Racism and Left 4 Dead 2
Posted by Guest in Console Games, PC Games on February 4, 2010
by guest contributor Alex H
Alex Horn is a Latino existentialist looking to explore the intersections of race, gender, and semantics in the video game world. He is an aspiring independent game designer based in Philadelphia.
This post was inspired in part by Lake Desire’s recent posts on racism in RE5. In them, Lake Desire (who is quickly becoming my muse), points out the problematic depictions of race in the game, and notes that the fact that being “made in Japan does not excuse its racism,” and “because the game was made by people of color does not mean it does not perpetuate white supremacy.”
To some, this may seem obvious; however, if one tries to take what lessons can be learned from the RE5 debacle and apply it to L4D2, you are hit with a feeling of déjà-vu. Responses to comments on racism in L4D2 include incredulity, the nonsense-racism defense, and the same “the plot justifies the portrayal” arguments you get with RE5. “Some people are going to complain about racism in any game that has black people,” etc., etc., etc. You get a veritable derailing for dummies checklist. This confuses the subject. We are not attacking personal motivations, we are examining social phenomenon.
It could be said that only ignorant “fanboys” make these types of arguments; unfortunately, this is not the case1.
Across the Divide – 2/3/10
Posted by Cuppycake in General Gaming on February 3, 2010
It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these! I’m a slacker, sorry. In other news, we’re on the lookout for a new accessible Wordpress theme for this blog. If you happen to know of one, comment here and let us know! We know there are some issues here with readability and layout, so we’re happy to explore other options if you help us find something. Onward!
MMOCrunch talks about how Aion is blurring gender boundaries. I’m not so sure the game really does, to be honest. Just because women are playing it, doesn’t mean that it’s catering to women. Women play all games, that’s nothing new!
Web game My Minx allows young girls to dress up, hit the clubs, have sex, and then take the morning after pill. Many parents aren’t too thrilled.
Racialicious takes an in-depth look at Facebook’s racial diversity for us.
iTrust: Yet another iPhone app that allows you to keylog to spy on your boyfriend or girlfriend.
Reddit has a “feminisms” channel to read latest news on the web pertaining to feminist interests. Warning: comments are not always a safe space.
Read on for a study about gaming and ADHD by University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.
Regular commenter for The Border House, koipond, is looking for some people to talk about games at the Anime North convention in Toronto.
What else did we miss? Share some links in the comments 
Cat is 4 Fite!: Popularity of the Druid class in World of Warcraft
A World of Warcraft druid in cat form: a white cat with facial tattoos, darker mane and a collar with purple gems hanging from it.
Many of the women I play World of Warcraft with (Alliance side, two nights a week raiding group that’s relatively successful considering our limited playtime) play druids. Most of the druids in our group are women. What makes this class so appealing, and what lessons might we be able to draw for future game design?
Game Analysis & Nostalgia: Indigo Prophecy Edition
Posted by Arie S. in Console Games on February 3, 2010
Game changer?
As an avid player and writer concerned with videogames, I think it is important to analyze some of the finer moments of games that we love. This medium is evolving constantly; we can analyze both effective cinematic and interactive sequences that have heightened our expectations of these experiences. We can also finally address the greater questions of how sexuality and identity are presented in a more mature gaming industry. I hope this column will be a check-in for editors and readers alike to speak on their personal moments with games they love, and discuss how they ended up at the Borderhouse. Welcome to all! SPOILERS AHEAD.
1. Immersion in Unlikely Stages
The phone keeps ringing, and Carla is still in the shower. The camera zooms in a little too close, and David Cage is meticulous about ensuring that the scene remains slightly tasteful- although I still feel like a bit of a voyeur. The intrigue of forming any sort of emotional connection with the character on screen is that the player gets a sense of their behavioral interaction in a multitude of settings. Carla has been a very resolute Police Detective up to this point; she’s absolutely determined to name a suspect in the ghastly Diner murder and follow her partner’s leads. She’s just come from practice at the firing range, and reconstructing details of the murder with the coroner. At this point in the game, the player recognizes her panic attacks associated with claustrophobia (Aside: The mini-game mechanic of pacing yourself in the first person perspective while using the L1 & R1 buttons to steady your breathing was thrilling! I felt anxious about balancing the whole situation.)
Is voice chat really always necessary?
A headset, hanging on a wall. Photo by flickr user Watchcaddy used under CC license
“There’s no good reason for anyone not to use voice chat.”
That, or something like that, was something that a guild-mate once said to me when I was playing Warhammer Online and which really set my teeth on edge. With hindsight, this moment probably marked the beginning of the end of my time in that guild and in that game. It just stopped being fun at that point.
I am very very wary of using voice chat with people I don’t know very well and I have my reason. I think it’s a good one too. I’m male to female transsexual, and while I pass in most circumstances, my voice is still fairly masculine. This means that in the absence of any visual cues, most people will read me as male based on my voice alone. Add this to the already prevalent notion that there are no women in games, and the fact where I’ve had people react negatively to me before because they thought I was a man pretending to be a woman, and I suspect you can understand my reluctance.
Whenever I see a game advertising that it has built in voice chat capabilities, that instantly dissuades me from buying the game. No matter how good the game comes across as otherwise, I simply do not have the time or the energy to deal with anybody I run into in game thinking that they have the right to talk to me via audio.
Mine isn’t the only reason, of course. I was recently shown a post in the WoW_Ladies LiveJournal community by a woman whose guild wouldn’t let her tank because she’s deaf. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to think up other reasons. Maybe someone isn’t a native English speaker and while they’re comfortable reading and writing English, they’re not comfortable with spoken English. Or maybe they have young children and need to listen to a baby monitor, just in case there’s an emergency.
When people say “there’s no good reason” what they actually mean is “I can’t be bothered trying to imagine any good reason”. In their minds, they can use voice chat, and if they can then everyone else should be able to as well.
Even worse is that when people are confronted, head on, by a reason, they choose to completely ignore it. In the case of the deaf woman who wasn’t allowed to tank, I’d be extremely surprised if the people involved expected her to be able to participate in voice chat. Instead of making provisions to let her play, they put their own convenience first.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are times when voice chat in a game is all but essential. However, these times are few and far between, and are generally restricted to high-end competitive PvP. In that sort of environment, the margins between defeat and victory can be very fine, and you need to have some way to instantly communicate complicated ideas. I understand this.
I’m not a WoW player myself, so I’m not certain about the difficulty level of the raid she talked about, but I have played several different MMOs and I can say that I have never encountered any PvE content in any of them where the margin for success was anywhere near that fine. You just don’t need the same degree of instant communication when you’re fighting against an AI with predictable patterns of behaviour. If you know what the enemy is going to do, then you can prepare for it beforehand, and use simpler communications while you fight.
In these circumstances, voice chat is a convenience, and nothing more. Anyone who requires voice chat and won’t even consider making exceptions is effectively saying “my convenience is more important to me than letting you play in my group”. In my head, this always translates to “don’t worry, you probably wouldn’t want to play with me anyway”.
What Makes a Game Epic?
Posted by Alex in Console Games, General Gaming, PC Games on February 1, 2010
Contains minor spoilers for Dragon Age: Origins and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
What makes a game epic? Dragon-slaying? Not necessarily! (Pictured: a group of four fantasy heroes battling a large, electric-white dragon from Dragon Age: Awakening.)
A great many games, particularly in the fantasy and sci-fi genres, seek to be epic in scope, or evoke a feeling of epicness. It’s an elusive quality because simply making a game very long or very large isn’t usually sufficient, and what makes a game epic may vary from person to person. One thing that I associate with epicness is not only the passage of time, but physical and emotional journeys, as well as change. Change is the key thing there: spending fifty hours in a static world doesn’t feel epic to me, which is why most of the Final Fantasy games that I’ve played don’t quite work for me on that level.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the first game I played that truly felt epic. And the epic moment wasn’t sealing away Ganondorf, or the heartwarming and fairly silly montage of happy Gorons and Kokiri at the end. That first real moment of awe came when I stuck the Master Sword back in its pedestal and left the Temple of Time as a ten-year-old child once more. What was so epic about that moment was the reminder of how much had changed over the course of the game. Ocarina of Time is one of very few games that has the guts to create a beautiful world, introduce the player to it, and then completely destroy it for the bulk of the game–and unlike Okami or Ocarina’s successor, Twilight Princess, things don’t get magically all better once you finish a dungeon or defeat a monster. But going back in time in Ocarina is bittersweet: it’s wonderful to see Hyrule whole and happy once more, but upsetting to know what will become of the beautiful land and its people, with small hope of preventing it. Ocarina gracefully sets up the stakes of this epic quest, something few games accomplish.
But change doesn’t have to affect the entire world to be meaningful–it doesn’t even need to be physical. The change can also be mental or emotional, a sense that the character you inhabit has evolved or grown. No game I have played accomplishes that as well as Dragon Age: Origins. In the world of Dragon Age, Mages are dangerous and feared, and so have to go through rigorous training, which is capped off by a trial where the Mage has to prove she or he is able to resist the control of demons, or die. My first character was a Mage, and the beginning of the game involved overcoming her trial (called a Harrowing). At the time she was sheltered and naive, a wide-eyed idealist, talented but knew only a few spells. Over the course of fifty hours of play time, she changed, not only becoming more powerful as in most RPGs, but growing in character and personality: she made friends, broke a curse, slayed a dragon, fell in love, executed a war hero, been to hell and back. She saw the world in its beauty and brutality, grew up, became more cynical. So toward the end of the game, when someone mentioned her Harrowing, I had a real sense of scope for a moment, of how long ago and, more importantly, different things were at the beginning of the game. Everything had changed.
For me, in order to invoke that sought-after “epic” feeling, a game has to work to show me its scope; for me it is not so much badass moments of slow-motion Ogre slaying, but in quiet moments where the game shows me something or a character says something that makes me think, “Wow, that was so long ago and so far away, and so much has changed since then.” I think a game has to go beyond simply being long, and put players on a real journey. What about you? Do you enjoy “epic” games? What games live up to this label for you, and why?
BioWare Forum Poll on Your Sex
Posted by Denis Farr in General Gaming, Web on January 30, 2010
Given our interest in Mass Effect (and admittedly, BioWare in general), we thought it would interest our readers to know of a poll happening in the BioWare Social Network forums (for which you do need to have an account). Seeking to highlight what he saw as unfair representation of females in the gaming community, particularly in the BioWare forums, user Brocodaily is the author, and it was brought to our attention by Kateri (whom you may recognize from her Shepard post).
The poll asks a simple question based on the assumption that you play Mass Effect: are you male, female, or unsure?
While the last option is a bit… odd (and leads to some gender essentialism in the comments, so tread with care), it is also a small way to highlight how many female gamers there are in BioWare’s fandom, and that play Mass Effect in particular. So, if you’re a male, female, or want to skip out due to not really feeling your option is there, we thought you’d like the opportunity to vote.
Gender, Sex, and Meaningful Avatars
Posted by Brinstar in Console Games, PC Games on January 28, 2010
Samus Aran from Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. She's fully armoured and appears to be in mid-jump.
At Infinite Lives there’s an intriguing post from Jenn that discusses the notion that self-created player-characters/avatars such as your character in Fallout 3 may be more difficult to identify with than pre-determined, blank slate, player-characters such as Faith from Mirror’s Edge, Samus from Metroid, and Chell from Portal. The main thing that the latter three protagonists and games have in common is not only that the heroines have very little personality as expressed in their respective games’ plots. Also these three games have very little dialogue compared to Fallout 3 and games of that ilk, as well as having comparatively little interaction between the avatar and NPCs inhabiting the game world.
So what does this mean for the player experience and identification with one’s character? According to Jenn, one of the differences is due to the fact that, while one may create a character that is female or male sexed, the experience you have in Fallout 3 is the same in terms of your character’s gender. Read the rest of this entry »
Console interface text size
Posted by Gunthera1 in Console Games on January 27, 2010
Text size in console games can be a huge issue for visually impaired individuals. The ideal situation would be options that allow for larger text or icons to make the interface more accessible to gamers. So, how are the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 treating text size? All of the following images were taken off my home 32 inch television sitting at the sofa that is 8 feet away from the screen.
Do Game Designers Have A Social Obligation?
Posted by Cuppycake in Console Games, General Gaming on January 26, 2010
Darren over at Common Sense Gamer asks a curious question – do game designers have a social obligation to consider issues such as race, class, ability, and sexual orientation in their games? We think we’re in a good position to respond to this, since this is the exact reason why The Border House exists.
“Understood that sexuality is a very personal and hot topic that gets everyone’s panties in a knot, but do we really need to represent every single human condition within our games just to make a social point? It’s an interesting topic and ultimately I think the answer has to be “no”. If we insist that game designers start being socially conscious on every human condition, I think we’ll start really hating our gaming sessions. If we go by the theory that “games are art” (…/cringe…), then do we really want to tell the artist how they should create?”
We ask – why does including non-standard types of characters mean that the game is making a “social point”? How do you think an Asian-American woman feels when you tell her that including a Japanese female character in a North American MMO is a “social point”? Do you think the disabled woman in a wheelchair entering a grocery store thinks she’s making a “social point” every time she leaves her house? We have designed our games to be so inherently fit, muscular, white American, that it’s now an exception and a social point to include people outside our comfort zone. We’re also so comfortable in this privilege that most people don’t even recognize the lack of accurate representation as a problem. Something has to change there.
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