Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Video Game Culture and Feminism




There's been a longstanding stereotype of internet and video game culture as anti-feminist in its rhetoric. The internet culture's anonymous nature and irreverence seem to fuel this type of imagery. There are numerous examples online of this. The most recent example that comes to my attention is the sexual harassment for female players that occurred in a Starcraft 2 Thread on Teamliquid.net

What's interesting is that the social normative in these cultures almost seems to be okay with all of this sexist ideology. And what's even more disturbing is that it's almost expected and accepted behavior. The 'trolling', or 'griefing' mentality comes into play.

It's even become an issue with the webcomic colossus, Penny-Arcade.

Penny-Arcade, an internet media empire based on the eponymous webcomic, has a rabid and loyal following that numbers in the millions. They have become well respected figureheads in the video game movement in the United States. In a 2006 article from MTV news, they are listed as one of the top 10 most influential video gamers of all time:

"The Advocates: Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. If there's one thing game-playing generates, it's vociferous opinion about all that is right with games — and so much of what is wrong. Most of that group-grumbling has no clear effect, but that's not the case for Washington state's Krahulik and Holkins. Eight years ago, the two friends created the online comic strip Penny Arcade and began merrily skewering all that was wrong with games. They developed an online following of millions and have become proven tastemakers, even on a Web that is cluttered with gamer opinion ... But more importantly, they have become the closest the medium has to leaders of a gamers' movement, going so far, a couple of years back, to launch [the equivalent of] an annual E3 for gamers, the Penny Arcade Expo."

Not only that, they have generated millions of dollars for their Child's Play charity, a fund that helps give children toys and games in hospitals. So it sounds like these two guys are great advocates for gaming culture's progress away from this stereotype of immaturity. They even banned booth babes from their Expo.

Enter then, the Dickwolves controversy.

It's a really long story. And actually quite complex. But basically - and I'm probably not doing the entirety of the story justice - the Penny-Arcade guys wrote a comic strip that offended a subgroup of feminists and the feminists were vocal against it. The strip in question had a rape joke in it, and these feminists were calling it out as normalizing and perpetuating rape culture. Penny Arcade, thinking it was the internet and things would blow over, and that this group was overly sensitive to the issue, retorted with a follow up comic. It probably wasn't the best idea.

Unfortunately for them, they should have been more attentive to the feminists motivations and studied up on the issue. The entire controversy could have been avoided if they simply said they didn't intend to offend anyone. But instead they dismissed the feminists arguments entirely and played it off as another joke. This of course drove a huge backlash by the feminist community and there was an ensuing battle between the two camps.

Things escalated quickly to catastrophic levels, to the point that Penny-Arcade made T-shirts that had the Dickwolves depicted as a type of team Mascot. Many feminists viewed this as instigating the notion that the shirts literally espoused rape as a sporting event. The feminists then said to boycott PAX (the Penny-Arcade Expo convention) because they weren't comfortable in that environment anymore. PA subsequently removed the shirts from their online store.

It's gotten to the point where both sides have literally received death threats and both camps have called their followers to stop with the trolling.

Critically, I have to side on the feminist group here. I love reading Penny-Arcade and the comic strip that sparked all of this did not seem offensive to me. But just because I did not find it personally offended I can understand how others would. But that's not what this debate about and why I would side on the feminist camp in this issue. It was the handling of the situation after the first comic that made it such a big controversy. Feminists and rape survivors who are advocating against Penny-arcade just seem to have the moral high ground here.

That is too bad, because on a net benefit level, I think the Penny-Arcade guys do a lot of good. They just royally messed up in this department.

So, as both a video gamer and a feminist, I think the internet and video games have a lot of growing up to do. I'm sure that the Penny-Arcade guys are not for rape and don't want to perpetuate the culture through normalization of jokes about it. And I'm pretty sure they're regretting how they acted. But this raises a good question about feminism in internet culture. I believe that the stereotypes about the internet have some truth to it, because it replicates our current societal and cultural viewpoints. After all, the internet is just the space and sounding board of our behavior.

The grander question in the framework of feminism then, is what is wrong with our current culture and society when it deals with hate and bigotry?

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Asian Threat Construction in Video Games: How The East Is Portrayed as Evil Imperialists in Homefront


There's been a lot of negative rhetoric in the news lately about Asian countries, such as China and North Korea. North Korea had been labeled a rogue state by the United States for a long time, and China last year had been accused of currency manipulation by the United States Congress. President Obama cited Asian countries as direct competitors in his 'war for the future' in his State of the Union address. So, it's easy to how Asian countries are being portrayed as threatening with all the loaded rhetoric.

It's interesting to see that this kind of attitude is being adopted in video games today. One particularly interesting example of this Asian fear mongering mentality is in the game Homefront.

It's a game that follows in the same vein as another alarmist piece, Red Dawn. Except, instead of Soviets invading America, it's Koreans. It's being developed by Kaos Studios and published by THQ. And it looks to be released around March of this year. In the game, the player takes on the role of an American who enters guerilla warfare against an occupying Korean army. The backstory leading up to this Korean invasion is the best part though. It's almost as ridiculous as a College Parliamentary Debate round, where everyone's arguments claim impacts to Nuclear war and extinction. The backstory goes a little something like this: there's an energy crisis in the year 2027, a giant flu epidemic that wipes out a good chunk of the U.S. population, and a unified Korea that annexes Japan and much of South East Asia.



The premise is pretty lol. For one thing, the likelihood of a unified Korea with imperialist ambitions under the North Korean leadership of Kim Jong Il's son is miniscule at best. While there have been steps taken by both countries to reunify, the outlook of it occurring like Homefront's backstory is a gigantic stretch. For one thing, the South Korean president said he would entertain reunification only if it was through a democratic process. Secondly, North Korea is severely lacking in an economic infrastructure due to global sanctions. For example, South Korea had to send them food aid due to flooding. So, South Korea is actually hesitant to reunite with North Korea because it lacks economic stability. And if the energy crisis occurs (yay peak oil theory!) like in the video, North Korea would be far worse off than the United States, which at least has some semblance of alternative energy and energy reserves. If there would be a unified Korea, it would most likely happen after the collapse of the Kim Jong Il's regime with a democratic South Korea taking over.

And the shellings last November in the South Korea island of Yeonpyeong didn't help Homefront's cause. And that's just the most recent setback for reunification, tensions have been high last year since a South Korean ship was sunk by North Korea. The South Korean president has taken a hardline stance because of this. This means reunification by the year 2013 isn't going to happen.

But more importantly, the international community just wouldn't stand for any of this. China is allies with both North Korea and the United States. And they are much stronger politically, economically, and militarily than North Korea. I just don't see them backing North Korea annexing most of South East Asia including Japan. They would intervene well before any of that would happen. China is the number one investor of the United States. Furthermore, Russia is another big country there. And I doubt that they would allow North Korea to attack Japan or the United States. Japan is also backed by the United States. The U.S. military wouldn't simply leave Japan like in the video. It's a key staging area for all of it's Pacific operations. And Japan itself isn't defenseless either. They have the Japanese Defense Force, which is pretty much a military in all but name.

The simple truth is that the global community is too interconnected now in terms of economy and global trade to allow any type of imperialist or aggressive action by developing countries like North Korea.

So Homefront's story is that of pure fiction. But it's interesting to see the mentality behind it. Before we were scared of communists. Now it's Asians.