Well Played a Journal on Video Games, Value and Meaning
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Well Played a journal on video games, value and meaning volume 4 number 3 2015 special issue on diversity in games edited by Jane Pinckard and Clara Fernández-Vara Well Played A Journal on Video Games, Values, and Meaning Editor-in-Chief Drew Davidson Editors Ira Fay Clara Fernández-Vara Jane Pinckard John Sharp Editorial Board N’Gai Croal Sam Roberts Sean Duncan Doris Rusch Mary Flanagan Matthew Sakey Tracy Fullerton Jesse Schell James Paul Gee Lee Sheldon Katherine Isbister David Simkins Stephen Jacobs Mark Sivak Shawna Kelly Francisco Souki Kurt Squire Richard Lemarchand Stone Librande Brian Magerko Constance Steinkeuhler Josh Tanenbaum Matt McClean Alice Taylor Eli Neiburger Greg Trefly Celia Pearce Caro Williams Arthur Protasio Jason Vandenberghe ETC Press 2015 ISSN 2164-344X (Print) ISSN 2164-3458 (Online) TEXT: The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/) IMAGES: All images appearing in this work are property of the respective copyright owners, and are not released into the Creative Commons. The respective owners reserve all rights. All submissions and questions should be sent to: etcpress-info ( at ) lists ( dot ) andrew ( dot ) cmu ( dot ) edu For formatting guidelines, see: www.etc.cmu.edu/ etcpress/files/WellPlayed-Guidelines.pdf CONTENTS Editor’s Preface vii Introduction 1 From Pixel Babes to Active Agents – How to 11 Fix the Lack of Diversity in Female Digital Game Characters I Choose You! Diversity in the Design of 26 Pokémon Actions speak louder than hypersexualized 41 pixels: A partnership with Lara Croft “This Is My Story”: Representation and 56 Change in Final Fantasy X-2 Hiding in the Tall Grass: Searching for Queer 69 Stories in Pokémon Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa): Possibilities 85 for participatory game design Death of the Gamer Slaying Gendered Power 105 Fantasies in Legendary Axe II (Victor Musical Industries, 1990) ETC Press 127 EDITOR’S PREFACE For years, many of us invested in games have highlighted the lack of women in nearly every level of game design, production, criticism, and study. While we are far from having solved that particular problem, we believe that one tangible sign of progress in efforts at increasing participation is that the conversation has expanded to include ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity, queer and LGBT voices, as well as international perspectives. This collection of essays demonstrates how wide-ranging such considerations of diversity can – and should – be. We’re proud to bring together various perspectives in this anthology, which both charts where we’ve come from and suggest places to explore further. Our hope is that the variety of perspectives in this issue shows some of the many ways in which we can examine diversity in games—there is diversity in the diversity. The essays cover AAA games and independent games; we also have two different essays on Pokémon showing how the same game can tackle different aspects of diversity. And yet, this is only but a sliver of how diverse makers, players, and critics can provide new and refreshing points of view to making, playing and understanding games. This volume is part of a general effort in academia, journalism and industry, to making diversity in games visible, which is the first step to give agency to diverse game designers, developers, players and critics. Unlike what some people may argue, this is not so much an attack against games, but rather an attempt vii to expand and extend our understanding of games and players. Games should be for everyone, and anyone should be allowed to make them and write about them. Jane Pinckard and Clara Fernández-Vara viii INTRODUCTION This Well-Played Journal special issue emerges at a pivotal time in the videogame industry’s long-troubled relationship to diversity. Industry journal Gamasutra proclaimed diversity one of the five defining trends of 2012 (Graft 2012). This pattern continues to expand and define where the game industry is going. Game scholarship has been closely entangled with the diversity debate since its inception, particularly the critical design practices coming out of universities, as well as the independent game scene and game journalism. Why should we care about diversity? Aside from the obvious fact that we live in an increasingly diverse and global community, and that diversity is held up as a positive social value, numerous industry and academic studies have overwhelmingly shown that it’s good for business. (Weiner 2014) Although the demographics of the game players have changed radically over the past four decades, the stereotype of the white male “gamer” still pervades the popular consciousness, and remains the overriding marketing paradigm for the mainstream industry. In some ways, the industry has existed within its own bubble, oblivious to a changing world and shifting audiences, as well as evolving values in society at-large. This obliviousness is being challenged on several fronts, including the inclusion of new voices through the indie game scene, more rigorous and critically informed game journalism, and the rapid-growth of game scholarship as both a discipline and an influence on a new generation of students of game design. 1 The past three years in particular have brought the game industry’s “gender trouble” to a crisis to such an extent that the problem has captured the attention of the mainstream media. While this volume cuts a wide swath across several sectors concerning diversity, gender holds a central role in many of these chapters, alongside both broader issues of diversity as a principle, and more focused topics, such as ethnicity and queerness. Diversity and gender are not new challenges for video games. As early as the 1990s, activists working within the industry began trying to address the gender problematics of digital games content as well as gender disparity within the workforce. The “girl game” movement of the mid-1990s brought us Barbie Fashion Designer (1996), Purple Moon (1997-1999), Chop Suey (1995) and the enduring Nancy Drew series (1998-present), among other fare largely targeted at female children. Some of these games have been criticized more recently for relying on design and marketing techniques that may have further reinforced gender stereotypes, but they did break major ground in opening up a pathway for new paradigms of gameplay. Barbie Fashion Designer, for instance, was an early example of a game which employed user-created content as well as transmedia, allowing girls to design and print their own clothing onto fabric for physical Barbie dolls. At the same time, a number of mainstream games during this period, such as Cyan’s Myst, which held the title of best-selling CD-ROM for eight years, and LucasArts’ Monkey Island series, also had widespread appeal among women. Alongside the game industry at about the same time, scholars began grappling with the gender problematics of video games. A feminist strain developed within the field of “game studies,” a stubbornly cross-disciplinary enterprise that intersects humanities and behavioral science, computer science and engineering, and art and design. As early as 2000, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat (MIT Press 2000) devoted an entire volume to 2 the topic. This set the stage for an ongoing engagement with conversations about gender and diversity among games scholars, as well as more in-depth studies about the broader role of gaming on the sharp decline of women in IT workforce. Around the time of its publication, a number of trends began to emerge which have brought us to the pivotal moment at which we now find ourselves. The Sims (2000), a game which almost didn’t get made due to strong resistance from EA’s marketing department (Purcese 2008), demonstrated that girls and women would indeed play games, even if they weren’t painted pink and purple. The Sims, it should be added, also broke ground by being one of the first games to include the option for same-sex romance. The rapid growth of casual and mobile games, including new platforms such as the iPad, as well as mobile gaming consoles, have expanded the audience for games beyond the traditional “gamer” demographic of young, white males, bridging the gaming divide across gender, race, class and age. Nintendo’s classic “Gameboy” even had a gender makeover in 2004 to become the Nintendo DS. Ads from this period showed girls playing with the device, which became available in pink. Mainstream consoles saw a rapid shift in gender dynamics. Games such as Katamari Damacy, Animal Crossing and Little Big Planet changed the flavor of console gaming, and new interfaces such as the dance pad, music controllers, Wiimote, and Kinect continued to expand the gender appeal of console games. The Wii marked the first time a console game was featured at a convention of the AARP (Taub 2006). Although exclusion of women and hyper-gendered female representation of characters such as Lara Croft were still the norm, they were being countered by characters that female players could relate to—Beyond Good and Evil’s Jade, Portal’s Chell, and Mirror’s Edge’s Faith, all games which have had widespread mainstream appeal. Even Lara Croft herself got a “reboot,” as chronicled in Chapter 4 of this volume by Mansari, transforming her from a male action hero in a hyper-sexualized female form, to a solid and relatable 3 character for both men and women. Nonetheless, in 2014, Ubisoft still managed to release its Assassin’s Creed Unity with exactly zero female playable characters using the excuse that women were “too hard to animate,” despite the fact they had had them in previous games in the series (Farokhmanesh 2014). Critics pointed out the absurdity of this choice given that the historical setting of the French Revolution was rife with notable women troublemakers (Risbridger 2014).