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Analysis: Modern Warfare 2 - Is It Really 'No Girls Allowed'?
by Lewis Denby [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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November 13, 2009
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[Does the release of Modern Warfare 2 mean "an army of women" is about to take up arms against losing their menfolk to the console? Columnist Lewis Denby finds himself refuting an unsettling argument.]
It seems that I, and the entirety of the male gaming population, should be on-guard at the moment. According to Telegraph writer Hannah Betts, “an army of women” is about to argue with us.
In a fascinating piece of writing - which I'd like to think is tongue-in-cheek, but really struggle to believe that's true - Ms. Betts clings onto various gender stereotypes for dear life as she attempts to assign her frustration at the male species to the evils of video games. And with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this week, she appears to have found her perfect opportunity to do so.
Writing for the Telegraph, Ms. Betts begins by describing the game’s launch as “something momentous [for] The World Of Men, something that those living in The World of Women – that is, largely, The Real World – may yet be unaware of.”
This is an astonishing article, one rooted in traditional male/female values and behaviours. They’re assigned behaviours that gender research has attempted for years to disprove and dissipate, her language the sort that critical linguistics has battled against for almost as long.
The notion of gaming being a male pastime is one that’s existed for many years. It’s become engrained in a sort of folk-sociological culture as a boys’ sport, a no-girls-allowed club, and it’s been subject to much discussion. Heather Chaplin’s rant at this year’s Game Developers Conference, in which she accused mainstream gaming of being deeply embedded in “guy culture”, is but one notable example.
But times are a-changing. Recent surveys suggest that the margin between male and female gamers is significantly narrowing, and that now, as many as 42 per cent of those playing video games are of the fairer sex. I suspect it’s safe to assume Ms. Betts is unfamiliar with these statistics or, worse, determined to ignore them at all cost for the greater good of her furious diatribe.
“Should you be a reader of the female persuasion,” speculates Betts, “your reaction [to the article] is likely to be mystification followed by the dawning realisation that this accounts for your partner’s having since gone AWOL.” Is that really “likely”? Really?
“The gaming widow has become a fixture of contemporary culture in the way that the pub or football widow was wont to be, except that the extent of her abandonment is considerably more profound,” she continues. “He may be with you in (increasingly pallid and flabby) body, but his soul is elsewhere.”
Now, it just so happens that, while I earn my keep by writing about video games, my education is in linguistics. And there’s a whole, enormous field of study into this sort of flabbergasting writing that maintains gender stereotypes by simply throwing the blame between the sexes, assuming that ‘men do this, but women do that’, until the greater population simply laps up these behaviours without second thought. It’s known as the Differences Model. It’s a tempting view to take, but once you scratch beneath the surface it’s an approach that’s demonstrably untrue.
Gender is a behavioural concept. It’s something you “do”, rather than something you “are”. You are your sex, and that's biological. But we choose our behaviours based on what is expected of our own social grouping, whether that’s as a straight man, a straight woman, a gay man, a gay woman, an atypical straight man, an atypical gay woman, and so on.
These groupings are social constructs, but they’re so deep-rooted that they now seem impossible to escape from. Consider how many times you’ve heard someone say “be a man!” to a male of apparently cowardly demeanour, or call a young girl who enjoys playing in the mud a “tomboy”.
Now, Ms. Betts attempts to keep these stereotypes alive through the medium of video games. The most alarming realisation for me, upon reading her article, is that these stereotypes are just assumed, and never challenged. They form the whole basis for her argument: that video games, which are surely a male-only pastime, are leaving girlfriends and wives everywhere forlorn and alone, without their big strong man on-hand to get them through the day.
“For legions of British women,” Betts writes, “gaming is a ghost at the feast in their relationship,” before relaying the account of a poor woman whose husband is addicted to his Nintendo DS – a console that has in fact been largely associated with, among other groups outside the core gaming populace, females.
Of course, what Hannah Betts is actually writing about is the notion of gaming addiction, an area that’s being increasingly explored, most hideously in a recent documentary on British television channel ITV, which included such “expert” claims as “gaming addiction could well be more dangerous than regular, chemical addiction.” That’s a whole different area of discussion, but Betts appears not to have realised this.
Indeed, so certain is she of this exclusively male dependency that she went on to scour the ‘net, finding “the plaintive lament of a woman whose newborn has been entirely ignored in favour of Warcraft.”
But some women, bless their hearts, can learn to live with this, Betts says. She points to one email from an acquaintance, who said that his wife assigns a single morning on which she takes the children out so he can stay in to play games. “Within seconds [his email] had 12 replies: 10 stating that she was having an affair, two with links to detective agencies,” adds Betts, unfathomably. Is she serious?
In one meagre attempt to balance her piece, Ms. Betts refers to a single “idyllic scenario”, in which the fiancee of the Telegraph’s Games Correspondent discusses her own way of dealing with her partner’s gaming obsession.
“I’m quite crafty so I can be off sewing while he’s on his Xbox,” she says. Thank goodness: while we men are all busy playing games, our women still have time to get the sewing done. Hopefully they’ll factor in the time it takes to wash the dishes and make sure dinner’s on the table at six o’clock, as well.
In no way am I suggesting that there’s isn’t a problem with gender inequality within gaming, its industry and its consumer base. I’ve written about some of the issues at length, in fact. But trying to assign gaming dependency to some sort of biologically male urge is preposterous, and has resulted in the sort of sexist discourse that will only maintain the problems both men and women face in our wider society.
[Lewis Denby is editor of Resolution Magazine and general freelance busybody for anyone that'll have him. Wander over to his website for a blog, more information and contact details.]
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Great read.
The demographics highlighted in the article are not defined by society but by NATURE. Nature laid down the foundation -- we could never be interchangeable. Society just puts a few (suggested) tweaks on them, kind of like the CoD "Perk" system.
I understand that there are obvious differences in gender and that these differences are socially constructed. This being said, modern feminism's general mission statement is to point out and embrace these differences, which would lead to a rational discussion of gender roles in hopes of understanding how they negatively affect people and hopefully change those roles in favor of roles that don't affect people negatively. It's not that there's a problem with differences in gender, it's that there's inequality between genders, both male and female.
That being said, it is embarrasing to see Ms. Betts' article. I expected better journalism than this ill-conceived trash. In a time where joblessness is rampant in an age of diminishing journalism, here we have this poorly-researched tirade, mocking better journalists who could have made something more constructive. Either Ms. Betts resigns so that those better suited for journalism has an actual chance, or the news-entertainment-media phenomenon grows just a little bit fatter on American stupidity.
That, or we all just got professionally trolled.
Now, if women are so concerned that their boyfriend or husband is spending so much time with their consoles, take an active role in seeing what it is about the video games that interests them! I know one too many guys that were forced to endure terrible shows like Sex and the City and Grey's Anatomy b/c their girlfriend or wife wanted to watch them. How about returning the favor??? And the idea of the 'idyllic scenario' consisting of the man playing games and the woman sewing hurts my soul to no extent. Why don't you go bake some pies while you're at it?
To bring up what Anwar touched on, I've thought about the whole game design decision on whether or not to allow female avatars. When first playing games, I was upset by the idea that I wasn't allowed to play as a woman in games such as Halo, Gears, or COD. But thinking about it, what type of atmosphere would one then be thrust into? Female characters in video games tend to be very sexualized. Just look at upcoming game Bayonetta...yeah she is this gun-toting bad-ass witch (with glasses???) that remains semi-covered until she starts casting spells. So if female characters were playable in COD, etc. how would they appear? Overly sexualized or too manly? Plus, I personally enjoy the idea of only killing other male avatars. There's to taking out any aggression you may have as a woman on the male sex ;)
I'd like to believe that what contributes to women coming to gaming is that they aren't typically introduced to it when they were younger. Admittedly when I was growing up, playing video games wasn't something I really talked about with my girlfriends. But that's all changing now - girls are getting into games more openly and younger age. Whether you're shooting tangos in MW2 or shooting sparkly stars in some 'female targeted' game, the same skill sets apply - you're still playing a shooter.
Personally, I love the Modern Warfare series, and I say this as a female gamer and game designer. I love the story and the characters, the ambiance and environment created, I love the different mission types, the excellent AI and the fact that I can shoot an NPC off the top of the roof and have him dangle from a flagpost from his fall.
Tara points out an important point as to why so many women are involved in creating electronic games (and manga, and anime, etc) in Japan. These media formats are deeply imbedded in the culture there and girls grow up with them. It's not viewed as unusual for girls to delve into illustration, acting, etc with the goal of working in the industry professionally. Of course, the areas where they have made more limited inroads are as business owners and other related fields, but even in these areas there has been various important women over the past 15 years or so, including the birth and growth of the otome game genre and the somewhat related genres of shounen ai and yaoi. It should be understood that Japanese girls and women often create works targeted for guys whereas the opposite is much less the case despite the fact that the shoujo genre was started by mostly male creators (reminds me of how geisha were originally all males).
I think specific games do not need female avatars, per se, unless it is handled very carefully, and the same is true for male avatars. It depends on the game and the intentions. Women are still officially barred from active combat (despite historical facts that women are just as capable in combat as males, and more so depending in the specific context). If a game is attempting to create a realistic combat experience, great care would have to be taken if female avatar choice was included. It could be done, but it might be extremely tricky due to storylines, events, etc. The same is true for something like teaching or nursing, two professions that are extremely female-dominated. Offering male avatars in such a setting (assuming that realism is being attempted) needs to be done very carefully. Of course, this is also one big reason why fantastical settings are easier to create.
None of this is to say that stereotyping professions should be condoned. In fact, the opposite is true, and that is precisely what much of modern feminism strives for.
By the way, modern feminism is actually divided into many, many different factions and philosophies. A single overarching "feminist philosophy" doesn't really exist, but rather many different splinters or threads with sometimes opposing beliefs and approaches to various issues. This is often lost on the general public or even scholars who do not focus on feminist studies in some fashion.
I'd like to conclude by offering some references in reply to the post from Jason regarding "nature" and gender tendencies, as well as clarifying one point in the article regarding physical sexual identity. Many people believe that physical sex is a biological given and that it is purely dichotomous (male/female). However, this is not an accurate view, and modern biologists and medical practioners have finally realized that physical sexual identity covers a spectrum of possibilities just as socially constructed, psychological gender does. There are many people who are intersexed, transgendered, etc. In fact, sexual reassignment surgery (that is, altering sexual genitalia at birth in order to "fit" the newborn into specific male/female categories on a birth certificate) is one of the hotly debated issues today.
If anyone is interested in reading about this issue further, I suggest three books, all of which were required for one of my courses in Biology of Sex & Gender. "Middlesex" (Pulitzer prize winning novel), and both "As Nature Made Him" and "She's Not There" (the latter two are "bookends" for the same general issue and should be read back to back to learn about the true scope of the facts). In a nutshell, there is no predetermined "nature" that dictates general tendencies. At best, there is specific individual "nature" but that varies with each and every individual.
As an added point, one of the many branches of modern feminist philosophy that I mentioned earlier is, in fact, evolutionary feminism, where some scholars argue and believe that it is natural, biological determinist and essentialist factors that cause differences between males and females. However, this line of reasoning has been largely debunked because there are far too many exceptions to allow it to be applied generally as the proponents desire.
I wonder how Ms. Betts would feel about the many Japanese girls and women who create works for males, including sexually explicit and violent works, or the many girls and women who create similar works for females, including sexually explicit and violent works? In addition, I wonder how she'd feel about the many girls and women who constantly play otome games or other types of games regardless of the target demographic?
Oh, Jessica's comment about Sex and the City was kind of funny to me... I liked the show, at least the first three seasons (didn't get to see the rest... not yet, anyway). It isn't targeted for me, per se, but then again that can be said for a game like Princess Debut, or it can be said that a male-targeted game like Tokimeki Memorial isn't targeted for girls despite the fact that many girls enjoy it (and helped create it).
Not because "society made them that way" (although it's reasonable to think that has a reinforcing effect), but because men and women are different as a direct result of biochemical differences that begin affecting brain structure and function in the womb. We're all more alike as human beings than we're different as men and women... but within humanity, men and women in the aggregate are motivated differently and behave differently as a result of those innate motivations, and the behaviors that demonstrate this innate structural difference can be seen everywhere by anyone who prefers seeing reality as it actually is over what some wish it to be.
So while any individual woman may enjoy playing games (whether Trism or Solitaire or WoW), and plenty of individual men have no interest in spending hours staring at a computer screen for fun, in the aggregate men are more likely to play computer games -- again, especially for long stretches -- than women because they are less concerned with maintaining emotional relationships than are women. This is the same reason why more men consistently enter Computer Science as a profession than women: women (rightly) perceive highly technology-based activities as less likely to provide opportunities to establish and maintain emotional connections with other people.
I'm happy to see the longstanding imbalance of the sexes in computer gaming changing somewhat as games gain online capabilities. As this process creates opportunities to make more games that respect the natural desire of half of humanity to relate to other people as people, more people can enjoy the entertainment that comes from playing computer games. That's a Good Thing.
But while I thought the _Telegraph_ piece was unnecessarily snarky, at least that writer is willing to acknowledge the reality that -- as it has always been -- there are far more men willing to obsess over a solitary hobby than women, and that includes computer gaming which is still perceived as being a relatively solitary pastime. If she was wrong, it was only in thinking that there's anything special about computer games as a source of virtual widowhood.
To conclude, I respectfully disagree with Lewis Denby and most of the other commenters. Game developers will go badly wrong if they buy into the misguided modern conceit that sex-based differences are merely social "constructs" that can or should be fought, that recognizing the reality of these differences (along with our similarities) is somehow wrong. They will do far better to design games to be fun for both men and women as the different kinds of humans we actually are, not as the perfectly malleable and completely interchangeable victims of society that social theorists and activists choose to believe we are.
I remember attending PAX '08 when they had a few members of the PMS clan playing against all comers. I got my ass handed to me (as did a lot of other guys) by PMS Venus and I thought it was great. Why? Because she wasn't the stereotypical female gamer "of old" who looked and acted like a tomboy. She was just a woman and just happened to kick ass at Quake.
I often groan when a female gamer lets on that she's a woman in a match because you can almost feel the wolves circling. I really would rather have more women playing actually but I know it's still hard to find women in shooters. In a way, I think WoW and other MMOs have helped bridge the gap between "hardcore" gaming circles and women. And, as mentioned above, I think once more women realize WASD+mouse is pretty easy to get used to they can start handing other guys' asses out and maybe cool off some of the excess testosterone in some matches.
I'm here to play and I really don't care who's on the other side of a handle. I just want them to play too so we can have fun and not bicker about who's got a bigger penis or who's gay. Let's just game on.
As a gamer with a non-gamer female partner I have to argue that's its nice to game at night and have her come by the room and ask "how's it going?" and she likes that I'm not at the pub where I need to find a means to transport my intoxicated body back home (not that I was ever a lush).
She loves that she can be the "informed one" when her female friends start going on about their men playing such-and-such a game all night. She gets right in there and tells them it's a FPS based in WW2 or whatever. She'd love to play but finds her skills lacking and she's one to be competitive or not play at all. I believe perhaps this generation will be more unisexual in gamers.
That being said, it is true that there are individual variances between PEOPLE. As I pointed out, we now understand that we are not a dichotomous, male/female species either physically or psychologically (by whatever definition one might wish to attempt to adopt for terms such as "male" and "female"). Since there are certainly individual variations between people, this simply means that different people have different preferences, but that generalizations CANNOT be made, or at least that any generalizations do not necessarily mean anything when placed in a real world context.
As I also pointed out (or tried to anyway), the perception of gaming being "male-only" did not exist back when the first Golden Age of gaming started and then crashed in the mid-1980s. Such a perception did not begin until the industry began taking off in the mid-1990s or so. In fact, such a view did not happen everywhere, anyway, as areas outside the English market (Asian markets, especially Japan) did not have a crash as we did here. In the Japanese market, it's more likely that girls and women would get involved as illustrators, writers, actors, etc rather than males, if anything, and there are various cultural reasons that support such things happening.
What game designers must learn to do a much better job of is to design games that appeal to different tastes, not different sexual identities or gender identities, because the latter generalizations lead to false assumptions when creating a product (as well as perpetuating stereotypes, but that's not my main point or concern at this time). The fact is that different people simply have different preferences, but those preferences do not follow some type of biological determinstic reasoning or causation, but rather are formed from an infinitely complex array of interconnected, interdependent factors in each individual's life.
Articles by written by people like Hannah Betts are pointless to debate. She is a paid to be ridiculous and feed her audience, not make logical, well supported arguments. She has no objectivity and is incapable of discerning between the quality of one source of information over another - which is quite amazing when you think she's supposed to be a journalist.
No.
"these stereotypes are just assumed, and never challenged."
Why should she challenge the stereotypes? She is writing in a genre that relies on them. Video games can hardly take the moral high ground here - I'm playing Torchlight at the moment and it's great fun, but it doesn't break any new ground in gender equity.
Oh, and there's no fat illiterate man in her article. There's an unemployed banker, who I suppose could be considered an examplar of depravity.
Meanwhile, let me say that your article is misguided. I don't share your victim's outrage at the journalist in question, I find it kind of funny.
I have written on this subject before, I have my own strong opinions based on years of observation though, here is the academia free and reference-less version:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/business/features/biology/