 |
|
|
| |
This Week In Video Game Criticism: The Mass Bayonetta Doctrine
by Ben Abraham [PC, Console/PC]
|
|
| |
|
January 21, 2010
|
| |
[Gamasutra is partnering with game criticism site Critical Distance to present some of the week's most inspiring writing about the art and design of video games from commentators worldwide. This week, Ben Abraham looks at diverse topics from Bayonetta through Mass Effect to the 'Kotick Doctrine'.]
There’s a bit of a meme going around the game blogosphere at the moment, and Denis Farr hops on the wagon with his post about his Shepherd in Mass Effect. The point is to “make sure people don’t forget that not everyone plays a default white male”.
Kate Simpson has long been known as the best blogger without a blog. However she’s got one now, and its initial offering is a fantastically well realised conversation about her “Commander A. Shepherd”, another offering in the Mass Effect ‘my Shepherd’ meme.
Lyndon Warren does not understand why people dislike Game of the Year awards and picking a “best” game out of the year’s crop. I added my own rationale for avoiding referring to a game as the ‘best’ in the comments, which are full of interesting points on both sides.
Michael Abbott writes about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, calling it ‘the wrong game’. This week, Abbott also started a new monthly column for Game Set Watch called “Abbott’s Habit” whose initial entry contrasted the imagined landscape of Demon’s Souls with the architecture very grounded in reality present in Assassin’s Creed 2.
Scott Juster calls the film Avatar a “colonial wet dream” and says Uncharted 2 is “the most dangerous game in recent memory”. Here’s why:
"Uncharted 2 is a post-Quentin Tarantino response to Indiana Jones: Drake is a hero who indulges in both witty repartee and self-aware meta-comments; he is a struggling everyman and a sociopathic killer; he walks the line between affable bumbler and ruthless professional. The game features lush-looking environments and textured characters, but does so by enforcing the rigidity of film onto a medium based on malleability."
Elsewhere, C.T. Hutt writes about controllers and how their development has influenced “The way we play", noting poignantly: "They are creating systems that will allow us to control digital worlds with our very bodies and minds."
Eric Swain has been reading up on Bayonetta & sexuality, sending in this series of links containing various responses to the game. Tiffchow writes about “Sexuality as decoration vs. celebration” which is in turn responding to Leigh Alexander’s initial post about the game, “If you run out of ammo you can have mine.” William Huber also questions Alexander’s article, labelling it “the perpetuation of a misguided notion.”
In related news, Iroquois Pliskin responds to Gus Mastrapa’s review of the game for Wired. Pliskin dissents from Mastrapa et al.’s view that paints Bayonetta as a dangerous employer of sexist imagery, saying "…the real perniciousness of sexualized images of women, to me, resides in the way that they warp our images of womanhood. The evil begins when a girl sees that image and says, that is what I am supposed to look like. I cannot imagine how anyone, even someone in the grasp of the body self-hatred industrial complex, could take these representations seriously. The faux verisimilitude of your standard issue of Cosmopolitan is far more harmful per capita than this ludicrous game."
Our final entry in the Bayonetta discussion is Chris Dahlen's Edge Online column that talks about the imagery in the game while taking a look over the critical reception it has received. Don’t miss the comments thread on this one, either.
Gamecritics’s Chi Kong Lui writes about ‘The fallacy of universal authorship in games’, inspired by a number of other authors' comments -- primarily centred on the interactivity in Uncharted 2. In other links, Michael Clarkson takes some time out of this week to talk about some of the immersion breaking moments he experienced in Assassin's Creed II.
Richard Clark looks at “Five video game moments that give me hope for the medium”, including two unexpected moments from the games Lucidity and Spider.
I don’t believe that we’ve linked to this before, but Dan Golding’s started a new project called ‘Gaming Watch’. Australian readers will be no doubt familiar with ‘Media Watch’ on ABC TV, and Golding’s aping of the format takes away nothing from his pointed observations into video game demonization and misrepresentation in the media. Definitely one to watch going forwards.
Let us ponder together the mysteries of the week in video game blogging, but first something I missed reading last week. And it’s Ian Bogost writing about the potential for fruitful exploration of classic consoles and expired platforms by developing new titles for them via, for example, the Virtual Console and XBLA’s Game Room. Bogost says: “I find myself once again hoping that Microsoft might open this channel to sell new games made for old systems.”
Next a quick mention of Sun B Kim’s “Design Play Blog”, which is looking for help in translating English videogame design blogs into Korean. Kim has previously translated Critical Distance’s critical compilation on Grand Theft Auto IV, as well as a number of other articles from other authors, so it’d be great if any of our readers could lend a hand.
And lastly for the weeks worth of writing, Sean Sands' editorial at Gamers With Jobs is notable for coining the phrase the “Kotick Doctrine”. That’s a keeper, that is. The piece also contains an excellent discussion of sustainability in game development and publishing.
|
| |
|
|
Bayonetta is an experience much Honey was; and no one, especially Anime Otaku should be surprised by its over-the-top female protagonist that may overtly use sexually in a visual tone to draw unprecedented power against her foes. The very nature of Anime style has always been to go extra ordinary when fleshing out the traits of a character to show them more as a symbol, rather than as an ideal.
Actually, this is no big deal in Japanese entertainment and other cultures because many of the female characters and stories are created by women, not men. If anyone wishes to criticize overtly sexual themes and presentations of female characters (such as those created by Rumiko Takahashi, for example, or adult works by accomposhed illustrator and adult game CEO Carnelian, or works that really push the general audience limit such as DearS by Peach Pit, which is two female creators) the strongest statement that could possibly be said is that such characters are the interpretations of what some male audiences want in female characters in the view of these specific female artists. However, considering the enormous popularity of such characters with both male and female audiences, as well as the fact that female sexuality is a source of empowerment not objectification, there's really no grounds for complaining. Of course, Japan and various other cultures do not view sex and sexuality as a sin because the life philosophy is based on totally different elements than certain other societies such as America.
These same observations apply to male characters, as well as the many characters that demonstrate that physical sexual identity is a spectrum between perceived stereotypical and socially constructed male and female extremes, just as gender identity is a psychological spectrum. For example, you have various intersexed characters, or characters that have many elements of the opposite sex regardless of their physiology. In addition, you have the growth of acceptance of males dressing as females and the success of books teaching how to go about doing such things. Of course, females have been allowed and even encouraged to dress as males for years, so it's nice to see the opposite taking place, although I am talking about Japan rather than any global change in attitude.
With respect to looks/appearance, there seems to be a lack of awareness that avatars do not necessarily reflect an individual's actual appearance, nor should they. If they did, we would be carrying the pitfalls of lookism from physical interactions into the virtual sphere while undermining the entire empowerment of freedom to express oneself as one truly sees oneself, as well as experiment with a variety of identities rather than attempt to "fit" into what others expect of us. This means that having a Caucasian male avatar or anything else, including nonhuman avatars of many kinds, doesn't really mean anything. In fact, the direction taken in recent offerings such as Bethesda's Fallout 3 are exactly the wrong direction to take because they attempt to offer explicit markers of ethnicity and behavior rather than allowing players to simply play whatever type of character they enjoy with the character's identity being contextual rather than explicit.
For a short but accurate academic view of these issues, people might want to read Dr. Matt Thorn's brief essay, "The Face of the Other" (http://www.matt-thorn.com/mangagaku/faceoftheother.html). Although Dr. Thorn is talking about Japanese manga, his observations apply to other entertainment media as well as real life interactions.
It seems incredibly juvenile to complain about companies that make good games just because those games happen to have a number in the title. At the same time it's self-defeating to suggest that companies drive themselves into the ground by creating innovative titles that don't sell.
If there's going to be a game industry that's driven by corporations, it's going to have to base itself around products that make money. If you like large scale creative risks, you need to acknowledge that those risks can be taken because they're funded by the proven franchises.
Thanks for the insight. I happen to teach the Manga Style of comics (Me being Black American Male and not native to Japan) to young children that are interested to learn it and I often use the "Happy Face Theory" a lot. Dr. Thorn's Essay gives me a lot of insight to what I talk about when I use the circle, two dots, and a line to signify the face. I argue often that the Japanese Cartooning is very good at using this method and that's why it appeal is far reaching into other European Western Societies. I also make comparisons to the Emote Icon and as face that helps to create characters with emotion.