Girls play games now, you know?

Yesterday I had a friend stay over my house, after attending a party. During the course of the night, she said that she’s going to get a PS3, because the guys at her work said she should, because it has Blu-ray. Now, I know only one person who gets truly excited about Blu-Ray. He’s a film writer. Films are his life. He wants to see them in their amazing, crisp, hi-def goodness. So I told my friend, “I don’t think it’s worth getting it for the BR. It depends what games you want. XBox are going to do some pretty cool things in the near future, I think you should get that unless you have a solid reason to get the PS3.”

She then came back at me with, “But I was talking to the guys at work…”

I said, “Yeah, and I work and research in games, and date a programmer. I know several people who own every console known to man. How about I ask them? But we’ll get a comparison chart when we get home?” (I think we fought a little more because we were both drunk… but that was the conclusion)

She ended up deciding on the PS3 because she wants SingStar (although she wanted a “white” one, and I said that’d be the 360, but there was pink released at some point… how gross), but she told me how when she talked to the guys at her work about it (I’ll generally describe their occupation as “earth scientists”), and they had expressed some serious confusion over why she wanted a console. “But you’re a girl… Girls don’t play games! Are you serious? Like… real games?”

Sigh. Welcome to 12 years of cultural gender retardation. At least I have the, “You like to go around shooting people? That always struck me as a little homoerotic, personally,” line to throw at them, should they bring up the “girl games vs real games” divide.

Honours Thesis: Complete!

So I handed in my Honours Thesis yesterday: I am now totally the expert on how to make games that are tragedies… in the genre sense, not talking about its success/failure. And yes, I got that joke often. Thanks guys.

I’ll be trying to make a new website for myself soon, and will upload a pdf of the written component, as well as revised versions of whatever else I may have written that seem like they might be interesting or relevent.

Right now I’m finishing my PhD application, which I propose shall be entitiled, “Suitable for Mature Audiences, Too: Electronic Games as an Avenue for Adult Play.”

So don’t be surprised if this blog suddenly stops talking about tragedy and starts talking about education. Not that there was much talking happening in this blog anyway…

Eleven years, no change

Well, not no change entirely.

But the sentiments reflected in the final chapter of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat are still pretty significant today.

I don’t agree with all of them, but it’s worth the read and it’s sad that this chapter could essentially be from a book released now, eleven years later. By far, my favourite quote (which I feel is still true today) is this:

Makes me wonder if the gaming industry is even catering to what guys want in the first place. Maybe it’s just what they think the guys want. (Michelle Goulet for Game Girlz)

Michelle argues that while the sexpot female is supposedly the male ideal, so are the male characters. If they’re not bulked up strong guys, they’re skinny outcasts who either have a science degree or access to a magical sword. While there have been some women who are “average,” there are still plenty of assumptions about what guys who play games would like. This is the default, and making assumptions about what girls would like ends up making it into “Girl Games.”

I’d really like to see a so-called “Girl Game” advertised at an expo with perfume-ad worthy male models. To quote Michelle Goulet again:

Fabio’s stereotype just doesn’t make it into a lot of games, and if this were the case, I don’t think I would have as big of a problem with the “big busted bimbo.”

Nor would I.

Girl Games and Queer Theory

So there are “Grrl Gamers,” and “Girl Games.” So basically, in the game-playing market, there are women and there are androgynes or undifferentiated? You’re female… or you’re a “normal gamer”?

Maturity of the medium

This is just a quick smattering of a few quotes about the maturation of various media.

The Myth of the Unnarratable Game

Tonight, I was talking to a friend online, and he said he was having a debate with his housemate over whether or not all games had narratives.

My personal opinion? Yes, all games have narratives. It is important that we do no limit our perception of what constitutes a narrative. Generally speaking, a narrative/plot/story is a sequence of events tied together and recounted in such a way as to create meaning. According to Aristotle, a plot requires action, but not necessarily character. There are good plots, and there are bad or weak plots. There are plots that are simple and some that are complex, and they can be categorised according to their strutural and formal attributes.

There is also the whole aspect of self-narration and identity formation that I’m not even going to touch in this post. That’s huge and I love it, but that isn’t what this is about.

There were arguments put forward about MMOs (grind erases narrative), as well as sandbox and “sim” toys (note: I use the term “toy” because Will Wright does). I was surprised that “puzzle games” didn’t come up.

If you play any of these types of games, here’s an activity to do: think about the best game you played of it. What is going through your mind? Key events and moments, strung together in a sequence. There ma or may not have been character, but there was action. By Aristotle’s definition, your “unnarratable” game just achieved the status, “Plot!” Congratulations. You just narrated the unnarratable.

Shaking up Shakespeare

I keep thinking it’s odd that, while Aristotle noted dramatists using their work to neuter dangerous, hubristic inclinations within their society that would destabilise the democratic power structures of the time, Shakespeare’s tragidies seemed to focus more on questioning the natural order or divine/man-imposed right to power: to the throne.

inversion

I feel too used to criticising the society and not the individual. I want to make my tragic hero properly heroic, and martyr him or her to reveal the flaw of the society.

I am far too used to plays that say, “So this is your society: a little fucked, isn’t it?”

Instead I need to think in terms of catutionary tales. I need to think in terms of an external society that is okay, and an individual who represents a seemingly alright deviation within society, or a sub-group of society.

Hubris as a positive trait

In Aristotle’s Greece, the society was pretty afraid of Pharmakos, or what we would call a “tall poppy.” These were members of society treated as scapegoats, often because they had too much good fortune or luck. Democarcy was the political system of the time, and anyone in the minority was treated with suspicion. Hence the tragic hero: full of hubris, the sense that their personal moral choices were more relevent and valid than those of their society or their gods.

But in today’s society, we have almost an excess of hubris. Everyone is expected to have their own opinion, and they have the right to that freedom of speech. What could be understood as slandering another is acceptable today: telling someone, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” treads all over their right to freedom of speech.

Is hubris encouraged in today’s society? Is being selfish exactly what we expected we should be? Is this a change, or is this a good thing?

We may have more contestants to win the meritocracy crown, but does it just give rise to the stupidification of the masses based on the misiformation of one?

Are we freeing ourselves to uncover “The Truth,” or are we just second-guessing everything?

Preventing social and personal change

I’ve been doing more creative research lately, starting to read up on Atlantis and the Knights Templar. The current edition of Hyper magazine is exploring moral choice in games. Very heartening, but also interesting because it isn’t exactly what I’m looking into.

I also gathered together my two essays and put them together to the best of my ability to begin my exegesis. I’m formatting it with topics and conclusions which then become my design constraints. In doing this, it has more brought to my attention where I’m going wrong with my thought process on Tragedy. Until now, I’ve kindof been seeing it as a way of changing society or personal thought. But I’ve since realised that this is backwards:

Tragedy is not about changing society, but preventing change and maintaining what else exists.

Thus, I need to ensure that the theme of my game isn’t about something I dislike about society, but something I do like that is being challenged. I’m supposed to be reinforcing behaviour and thought, while warning against incorrect choices. So, I need to ensure that the first part of my game design is aimed towards building up the relationship between the player-character and the tragic hero. I can’t have him/her be too deviant from the start, or else the deviancy must be understandable/interesting/tempting for the player as well.

It’s difficult, because my instinct is to show a “normal” hero or underdog- someone who goes against the corrupt society and is revered for it. Instead, I need to make sure that whatever I am depicting in the society in which this is set is what I want to reinforce, or otherwise the tragic hero needs to take their society to excess, and make sure that the law of their city is what they follow, instead of the law of the Gods of their time.