded human” kid? His questline aside, some people have expressed dislike with the whole “elf + human = human” thing, crying erasure. ((For anyone who hasn’t yet figured it out; elves are the “race oppression” analogy in Thedas. You could possibly argue mages are the “gender/sexuality oppression” analogy (which results in a somewhat nasty Broken Aesop), but I’d make the case that they’re actually the imperialism analogy, albeit writ down onto a social level rather than a national one.)) I think this totally manages to ignore the fact that, while Feynriel doesn’t look like an elf, he’s a lot more (ahem) fey than your average human, not to mention has a distinctly elvish name. If you bother paying attention to the dialogue, it becomes heavily apparent this is intentional.

Feynriel will actually give you Passing Privilege 101 — he even uses the word — if you talk to him in the Dalish camp. In Kirkwall, his “elfness” was erased by the humans who assumed he was “one of them”; amongst the Dalish, he will never be anything other than “the elf-blooded human”. Like all of its dealings with privilege, DA2 doesn’t pretend to give any pat answers to this; Feynriel is Othered when you meet him and he’s still Othered when he writes you his final letter about life in the Imperium. But writing Feynriel off as BioWare erasing ethnic identities is, in my opinion, a bit of missing the forest for the trees.

Part the second: I think everyone who plays DA2, particularly anyone who plays as mage!Hawke, gets to a point where the disconnect between “all mages must hide or be locked up!” and “whee I have robes and a staff and set people on fire and, oh, may I introduce my BFFs the abomination and the blood mage!” really starts to set in. I discussed this a bit elsewhere, essentially coming to the conclusion that the disconnect is a very deliberate. From the relevant footnote:

Early on the in game, if you’re a mage, you get the sense the Templars in Kirkwall have a particularly vicious form of genre blindness re. someone walking around in robe carrying a staff setting fire to people. By the end of the game, it’s fairly evident that they’re perfectly aware you’re a mage, and have deliberately left you alone; at first due to bribes, and later due to your social status. The presence of characters like Fenris’ ex-master — as well as Varric’s judicious application of bribes on behalf of Anders — indicate this isn’t an unusual situation; money and influence can buy a sort of “freedom” for mages. [...] In short, you’re privileged. And BioWare, a) knows it, and b) has set it up that way deliberately.

Some of the discussions you can have with other characters (Fenris and Anders in particular) also highlight this. It’s frequently mentioned that the main distinction between the Tevinter Circles and those elsewhere is due to Imperium mages mostly coming from noble families, while non-Imperium mages are impoverished social outcasts; either by virtue of birth or due to the forced disinheritance that comes from being taken to the Circle. When Alistair showed up for me in Act III his dialogue made it apparent that the slightly improved conditions for mages in Ferelden are due to the Crown being sympathetic (he’s there protecting apostates Kirkwall wants extradited). Not to mention the fact that my Warden — the kingdom’s hero, king-maker and Alistair’s BFF — was a mage; a fact Anders points out at least once.

This is another kind of “passing”; one bought by conferred social/financial privilege. It’s not that the mages in Ferelden are any less prone to blood magic (q.v. DA:O) or that the kingdom’s Chantry teachings against magic are any more forgiving (Anders, who’s from the Ferelden Circle, makes it clear that they aren’t, extra kissing aside). The “privilege” of the Ferelden mages isn’t really their own; it comes purely from the fact that they have the sympathies of a powerful non-mage… and one who, while popular, won’t be in power for very much longer. ((Ferelden political system aside, remember being a Grey Warden is a death sentence; Alistair has maybe another fifteen years before he books his One Way Ticket To The Deep Roads.)) Similarly, by Act III Meredith makes it pretty clear that, whilst Hawke has bought a kind of freedom due to his social position, his cage is gilded at best; if you annoy her, she makes quite a few “don’t forget I own you!” style speeches re. you and your friends. In short, the privilege mage!Hawke does have is both tenuous and relies entirely on the perceptions of others. He’s not free because of some innate right, he’s free because mainstream society finds it amusing/advantageous to “allow” him to be so. It’s not a state that was ever going to last.

Finally, and most interestingly, the need to “pass” as mage!Hawke can bleed over onto the player; I can’t be the only person who deliberately ended up wearing the least “magey” looking armour I could find — cumulating, amusingly, in a brief stint at the start of Act III dressed as a bearded Chantry Mother — despite there being no game-based incentive for me to do so. Not to mention the Mage Champion set doesn’t exactly scream “wizard” in any classical sense, particularly if you also end up wielding the suspiciously spear-like Bassrath-Kata.

Quotes again:

There’s a friction between passing and solidarity with one’s group. Those who can pass as being a member of a dominant group may miss out on many experiences and forms of discrimination that are held to be facets of that group’s commonalities. One of the main problems with passing is that in doing so an inequitable system is being held up (by those who pass others, by those choosing to pass). This is to say that passing supports the idea that equality, better treatment, is gained by melting into the dominant group.

Seriously. I would not have picked this for my favourite character. Ever.

#4. The secret life of them.

DA2 does something I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen before in a game. Not only does it give Hawke an existence that’s partially independent of the player, but it gives your companions the same thing. Unlike DA:O, your “unused” party members aren’t just hanging around in the camp waiting for you to call on them; they actually do things when you’re not around. Anders runs his clinic. Aveline runs the guard. Varric looks after his family’s business. Fenris… broods around and plays cards with Donnic. Whatever their day job, running around babysitting Hawke isn’t actually it; helping you out is something they do for lulz on the weekends when they’ve got nothing more pressing to get on with.

The side-effect of this is that your companions end up going through character development that, again, has nothing to do with your actions as a player. The best example is probably what happens between Aveline and Isabela.

We’re all used to the set-up; the competent-but-shy tomboy versus the gregarious sex kitten. I mean, of course they hate each other, right? Except — unlike practically every other time this sort of rivalry comes up — in DA2′s case neither woman is fighting over you. They aren’t two members of your harem vying jealously for your attention; you could probably convincingly argue that Aveline’s dislike of Isabela (which seems almost entirely one-way) does stem from a sort of sexual jealousy, but the ultimate moral of the tale isn’t women need to tear each other down in order to get ahead. By the end of the game, Aveline and Isabela are pretty much Type 2 Vitriolic Best Buds, and Isabela even gives Aveline (and Merrill) several actually-not-terrible “you go girl” type speeches about self-confidence.

Actually, Isabela is pretty much an all-round legitimate harbinger of female positivity, when it gets right down to it; an actually honest-to-gods example of how to do a confident female character who not only legitimately owns her own sexuality ((For the record, I love Isabela’s outfit. Unlike every other provocatively-dressed women in a fantasy setting ever in the history of time, Isabela’s choice of revealing attire does, in fact, come across as a deliberate choice made to attract sexual partners. She dresses sexy because she wants sex. Now. Possibly with you (if you’re hot). She has agency, in other words; she’s the subject of her own sexuality and not the object of yours, oh you assumed-straight-cismale-viewer you.)) but goes out of her way to be a mentor and friend to other women. And, I think, the relationship between Aveline and Isabela is also a sneaky meta-comment on the relationship players like me have with characters like Isabela. From Isabela’s promo renders, I would in no way have been able to tell you that I think she pretty much single-handedly constitutes a good deal of the reason DA2 doesn’t just pass the Bechdel Test on technicality, but blows the entire spirit of it (i.e. the presence of multiple developed female characters capable of powering their own narratives sans the presence of men) right out of the water. Future game developers take note; this is how you do it.

That aside, there’s another sneaky inversion here a la the hypotenuse scenario mentioned above. Because no, the women do not tear each other down in their attempts to fight for your attentions… but Fenris and Anders certainly do, particularly if you sleep with Fenris. Asides from just general viciousness toward each other, they’ll even get into the requisite “but why don’t you love someone more like me-ee-ee?” and “if you break his/her heart I will kill you!” speeches at various points (the latter from Fenris if you switch romance paths post freakout in Act II, you heartbreaker you).

And, yeah, I admit it; fanservicey pandering aside, I love the fact that this sort of petty bitchiness is being done by male characters for once. I particularly love that male players subsequently whinge about it. Oh, delicious irony! You bring joy to my black little heart…

Kaboom!

#5. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A lot of the criticisms levelled at Dragon Age 2 seem to be from people who’ve mistaken it for a particularly badly-executed Heroic or High Fantasy story. This is not entirely surprising; Dragon Age: Origins could be gently said to have straddled the border between Heroic and High, probably only not qualifying for 100% High Fantasy due to the setting’s cynical approach to morality (even the Always Chaotic Evil Darkspawn get a bit… trickier if you play Awakening). Unlike its predecessor, DA2 is deliberately and unashamedly Low Fantasy; to borrow an analogy originally used for something else, the difference between DA:O and DA2 is like unto the difference between The Colour of Magic and Night Watch. I’ll let you guess which one is which.

People who went into DA2 expecting an oldskool BioWare RPG game were always going to be disappointed; as was anyone who was after a narrative they could skim through pressing-one-for-lawful-good without thinking too much. Neither of those things were going to work out; the former because the mechanics of the actual game part of DA2 were kinda bad, and the latter because the story of DA2 really does require you to drink its Kool-Aid and play it for its own sake. The game isn’t morally-agnostic; it does have something it’s trying to tell you, and not listening to that is going to make the narrative very frustrating. This, incidentally, is why I went back and re-played the game as BioWare!Hawke; imagining myself as a dude caught up in forces far beyond his control rather than as My Expy the Chosen One who was going to storm out and fix everything.

With that in mind, the story worked much better. And this is what I mean about the game being Low Fantasy. In Low Fantasy, shit happens. In Low Fantasy, the cavalry aren’t going to arrive on shining gryphons. In Low Fantasy, the bad guys might be both everyone, no-one and you, all at once. And, most importantly, in Low Fantasy you can’t save the world; if you work really hard, however, you just might be able to save yourself.

This, I think, is the point of Anders’ character; apparently he didn’t get the memo about the genre-shift since Awakening, and still thinks all the world’s ills come down to Good Guys vs. Bad Guys and can be solved by storming in committing massive acts of terrorism. The game is quite careful about pointing out — loudly and repeatedly — that, no matter how much you might end up liking Anders personally, ((And YMMV. I’ve seen a lot of gross misogyny floating around because, by the Maker, how dare any male character in a videogame not be an inarticulate, hyper-aggressive Duke Nukem expy and/or ultra-stoic, personality-free Gordon Freeman-esque killing machine! I believe Anders’ primary writer was a woman, which makes all the snide little remarks about “emasculation” particularly cringe-worthy. Anders certainly is a bit… whiny, but this is intentional and essentially his main character flaw — your other companions find it tiring sometimes too — and he’s neither completely unsympathetic nor in any way unrealistic (men, I hate to break it to you guys, but you’re frequently extremely whiny; just clearing that up, since apparently a lot of you haven’t noticed). I found him a lot more flat-out sympathetic on my first playthrough than my second, however, where I found myself yelling, “Shut up, Anders!” in fond exasperation at the screen a fair bit.)) this attitude is both irrational and dangerously naive. Isabela gets a great line of party dialogue lampshading this, mentioning something along the line of “justice only making sense in a world of ideas”.

Hawke gets to be a little more genre savvy than that, assuming the player figures it out, which he or she may not; a lot of people didn’t, judging from what I’ve read. Like Anders, they still tried to play the game like a Heroic Fantasy and got angry when that didn’t work out for them, particularly because the main theme of DA2 is one of oppression and privilege. You can’t “solve” the kyriarchy — even a fake one in a made-up fantasy land — in a Low Fantasy setting. You can’t even really do it convincingly in a High Fantasy setting, and at least DA2 is honest about that instead of indulging in the usual rug-sweeping.

I'm just… going to put this screenshot here and let you make up your own mind about what I think it means.

Strength as weakness.

Ultimately, the main “problem” with DA2′s narrative is that it really does have Social Justice 101 and Feminist Media Deconstruction 201 as prerequisite courses; almost all of the game’s point is lost if you don’t read it from that angle (and, for gods’ sakes, one of the main characters is called “Justice”, just in case everything else was too subtle a hint for you). Even people who do will find it highly contentious — maybe even more-so — purely because the game does try and doesn’t hit 100% of all targets at all times; SJers are used to writing off non-starters, but they’re absolutely brutal with anything that tries and doesn’t make perfection.

The criticisms of DA2′s portrayal of mental illness and its whitewashing are valid, but I think they’re also almost threatening to drown out the ways in which DA2 does work. The game hits so many amazing marks — on its portrayal of women, on its treatment of sexuality, on its ability to portray complex intersectional concepts in a not-completely-cringe-worthy way — it’s almost unsurprising that it’s caused so much confusion. Because it really isn’t like anything else out there, and I think maybe that’s not going to be readily apparently anywhere other than retrospect (and once people get over the mechanical changes from its predecessor).

Everyone who likes videogames and has even a passing interest in feminism/social justice (or vice versa) needs to play this game; I can’t even stress that enough. Whether you love it or hate it or buy it or pirate it, Dragon Age 2 is closer to what people like you and me want to see on the market than anything else that’s ever been produced. No, it’s not perfect — it’s not perfect as a game and it’s not perfect as a social justice narrative — but if we don’t hold it up and scream, “YES! THIS! MORE OF THIS!” we’re going to keep getting games like Duke Nukem Forever, well, forever.

And, really. You can’t possibly tell me that’s a better option.

See you in the expansion, guys!

(Originally posted here on Azeroth.me)

Related posts:

1. SXSW Panel on Social Justice and Videogames
2. Whitewashing Dragon Age
3. Inclusivity Review: Dragon Age 2

The following is a guest post from Miles Snell (thefremen):

Miles Snell tweets from @thefremen and blogs at http://thefremenblog.com where he attempts to destroy kyriarchy usingonly his substantial wit and a laptop. He is a cis heterosexual white man.

When I was but the tender young age of 15, two highly innovative games came out in the same year. They would leave a lasting impression on me and arguably the gaming industry in general. One game was the first fully 3d game ever and the other was the first game (to my knowledge) that allowed the player to kill sex workers (without recourse, naturally). I am speaking of the year 1996, in which the game Duke Nukem 3d came out in January and Quake came out in June. One of those games would launch a successful franchise for a developer which still exists the other turned out to be a hit which could not be replicated in a timely manner.

Of course killing strippers wasn’t the only innovation Duke Nukem 3D brought to the table. The game offered an environment that was far more interactive than what gamers had become accustomed to. The mirrors were functional in that they showed the sprite of the protagonist, you could interact with toilets, pool tables, the aforementioned mirrors and strippers. You could also destroy many of the objects in the environment, including strippers and women bound/captured by the aliens in the game. I say objects because in every sense of the word, within the world of the game they are objects. The pigs in LAPD uniforms can move around and shoot back. Women in DN3D existed to either expose their breasts, be bound (aside: not saying there’s anything wrong with consensual binding) or murdered.

This depiction of women still stands out rather well in my mind since as a teen I watched relatively little TV and otherwise consumed very little media in general. I played many video games but Rise of the Triad, Doom, Doom 2, Aliens TC mod, X-wing, Tie Fighter and various other ’90-’96 PC titles simply did not have the unabashed sexism and objectification found in Duke Nukem 3D. Although these games assumed that I was white and male, they did not assume that I was easily entertained by cheap titillation over solid game mechanics and innovative new storytelling techniques.

Extremely muscular and tall shirtless white man with blonde hair shorn in a buzzcut stands atop the corpse of some creature, while firing a futuristic pistol downwards with each hand. The one in his right is hitting the creature in the head, producing some blood. He is wearing large black boots, black pants and black suspenders with grenades and apparently ammunition. In the background there is a mushroom cloud, the entire picture is yellow-red tinged. In yellow text near the top it reads: "Prepare Yourself for Total Meltdown!"

The characterization and attitude of Duke was something altogether foreign to me. I hadn’t seen any films with hyper-masculine or stoic lead characters (unless you count Ripley). I certainly hadn’t seen “They Live” which is where “I’ve come to kick ass and chew bubblegum…” came from. I had been raised thinking it was acceptable for boys to play with cabbage patch dolls. Mr. T was my most traditionally masculine childhood hero. It’s a fact that Mr. T beat up bad guys but he also drank milk and pittied fools. Duke himself was a fool, more than worthy of pity. He’s depicted as a narcissist and a hedonist with very little personality apart from his desire to pleasure him self while causing pain to others.

I saw absolutely none of myself in Duke Nukem. I thought he was an asshole who saw the world in a profoundly different way than I did. If anything, his worldview was more in line with the boys who made me dread going to school everyday. I can’t feel any authentic nostalgia for a character who reminds me of the worst part of my childhood. I can’t get excited about a character who is nothing more than a mash-up of one-liners and hyper-masculine stereotypes about men designed for sale to men who are assumed to be walking stereotypes themselves. This is the same genius thinking behind “I hope they serve beer in hell”, a film which didn’t end up making back it’s production costs at the box office.

Extremely muscular and tall shirtless man with no hair on top of his head and some black hair on the sides with long goatee stands with his left foot atop a green skinned orcish creature he has apparently slain. There seems to be blood seeping from the white spot on dark portion. The picture is also heavily saturated with red. In small text near the bottom it says "Lo Wang is", right below in much larger type it reads "SHADOW WARRIOR" with a similar Taijitu in-between the words Shadow and Warrior.

But back then the novelty of Duke Nukem 3D translated to success, as it would up selling 3.5 million units. 3D Realms produced Shadow Warrior as a sort of followup with a similar formula in 1997. Shadow Warrior, I kid you not, had a protagonist by the name of “Lo Wang” who was just a series of Asian stereotypes hastily scotch-taped together. Like DN3D the game used buckets of blood, crude humor and misogyny to keep its audience enthralled. As it turned out Shadow Warrior did not sell very well. The fact that some of its expansion content (think DLC only it was the 90s so it usually came on disks) was canceled is ample evidence of this. Personally, I played the shareware and even that was boring. I was already playing Quake 2 deathmatches online by then. Somehow, the somewhat new experience of shooting people with railguns proved to be much more enthralling than what was essentially a re-skin of Rise of the Triad combined with racist stereotypes piled on top of sexist stereotypes.

3D Realms must have figured that audiences weren’t tired of the tropes, but just didn’t like vaguely Asian characters because in 1998 they started work on a fully 3D version of Duke Nukem 3D titled “Duke Nukem Forever”. I don’t think it made that much sense considering the changes going on in the industry. Quake 3 would soon be released, setting a new standard for multiplayer in the genre. Half-Life’s often-delayed release was also imminent. Just imagine if you were 3D Realms and you’ve been working on a game which is essentially Quake 2 but with strippers you can kill, then Half-Life comes out. Here’s a game with a coherent storyline, excellent craftsmanship in every detail and was rewarded with absolutely stunning sales numbers.

For what it’s worth, Half-Life went on to sell 16 million copies, Doom sold 8.5 million copies and Duke Nukem 3D sold 3.5 million copies. If “sex(ism) sells”, then who’s buyin’? I can’t imagine that in a post Half-Life world, with Halo on the way (at the time a Mac title) Duke Nukem Forever sounded like a genuinely great idea to anyone at 3D Realms. Why is it that seemingly the entire gaming community is suddenly nostalgic to take a step back in gaming history, back to a time when FPS games were shooting galleries with novelty added in when new & exciting features or a major step up in graphics weren’t available? Are there really that many gamers who yearn for a time when the only perceived audience was white, straight, male and hopelessly immature?

As I grew up I moved on from making custom Doom levels to editing custom Quake 2 player models (Goku versus Sailor Moon! Darth Vader versus Kyle from Southpark!) the gaming industry also grew up slowly and surely. Now my gaming choices aren’t determined as much by “does this game have shrink rays, exploding toilets and strippers?” but instead “what kind of DRM does this game have? What are the romance options with regards to NPCs? Are there multiple endings? Are successful hits determined by chance or weapon skill?”. Gamers are used to so much more than what Duke Nukem ever had to offer, even in his prime.

Perhaps in the first round of the Bush years Duke Nukem would have been a good release as a comment about the hyper-masculinity of the White House at the time. Bush defined himself as a strong president through his ability to dominate kill and destroy, in much the same way Duke Nukem defined himself as a person through his ability to dominate kill and destroy. Instead of a timely release, development just kept on pushing on without any exit strategy and it became clearer and clearer to gamers that DNF was becoming a horrible mess that nobody involved knew how to extricate themselves from.

After DNF officially died in 2009, Randy Pitchford and Gearbox decided to zombify it, raise it from the dead and release a stogie smoking stripper killing undead monstrosity on the public. I just do not understand how gamers my age and a few years younger can have any sense of authentic nostalgia for this franchise. I was and still am the target audience they are trying to reach, but I didn’t connect with it then and I sure as hell don’t connect with it now. I’m 30 years old, I’m starting to have more gray than black hair. I tend to choose games that have grown up at least half as much as I have.

[Originally posted at TheFremenBlog]

Related posts:

1. Duke Nukem Forever – Wallowing in sexism

A unicorn striding majestically across a stream. A brilliant sunset lights up the landscape, and a rainbow rises above the sunset.

Today’s Friday Fun is hosted by this fantastic post.  Ever wondered why there just aren’t enough male characters in video games?  Want to hear quotes about why this blatant sexism is going on?  Read this for an exclusive look at why there are no men in video games.

Go on, talk amongst yourselves!  Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

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I decided it was time to move away from Flash games this week and to focus more on the mobile platform when it comes to games.  I’ve been screening them intensely, scouring the internet to find mobile games that are entertaining, affordable, inclusive and fun.  This weeks games are, Dweller, Pinball Deluxe and Cyber Defender!

As a technology note, all the games were played on an HTC Legend using Android 2.2 (Froyo).

Dweller

There is something to be said for a dungeon crawl.  It’s a genre that’s been around since Nethack really when you had an ASCII map of what was going on.  Dweller fits right into that mould.  You get your choice of Warrior, Ranger or Mage, each with their own cute little 8-bit like character sprite and you go down into the dungeons trying to destroy the Goblin King.  Along the way you’ll find monsters to fight, traps to avoid, gear to acquire, door to smash down and treasure chests to open.

Everything is very 8-bit in its look, with the cutest sprite still being the wizard whose face is the old Final Fantasy wizard-like where it’s a hood and a pair of eyes.  It’s got some nice features too.  Since it depends upon you pressing the screen where you want to go, and on the tile you’re standing on to pick up any object, you can increase the size of the tiles.  I know I played the whole game that way, but I was the warrior and wasn’t too interested in seeing far away.  I wanted to smash the monsters with my melee weapon!

The monsters are interesting too.  The AI is set up so that once they’ve taken enough damage they aren’t interested in taking you on anymore.  Instead, like any actual creature, they run away to save themselves from your dungeon crawling wrath.  It makes it a bit more challenging, you have to corner them sometimes in order to get the experience but it was a nice little touch.  The same thing with the status bar on your phone being visible.  There’s something to be said for developers who understand that while you are playing a game, you’re still on your phone and having the phone features is important, especially in a game like this where that extra bit of space doesn’t really do anything for the game play.

Game Cost: Free, no ads but willing to take donations from the menu screen.

Save to SD: No, but it’s an itty bitty game so it doesn’t take up much space.

Completely Arbitrary Number Value Judgement: [_] [_] [_] [_] [_] – 5 Treasure Chests to be opened.  Now which one is trapped.

Pinball Deluxe

I love pinball games.  Ever since I was a kid and they were still fifty cents a play.  I would go up, watch the flashing lights, and the sounds, drop my money in and play for all of two minutes.  I was horrifically bad at the game.  Apparently physics and I don’t really get along that well, at least when it’s applied physics.

At any rate the people at GreenCod have come up with a free pinball game that comes with three different tables that actually do something that a lot of other free pinball apps don’t, which is play differently.  They aren’t just reskins of the one field that they made and the hope that you don’t notice that you have to hit the same spots to have the board change.

My personal favourite out of all three maps is the space one.  I like it because I have a really easy time activating the screen minigame, but try them out and see what you like.  The flippers are very responsive and you can add elements like being able to tilt the machine.

Game Cost: Free, but with ads.

Save to SD: Bing.  100000000! Score!

Completely Arbitrary Number Value Judgement: –* –* –* –* –* – 5 Pinball Wizards with very supple wrists.

CyberDefense

Tower defense games have been around now for a while, and when I went looking for one on the phone I wasn’t looking at something that would do something different just yet.  I wanted to find one that provided a really good experience, and was a really solid game.  I believe I found that one with Cyber Defense.  The premise is that there are virii on your phone and they are attacking your CPU and you must use the anti-virus programs to stop them from destroying your precious communication device.  My precious, precious, precious communication device.

I’m sorry, where was I?

Right, the game.

There are a wide variety of levels.  You’ve got the standard three levels of difficulty as well as the various extra challenge type levels.  There’s the constant stream of a certain type of unit one.  Levels that change where the CPU chip is.  There’s even a last for as long as you can level.

The controls are really smooth as well.  When you drag your finger it very clearly shows where you are placing the tower you’ve chosen, as well as if units can get past them.  It’s something I’ve actually found lacking in the few other TD games I’ve found in the Market. There’s nothing more frustrating than putting a tower where you don’t want it to be because you pressed a slightly different spot on the touch screen.

Game Cost: Free, but with ads.

Save to SD: Nope.  Sad face on that one.

Completely Arbitrary Number Value Judgement: {/} {/} {/} {/} {/}- 5 Towers Defending you phone!  Protect the phone!

Sorry this was late.  I’ve had a hard time finding games in the android market that I think people might want to play.  I’ve downloaded a pile of them, and there are many more to go through.  Now comes the question of the weekend, do you play games on your phone other than solitaire?  I know it’s popular, I see a sea of cards on screens whenever I take a trip on the street car.

If you’ve got a game you’d like to get reviewed for Casual Fridays, or if you’ve got any comments, questions or anything about these reviews just leave a comment below, or email koipond at borderhouseblog dot com

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by guest contributor Cori Roberts

Cori Roberts is founder of Gameinatrix.com and remaining founding member of Gamer Girls Radio, and has been involved in gaming media for over 8 years. She’s currently obsessed with the MMO Fallen Earth and anything involving vampires in the world of Second Life.

African American (black) woman from the recent Call of Duty commercial. One of the very few times a black woman has been used in the marketing of any game.

While several gamers are fighting for the right to game with all the controversy surrounding the community as of late, there are a few of us women gamers waging another kind of war in our own respective communities. It’s not just the standard girl gamer war, where there is incessant name calling, references to genitalia or even the normal male chauvinist crap. The battle is having to defend why we are even playing games, in the first place. Why would “we” be playing games, because black women don’t play games.

I’m one of these elusive, mythical, Black (African American for you new kiddies) women gamers who purportedly do not exist. While this particular battle is not a boss battle for me, it is an annoying and repetitive battle. It’s one I have to wage most every time I encounter a new “sistah” who can barely operate her iPhone, but thinks she is somehow more versed in games and who should be playing them, than I am. The first thing I’m asked is how I ended up even playing games, like it’s a disease I somehow contracted. Then I’m told how “different” and “odd” I am. My mother bought me my first console at age six and I never knew I was any different from other little girl. Never knew I was a geek, a nerd, or any other derivative until I was much older. However, after I realized I was one of these beings, referred to as a geek, I kept it secret and tried hard to suppress it. I can tell you I use to rent games at Block Buster and often lied about who they were for. Once out on my own, gaming became part my regular daily routine. Get up, school, work, come home, game. When I couldn’t afford to go clubbing, you’d find me on the floor of my furniture-less apartment, head propped up with pillows, faithful dog at my side, playing games. The only thing I bought other than games was clothes. Come on, I’m still a girl! It should suffice to say, I obviously don’t fit the mold of fat white guy, with glasses. I was a thin shapely black chick with glasses (use to wear glasses anyway), who spent her free time perusing not only Cosmo magazine, but strategy guides in now defunct Electronics Boutique. The guys began to love when I came into EB every Friday, because other guys followed me in and they stayed to chat when they realized I actually loved games just as much as they did. Me, wearing my designer perfume and clothes, could take a guy down in Tekken in 30 seconds flat. After getting over the shock of being beaten by me, I always had a new friend and finally there in EB I stopped feeling odd and out of place. I fit in somewhere. However the older I got, the more dissonance I noticed with other black women once I mentioned video games or anything geeky for that matter. All of those silent lunches finally lead to me speaking up and a mini-battle royale about the Lifetime Network and gaming where I schooled my “sistah” on the world of gaming and technology. I also shared with her that technology is an area where black women were being left in the dust. Most of us are still taught and truly believe as black women, it’s just our not our place to be “smart”. Before the eye rolling begins, this is not true of all women of color, but it’s true enough. So true that I still have yet to pick up an Essence, Ebony, or Jet magazine and see an entire tech section (not to pick on Essence, this is true of a lot of women’s magazines). Hip Hop mags like XXL do share some tech info with its readers, but tend to have more male readers than females. It’s also still true that most black women tend to steer clear of the whole technology thing and can barely use an iPhone, let alone know which cables go where on their Xbox. While we’re excelling in other areas, still some black women view the gaming industry as a childish and MALE one. As a result, our presence in the world d of tech and gaming is lagging far behind the rest of the world.

As a Black woman (I prefer being called Black to African American, I didn’t move here from Africa and become American, I was born here), I find it disheartening that even so many of our notable Black public figures and role models don’t even acknowledge the gaming culture unless it’s the latest fad. For instance Oprah Winfrey has had a show or two about gaming addiction and how horrid gaming is, only to give away the Kinect on her show later. As a gamer I was not impressed or fooled. I once heard Tyra Banks say on her show something akin to she thought men were so childish playing games, and she hated when her man did it. Women don’t wanna play games, chile! These women are considered great role models and several young women look up to them. I wonder if they know the message they are sending to young black women. Yes you’re teaching them that beauty is subjective, but are teaching them that technology is for those other folk. This, in my opinion, will lead to a nation of beautiful black women who are technologically dumb. They will know the best way to maintain their weave but not how to change out a faulty hard drive. Or even how to do something as simple as defrag a hard drive.

Take note, most of the women you’ll see fighting for a place in the gaming industry usually are not of ethnicity. I explained to my friend the facts and figures of the gaming industry, and how our lives as black women should not be all about being a nurse (this is a common thing in the black community, pushing daughters to be nurses or get into law, go after the money), but instead embracing a new culture, a culture that does in fact make a LOT of money, a culture that, though considered controversial at times, is indeed the future. A culture where most times, our differences are celebrated, not hated. Ok, perhaps I’m pushing the Utopia envelope here, but aside from a very few assholes, I’ve NEVER been called out for the color of my skin. Admittedly, I hale from several racial backgrounds, but I identify as being your average garden variety, Diva, black, woman. I pointed out to her that I’ve never been told I wasn’t dressed appropriately to game. That my manicure to was too old to game. That I wasn’t black enough to game. The only thing that has ever held me back is not having the SAME game as a gamer buddy.

Said friend turned her head to look out the window and quietly said to me, “I just don’t get it…you gamers…” But she did call a few months later sounding bubbly and told me she’d bought her first console. Yes it was a Wii, but she was planning on getting an Xbox, as well. She’d seen some ‘interesting’ things at Game Stop that she actually wanted to play. But I dare say if I hadn’t opened my mouth, if I hadn’t in essence said that gaming as entertainment is okay, she would never have played. Though I’ve managed to bring some of my friends to the dark side, I still have to deal with strangers form assumptions based on the fact that I’m a gamer. If I’m in Best Buy or any store’s PC section, I still get the tech behind the desk who feels the need to try to explain to me every detail of my video card and how it works, where to install it on my motherboard. I hate the condescension in their voice and this is after I’ve told them a million and one times that I’m a gamer. I have every console, (except the 3DS, but give me time) and even a gaming PC, that I built myself, from scratch, even after I tell them I run a gaming website and podcast and have for 8 years. They don’t hear me until I get a little belligerent and then they are shocked and awed. The next thing is to test me, because it’s just impossible to them that black woman as a gamer exists. I am always told that of course I must not be hard core, no woman is. I can tell you that I am indeed as hardcore as they come. And just because I may wear a weave, wig, extensions or like shoes, doesn’t detract from that. I’d like to tell my fellow “sistahs” that yes, you can be fabulous, and play games, and know how your iPhone works. I do not find it cute or charming when you have a beautiful piece of technology and you use it more as a status symbol and can’t even figure out how to make a simple call. You can be smart, and know how to fix your own PC, iPhone, or hook up your own HDTV and then feel extra proud to sit down and watch your Sex in the City re-runs, without having to call your man over to do it for you. I am hoping one day to be in the store and not have to tell a another black woman to buy games for her daughter, not just her son, and not hear the mother say she won’t like it, when clearly the little girl is interested. I’d like to see more black women put their daughters in front of a computer and push them to learn more math, science and physics. But sadly I see this particular battle as a very long one. While I am graced to have a few black women who do share my passion for gaming, my white girlfriends (whom I love just as much) far outnumber the black ones. I do wish I had more black gaming girlfriends (and in the same city would be nice) so this black girl can stop constantly LFG.

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