Maddox - The solution to 'Sexism In Video Games'

kragshot · 2013-06-07T06:39:51+00:00

I've said this many times before; I've asked "alleged feminists" many times, why shouldn't they just support game developers who make feminist-friendly games and even set up scholarships to encourage young women to get into game design. All of the major consoles are supporting small, independent game design and there are countless resources available to help people break into game coding and design.

The answer I received each time I asked those questions was the exact same one in essence:

"Why should we have to? You men should just change your games into what we want them to be."

Each answer were essentially those same two sentences. They don't want to build anything for themselves. They would rather just shame us into doing what they want and guilt us into changing what we like just because they want it changed. And it's not the rank and file women who are behind this; it is just a core group of "alleged feminists" who support this emotional and social bullying.

IHaveALargePenis · 2013-06-07T04:52:45+00:00

This is a tricky slope, because only a few years ago those same "gurl gamerzz" were bashing men for playing videogames, and haven't really bothered to figure the ins and outs of video games themselves. So you can forget about them wanting/being able to actually make one.

And before you get on your high horse, actual gamers, not fucking "insert gender gamers" don't bitch about this. This is engineering ans STEM in general all over again. The women who majored in these fields are doing it, while the womyns studies rejects are in uproar about gender discrimination, sexism or whatever the fuck they managed to come up with during their latest brainstorming event.

literallyschmiteraly · 2013-06-07T10:40:46+00:00

Women don't realize that its just going to get worse the more they wage the gender war. Look at Japan; the herbivore movement causes men to use hobbies as an alternative to dating. As a result the influx of new games are very sexually charged and/or "moe" (cute innocence). The funny thing is that in Japan there are more women playing videogames than in the west, so its not even a demographic thing. Maybe if women cleaned up their act men wouldn't resort to sexual escape, and developers wouldn't profit from it.

Personally i think women don't like sexual portrayals because its still a form of competition.

Nerdloc · 2013-06-07T13:22:23+00:00

But, Maddox, feminists have made their own video game! And guess what? It's the feminist equivalent of Ethnic Cleansing!

Prepare to get buttblasted, /r/MensRights. Literally! This game "Hey Baby" is all about murdering men.

"But, Nerdloc!" you might say. "This game is about killing cat callers! They aren't innocent at all!"

Okay. But is saying, "God bless you" to someone sexually harassing them? What about, "Can I help you, miss?" Does that man deserve to be gunned down. Is, "Pst pst" offensive to you? Should men be killed for this?

"But Nerdloc!" you might continue. "All of this stuff is bad, sure, but how can you say feminists would support this? We aren't violent! We don't want men dead!"

Well, ignoring the obvious stuff like the Society for Cutting Up Men and the infamous radfemhub, let's look at some "media" coverage of the game then, shall we?

Salon seems to think women will love it!

Clearly, the game isn’t afraid to stir up some controversy. We’re used to heroines with big boobs and naughty little getups, but here we’re placed in the shoes of a virtual protagonist whom we never actually see. Instead of a far-fetched scenario, we’re placed in an infuriating and frightening everyday reality for many women. Show me a woman who doesn’t have at least one story of being aggressively pursued — verbally or otherwise — by a stranger on the street. Most of us have experienced the jolt of adrenaline from receiving unwanted, unrelenting attention from a man on the street, or have been forced to contemplate the relative merits of pepper spray, eye-gouging and a swift knee to the crotch. There is a real reason for sites like Holla Back, which provides a venue for women to vent about, and publicly humiliate, men who have harassed them.

The rage behind the game might be a little too real for some tastes, but there’s no question many women will find it thrilling, maybe even therapeutic. Personally, I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the “all men as potential attackers” mentality that the game engenders, even if it does make for interesting commentary about the ways street harassment warps women’s views of men. Ultimately, though, considering the existence of first-person sexual assault games like “RapeLay,” it’s about damn time someone introduced a street harasser shoot’em-up game.

Leigh Alexander loves it! (And yes, this is THE Leigh Alexander)

Actually, we'd been talking about games, of course -- she's a designer, and so she'd asked me what kind of game I would make if by some miracle I developed an interest in development. I jokingly said I'd probably come up with some kind of revenge simulator that let you shoot scumbag catcallers.

Her replies in the comments section are the real meat of her actual review.

JT -- yeah. Yeah, it's totally validating. Given that gaming is such a boys club, when I saw that this existed, that someone thought to make this, even though it's terrible, I had this flood of relief that approached tearfulness.

I'm not going to bother quoting more of her, but if you read the article and all of her comments, she essentially equates even looking at a woman to harassing her. Coming up and saying, "Hello" is physically and emotionally torturing a woman, etc., etc. And as you can see, this has had a profound effect on the woman's psyche as she was brought to tears upon hearing her dream game has been made.

Michigan Daily gives it a whole-hearted recommendation!

Finally! There’s a first-person shooter for women! The folks at LadyKillas Inc. released “Hey Baby Game” to satisfy the underserved gamer demographic. The play is simple: You’re a woman walking home at night, men utter flirtatious comments in your direction and you take them down with your three-foot long, .80 caliber machine gun. Come-ons vary from harmless (“Can I help you miss?”) to disgusting (“I wanna lick you all over”) and the game gives you the opportunity to give the perverts love or to unload your wrath.

To be honest, the graphics and animation suck. There is considerable lag and way too many glitches to make the game playable. It’s a shoddy production, available for free at HeyBabyGame.com. Still, the idea is spot-on.

Sure, it might be an unnecessarily violent overreaction to a seemingly harmless annoyance, but it’s feminism at its greatest. Video-gaming has been male-oriented for too long, and the streets have been crawling with creeps much longer. As the LadyKillas say “Ladies, are you sick and tired of catcalling, hollering, obnoxious one-liners and creepy street encounters? Tired of changing your route home to avoid uncomfortable situations? IT'S PAYBACK TIME, BOYS.....”

UTNE echoes these sentiments.

Finally, there is relief for women plagued by catcalls hollered from speeding car windows, unsolicited innuendos offered by complete strangers, and proverbial one-liners greasy enough to make you gag. Well, virtual relief that is, courtesy of the folks at the video game production company LadyKillas Inc.

So as much as Hey Baby is ostensibly a shoot ’em up gorefest, there’s way more to it than that. It’s art, activism, and social commentary operating under the novel guise of a recreational pastime, and despite its in-your-face presentation, its underlying message is meant to be discussed seriously—and it should be.

NewStatesman gives it a glowing review!

In real life, you'd grit your teeth and walk on, or maybe flash a smile if you were particularly worried for your safety. But in Hey Baby you get to draw an AK-47 and pulverise the leering scumbags. As you vent your frustration on the computer-generated misogynists, headstones appear displaying their obnoxious suggestions. It's not big, it's not clever, and it's hardly a coherent manifesto for feminist resistance - but, boy, is it cathartic.

This is a game that's meant not to be played, but to be discussed. Its creator, Suyin Looui, a digital activist rather than a professional game designer, has said that her aim was to "examine new technologies and their potential value for feminist activism". Hey Baby is guerrilla feminist art masquerading as a PC pastime, and is all the more effective for the knowledgeable, unpatronising way in which it subverts the tropes of gaming to make its points.

Hey Baby, like the everyday sexism it critiques, is much more than just a game. The project is propaganda art par excellence, using the conceits of gaming technology to model how male privilege feels from a woman's perspective. Mowing down digital aggressors may be satisfying, but making real men understand is infinitely more so.

Seriously! NewStatesman really loves this game!

There are moments in life when every girl wishes she were packing an AK-47. As a morose-looking sort of person, I regularly get instructed to smile by strange men in the street, and without wishing to criticise men’s indisputable right to pass public judgement on absolutely any woman’s appearance and demeanour, too much of that sort of thing can make even the gentlest soul long to execute the leering scumbags with a great big gun.

Now, there’s a video game that lets you play out that fantasy.

The makers of Hey Baby have created an urban street simulation from the point of view of a woman walking home in the evening. As you pulverise digital aggressors into a welter of pixellated meat, headstones appear displaying their obnoxious comments. It’s not big and it’s not clever, but it is cathartic.

But what about women’s dark, secret fantasies? We get plenty of cues as to what advertisers think women should fantasise about, mostly involving giant shoes made of chocolate, younger-looking skin and wild sex with men who wear a particular brand of deodorant. But what if there were more? What if women, too, had bad thoughts and private daydreams too transgressive for polite society? What if we fantasised about responding with criminal violence to everyday harassment? What if we wanted to make men afraid? What if we wanted money, status and power? What if we wanted to rule the world?

Well, I'd imagine you'd probably form something like... The Society for Cutting Up Men!

So, anyway, as you can see, feminists are completely capable of making games. It's just that they tend to be rubbish Valerie Solanas simulators. The feminists love it though, so I guess that's good!

Kind of funny though how that "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" game was lambasted for being misogyny incarnate and an attack not just on Anita herself but women as a whole while these same people praise a piece of shit like "Hey Baby" as a cathartic release of feminine anger.

murphymc · 2013-06-07T10:59:07+00:00

[permanently deleted]

AryoBarzan · 2013-06-07T01:52:14+00:00

This implies feminists actually doing something. A "women's studies" degree doesn't teach you how to program code and design video games. Whenever anything male-made gets popular, feminists do the same thing. Come in, cry "misogyny/sexism" and force people's hard work to be infected with their rhetoric regardless of what the general demographic wants.

Good on Maddox, though. Makes me very proud to have used to read his material religiously in the early 2000's.

rogersmith25 · 2013-06-07T13:12:39+00:00

More male gamers = more male protagonists

More male protagonists = more female loved ones

More female loved ones = higher probability of "damsel trope"

That's it. That's the whole paradigm. Occam's razor in effect - the above explanation doesn't need to evoke a giant patriarchal conspiracy.

It's scary that so-called "skeptic groups" are being taken over by feminism in the form of "Atheism+"... because it appears that all these so-called "skeptics" are willing to throw away the scientific method which they supposedly hold so dearly for very little.

KingOfEggsAndBacon · 2013-06-07T01:15:45+00:00

I would like to buy this man a bear.

Pecanpig · 2013-06-07T02:44:58+00:00

Fuck Feminist crap about video games, StarCraft II ftw.

murphymc · 2013-06-07T03:48:27+00:00

Oh Maddox :D

Akesgeroth · 2013-06-07T04:29:02+00:00

Just saw it, came here, and saw it was posted. As usual, he hits the nail on the head.

DirtAndGrass · 2013-06-07T21:38:26+00:00

I don;'t know the numbers, but i'd say there are "lots" of female video game designers, fewer coders though. Coding is too low paying.

2013-06-07T16:47:15+00:00

So, serious question:

Why shouldn't there be games targeted to men? Men and women consume books, but no-one argues that individual books should appeal to everyone equally - same with television. What's so different about games?

I mean, a vast amount of female oriented television programs and literature are produced, much of which holds no appeal for me, but I don't feel as if this is something that needs to change. I just don't read those books, or watch those tv shows. I buy or watch things that appeal to me, and believe me that means sifting through a lot of junk. I don't get this sense that the world must be customized to my liking, or that its even an option. In my experience, you live with what you can get, understand that no one owes you anything. Fans of more niche genres understand this, which is why you will often find communities of people within these genres working hard to proliferate the genre, even if it relies on a game that is 10+ years old. The fans understand that what they want is not forthcoming, no one will do it for them, so they must do it themselves. This is life. And doing this brings greater confidence.

I had a friend who wanted a porsche. He didn't have enough money to buy a new one, so he bought a used one that needed repairs off of ebay. He then spent three years rebuilding the car, sourcing parts, and repainting. The world didn't owe him a porsche, no one was going to give him one, but he found a way. And that way helped him to grow as a person, because he fought for it, and he did it with his own hands.

Pecanpig · 2013-06-07T01:15:53+00:00

Fair enough, but the flip side of that is that I don't think that game developers really realize that they have a female demographic to cater to. Female developers don't mean shit if they're still making games for men.

bridgecrewdave · 2013-06-07T08:55:04+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Title	Maddox - The solution to 'Sexism In Video Games'
Author	MidSolo
Upvotes	75
Comments	90
Date	June 7, 2013 1:09 AM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1ftz0t/maddox_the_solution_to_sexism_in_video_games/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/maddox-the-solution-to-sexism-in-video-games.1171925 https://theredarchive.com/post/1171925

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