HAYWIRE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 • IDENTITIES I am a gamer. The term has something of a bad reputation in the kind of highbrow videogame writing we aim for. Many would like to see it fall out of general use, arguing that a specific term for people who play videogames reinforces social stigma. After all, we don’t place these kind of labels on people for watching TV or reading books. It’s just one of many perfectly normal activities they happen to enjoy. There are also few events dedicated to competitive reading or movie watching. It seems to me a better comparison is the field of writing. Wordsmiths, too, are labelled with a term that at first glance only describes a perfectly mundane activity. Yet not everybody who writes is a writer, and not everybody who plays games might see themselves as a gamer. In either case the term is reserved not for those who write or play, but for those who do so regularly, passionately and define themselves via this love for words or games. Many people enjoy these things without active devotion, which is perfectly fine, but for some they are more than just distractions. They are part of their lives, part of their identities. In relation to other media we differentiate avid readers, lovers of literature, audiophiles or cinephiles. If videogame enthusiasts (ludophiles?) want to show their love for the medium with a similar voluntary badge, I don’t see why they shouldn’t. And, well, gamer is a term that’s already in common parlance. Things only get muddy when we deny others this expression of self and try to hold them to some arbitrary standards. You’re not a writer until you’ve published a book. You’re not a writer until you’ve published a successful book. You’re not a gamer until you’ve beaten Dark Souls. You’re not a gamer until you’ve beaten Super Meat Boy. You’re not a gamer until you’ve beaten Contra with one hand tied behind your back. Such rites of passage misinterpret the titles as exclusive membership cards, when really, they are declarations of love. We dedicated this issue to that love for games, to see how it compels us and affects us, but past that, to see how the thing we love connects to other parts of our identity: gender, sexuality, political or religious beliefs. We explore not only how such matters are portrayed in games, but how they affect the interactions within our community. Some of these are touchy subjects and they have driven us to the borders of our own expertise. I have devoted countless hours to make sure we are every bit as respectful as we should, but I am only one sleep-deprived hack of an editor, and I doubt the results are perfect. Bear with us on this one. Don’t forget, we come from a place of love. Cheers, Johannes Köller Editor-in-Chief HW Yukiko Amagi encounters her shadow self in Persona 4 «« Features Playing Dress Up 6 The Select Few 12 The Rainbow Planet 16 Fear is the Mind-Killer 20 The Strong, Silent Type 24 Realms of Representation 30 Unnatural Selection 37 Speclunky 44 Columns Off the Grid: Disordia 48 Same Difference: Elite and Dead Island 52 The Scripted Sequence: To the Future, Brightly 56 The Other Screen: The Truth of the Matter 60 Intermission The Seven Deadly Sins of Gaming: Narcissism 28 Information Masthead 64 Disclaimers 65 Playing Dress Up Zachary Brictson shares his personal gaming quirk. Give me half decent customization Bangs? No. How about blonde hair options and I’ll easily sit at a character with darker eyebrows for contrast? creation screen for over an hour. Twenty And the default earrings look nice, minutes on the jawline alone. Even if so let’s wear that hair up. Bring the it’s just a list of defaults I’ll match every nose forward a bit more, no, that’s too hairstyle with every kind of eyebrow much. Raise the cheekbones, a little eye available, with every mouth, with every shadow, perfect. And once I hit ‘Create’ shape and color of blush offered. It’s a the loading screen will fade to black, its silly process of chin stroking where I reflection revealing a grown man. What interrogate myself over tedious details. am I doing here? 6 That I’m essentially playing with fanboy’s personal wish list aside, I can’t digital dolls makes me a little self- help but wonder how weird this passion conscious, toy soldiers and Lego were might sound. Perhaps it’s a preference I really more my thing as a kid. But when should be comfortable with by now, yet it came to gaming I quickly developed after all these years there’s the same air this habit of playing the opposite sex of insecurity about me at that computer at any opportunity. It went from the screen. As if somebody’s watching over character creation screens of MMOs to my shoulder, mocking me as I make the those of more personal, choice-driven final touch-ups to a woman’s face. stories. I’d start playing favorites in Certainly the habit of not only games with party designing her systems, always sure appearance but to bring the heroines Certainly the habit of then also assuming of the adventure not only designing her role has deeper along. Within her appearance but implications, else fighting games, too, then also assuming where would this even on a somewhat tinge of guilt and competitive level, her role has deeper insecurity come I’d find myself implications, else from? Nor am I the only playing the where would this tinge only one who gets girls of the roster, of guilt and insecurity defensive over this whether they were come from? practice. Ask any guy functionally ideal why he prefers the for me or not. If you female option and ever looked at DLC offering nothing he’s likely to deflect the question with but cute costumes and wondered who’d a noncommittal shrug. At best you’ll buy such a thing, that would be me. hear how he’d rather stare at a woman’s I’m not sure how this preference behind for hundreds of hours instead came to be, and by now it’s developed of a man’s. The shallow justification into a clear bias. People are talking a lot neglects that the eye candy in question about this new Devil May Cry reboot, is our own avatar, and we do much for example, and let me just say that I more than stare at her form. Through would have thrown money at Capcom her we interact with the world and she if they had made a female Dante. represents us within it. In relation to Thrown. Instead, I’m just waiting the game, we are her. But to think too for the price to drop. Ramblings of a deeply about a man’s choice to play as a 7 lady is frequently seen as an attack on the act of playing these characters his masculinity. means engaging on much more than In my early days of World of Warcraft a visual level. Sex appeal does seem to I actually played as a male Orc warrior factor into this, and the need to play as (seems nobody finds the desire to be not just any woman, but an attractive big, green and nasty unusual), but as woman, invites Freudian analysis of soon as the expansion hit I tossed the underlying desires: Men creating that hulking monster aside like an idealized virtual partners or expressing outdated action figure, exchanging him feminine identities. for a female Blood Elf. It wasn’t even Perhaps this holds true for some. a question; in fact, it would have been I’m not one to dismiss the possibility, dishonest for me not to play as one. The nor am I here to speak for all men. ensuing awkward Personally I find that confrontations with In relation to the hypersexualization friends and online of female character acquaintances would game, we are her. designs degrade the be unavoidable, But to think too experience. Games but I’d cope with deeply about a man’s such as TERA it, laugh it off, and choice to play as Online feature they’d adapt. Gender beautiful women, crossplay is nothing a lady is frequently indeed, but why do new, after all, and seen as an attack on their armor options to be comfortable as his masculinity. range from lingerie myself in an MMO to chainmail bikinis, is worth any level of and why can they discomfort brought from others. It was only cast spells with a generous gyration a beautifully designed character and I of the hips? I can’t take such a world wanted to play as one. Simple as that. seriously, nor would I be able to take Of course, it wasn’t all that simple, myself or my heroine seriously while nor is it an entirely aesthetic decision. partaking in it. I admire my characters, It’s true there isn’t much else going male or female, and to see them made on at the creation screen beyond an into commodities instead of people is effort to create an ideal beauty and if insulting on a personal level. In a way, the models offered don’t align with my my experience gender swapping has personal taste for the feminine form, I made me more aware of the issues of find myself rolling males instead.