feminism
Latest
The Summoner's Guidebook: One lady fights for equality in the League of Legends
If you recall from a few months back, we covered gender equality in League of Legends. The general outcome of that column was that women are under-represented in the tank and melee fighter roles and are very over-represented in the support role. Furthermore, women are heavily objectified in LoL, and there's really no dispute over that. Some girls in the League stroll into combat with little more than underwear and a smile, and most of them wear some kind of overly sexualized outfit. However, one woman fights against the tide. She wears her conservative armor proudly and fights in a rather unladylike manner. She doesn't utter seductive remarks while she runs around the map in high heels. Everything about her is direct, practical, and in-your-face. She's Poppy, and she's my favorite character in League of Legends.
Why is Blizzard still OK with gender inequality in World of Warcraft?
Editor's Note: Comments on this post have now been disabled. It's getting late and we'd like to let our comment moderators get some sleep tonight. In most games I play, from World of Warcraft to Star Wars: The Old Republic, I make an effort to play mainly female characters. Unlike other males who play female characters, this isn't for cosmetic reasons; I'm not one of those dudes who can't bear to stare at his male character's butt for multiple hours a day. (How this is ever an argument that makes sense to people, I don't know.) This was a conscious decision on my part a few years ago, when I started to become aware of the discrimination faced by female characters. See, when you make the decision to make a female character, you're intentionally and unintentionally signing up for a number of things. First, you are intentionally signing up to play a female character. This could be because you identify as female, because you prefer the look of female characters, or any number of other reasons (including the butt one). What you're unintentionally signing up for goes further. You're unintentionally signing up for jokes made at your expense in a raid, like when my priest hit 85 and did BH in leveling gear, and my low HPS was mocked because I was a girl playing WoW. You're unintentionally signing up for harassment, for the catcalls and people begging you to talk in Vent, like you're a rare species of bird they'll only be able to hear once. You're unintentionally signing up to be victimized by other players because you dared roll something other than male at level 1, and you didn't know there'd be consequences for that choice.
The Soapbox: TERA's rocky road to release
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. What a difference a year makes, eh? February of 2011 found me drooling over my keyboard as I devoured all the screenshots and gameplay footage leaking out of TERA's Korean launch (yes, the westernization process really has been dragging on for a year). Fast-forward 12 months and the game is losing a little bit of its luster because of certain En Masse decisions and in spite of the fact that the firm has a potentially awesome MMO on its hands.
The Daily Grind: When does in-game armor go from sexy to stripperific?
So a discussion popped up around the Massively offices the other day regarding MMORPG armor (or the distinct lack thereof when it comes to some titles). A question was raised as to why some games get away with sexualizing female gear while others are raked over the coals for demeaning women, pandering to men's baser instincts, and generally setting the cause of feminism back by decades. Take today's header image for example. Guild Wars (and its upcoming sequel) are rarely bashed by the skimpy armor police, yet the game does accentuate the female form more often than not. Aion contains some of the racier outfits in the history of the genre, but you rarely see people complaining about it (especially the considerable number of real-life female players who deck out their Daevas in said gear). TERA, on the other hand, is the current whipping boy when it comes to sexy armor in MMOs, as numerous comment threads (likely to include this one) illustrate. For today's Daily Grind, we'd like to know what causes some revealing armor sets (or the games that feature them) to be deemed A-OK while others are decried as offensive. In a nutshell, what line does armor have to cross before it goes from sexy to stripperific? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Are you upset with how MMOs handle women?
While this year's BlizzCon didn't feature any shocking revelations about World of Warcraft, it still contained some shocking revelations for a few people during one of the question-and-answer panels. A question about the game's treatment of female characters wasn't just brushed off, it was mocked by the development team. This has been picked up in a couple of places, with the uniform opinion not just being that it was a bad way to respond to the question, it was a bad sign that developers can essentially brush off the question altogether. It's not an unfamiliar debate, one that runs through every media in one form or another. Whether you're a man or a woman, you might be of the mind that there's a serious problem with how the genre treats a substantial portion of its audience... or you might be of the mind that people get way too bent out of shape over a bit of extra skin on female characters. So where do you stand? Are you unhappy with the way that women are represented in MMOs, or do you think that it's much ado about nothing? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Noblegarden: Sexy or Sexist?
We are nearing the end of Noblegarden, but haven't discussed here at WoW Insider the most controversial part of the event: Shake your Bunny-Maker. For this achievement, you have to put bunny ears on one female of each race that is over Level 18.Before we go any farther in this discussion, I would like to state that I am female. Not that I am speaking for all females (no one can), but I think that it is important that you know where I am coming from. I also have a young daughter and would like the world to be a better place for her, as all parents do. It is also worth noting that the title for this post was inspired by one of my favorite movies: This is Spinal Tap. The band wants to release an album called Smell the Glove with a cover of a naked woman who is leashed and is forced to smell a glove. The lead singer mistakes the word "sexist" for "sexy". Hilarity ensues.
All the World's a Stage: If looks could kill
All the World's a Stage is a column for inquisitive minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening. The media usually portrays WoW as a "boy's game." That's not to say girls don't play too, of course -- just that the game is basically about qualities such as aggressiveness and violence, and our culture expects males to be interested in that sort of thing. Whether such a designation is true or not, the "masculine equals violent" stereotype is very pervasive, and it is natural for many male players to begin the game with a powerful and intimidating character in mind. The player may imagine that his avatar is warm and kind-hearted inside, but outwardly, his character looks as though he could rip out your throat with a flick of his pinky finger.But there are many men out there who don't like such exaggerated manliness in their characters, just as there are many women who don't want their character to look like a dainty barbie doll. Being a person isn't just about just one gender attribute, after all. Indeed, female characters in WoW can achieve a full range of human attributes in their appearance; they can look friendly and intelligent, yet lightning quick and deadly at the same time. However, the appearance of male characters is often so filled to the brim with "strength and honor" that there's not much room left for any other human quality.
Call for fewer game reviews, more game critiques
What's the difference between a review of a book, movie or game and a critique of one? Ryan Stancl explains and advocates more of the latter because he believes that games deserve more serious criticism in order to move forward as a respected form of art. To demonstrate the difference between reviews and critiques, Stancl will critique Katamari Damacy from the perspective of eight different schools of critical theory: Biographical, New Critical, Marxist, Structural, Jungian, Psychoanalytical, Feminist, and Post-Colonial. He's posted the first two critiques already. They're a touch dry, but we're hoping the Feminist and Marxist interpretations spice things up.
Girls That Play Games: Redux
Browsing the Warcraft forums this afternoon, I ran across a post advertising a WoW Gurls, a new forum for female Warcraft players. The response it's getting ("a/s/l plz" and "300 cooking is a prerequisite") does not surprise me, considering the venue, but it's still sort of disappointing. Another poster pointed out a more established forum, Women of Warcraft. While these forums theoretically provide a safe haven for female gamers to come together and talk shop, it sometimes seems that the establishment of a site for women merely attracts and encourages all of the typical forum trolls. Is this behavior simply to be expected when you mention women to Warcraft's target demographic?
Girls That Play Games
There's a interesting article on the Play Girlz blog discussing women who play Warcraft, and some of the treatment they face. They link back to a survey that has collected comments from female gamers, which range from interesting to unusual to disturbing. Being that I have recently taken to playing characters that are not in my raiding guild in order to avoid some of the more juvenile antics of my fellow (and overwhelmingly male) players, I can certainly understand where the author is coming from when she points out the following: Many people play games so they can get away from “real life” but when this fantasy that is supposed to be fun starts sounding so much like what you’re trying to get away from in the first place, it’s hard to ignore.[Thanks, Keegan]
