Feminism in News and Popular Media

[Allison W]

Two things at least semi-related to feminism and specifically feminism in gaming, again.

First off, given all that's been posted about misogyny in gaming (like Gamergate) and feminism in gaming, would anyone here be interested in me gathering up a list of video games with female protagonists, indie games by female devs, or otherwise pro-woman games? Titles like Depression Quest (a free nontraditional game by Zoe Quinn, a female dev recently targeted by Gamergate), or Gone Home (a nontraditional game about a young woman who's returned home from a year abroad in college to an empty home filled with signs of family drama, particularly centered around her younger sister and her sister's best friend). Relevant to this is that some major Steam sales are coming up shortly--the fall sale is supposedly in a few days, and the (big-ticket event) winter sale is generally around Christmas, so prime time to actually pick up some of these titles is coming up. So if there's an interest in this, I'd prefer to do it soon.

Second is something I didn't actually want to post here at all, particularly given recent topics in this thread, due to the controversial political content involved. But if I don't, there's a chance that someone else here might hear about it from entirely the wrong source first and bring a lot of misinformation here, which I definitely don't want. So the only reason I'm posting about this is because if you hear of it at all, it should probably be from me first. Forgive me.

It's about a controversial video game in development named Aerannis (kickstarter link, Steam Greenlight link) by Ektomarch, whose previous title was Subbania, a game about a closeted gay Nazi submarine captain and his crew fighting demons in the lightless depths of the ocean. So the developer is no stranger to playing Will It Blend with sensitive topics, but I'm still rather frightened to delve into this, as it is a god damn powderkeg of topics I'm afraid to have in close proximity all rubbing up against each other and ready to blow. If you just read the description without reading any of the posts the developer has made on what politics and intentions are going into the game, you could easily get the wrong idea about the developer's intent given all the scary words being thrown around--I actually did, at first, and was quite horrified, until the developer actually realised it was important to clarify the game's politics because god damn powderkeg. Gamergate also got the wrong idea at first; they apparently mistook its politics for being antifeminist, before the developer actually spoke up and said that if that's what they were expecting they would be disappointed (the dev also specified that third-wave intersectional feminist politics were a significant inspiration for the game's themes).

The kickstarter page explains what the game is about, though I don't know that it does it very well, in no small part because of the desperate need for the creator's politics to be disclosed when dealing with such sensitive topics. I actually did read the developer's statements, so I'll try to clarify what's actually going on here:

The developer clarified that "post-feminist dystopia" specifically refers to Plovdiv's leaders claiming that since only women are left to hold the pieces of the oppression pie, that feminism's goals have been achieved, when they haven't and inequality, marginalisation, unrest, and violence still plague the city. (Read: it is not a dystopia because feminism happened; it is a dystopia because it still needs feminism but the leaders claim it doesn't anymore.)

The dev also said that they weren't making a goal of stumping for or against any specific political philosophy, but I'm nonetheless smelling a bit of a knock at the libertarian-feminist crowd, as well as a certain allegory for the people who claim that patriarchy is no more and that feminism's work is done today. Similarly, the dev is going whole-hog on the wacky lizard-people-grade conspiracy-theory thing, but this, too, smacks of a metaphor (I'm still not a fan of crazy over-the-top metaphors) for a certain flexible, ever-adapting institution that runs our society that many people claim no longer exists (patriarchy), though I might think of different metaphors to use for it. In that light it sounds almost like "Yo dawg I took the real world and added a Boss Rush mode."

My concern there is that for all the dev loves the juxtaposition of ridiculousness and seriousness, and for all that gamers love any excuse for awesome boss fights like a giant crab monster that chases you up stairless chasms while verbally harassing you in your proverbial sore spots (I am guilty as charged), I'm still not sure I'd want to mix that kind of wackiness with holy shit serious political topics like these. Perhaps a little more pressing is that while I usually like antiheroes it almost seems like adding more tinder where the tinder index is already dangerously high, particularly given that the protagonist is a trans woman in an all-woman society. And, it's said that great writing makes the specific universal and the universal specific, but therein lies all the trouble: given the intense focus on themes both political and personal, the story writing and dialogue writing are both going to have to be excellent to pull this off. Better than the first-draft writing so far, and it definitely better be a damn sight better than the word salad you've been getting from me.

For those who are still freaked out about this (I wouldn't blame you; those were some pretty scary words and hot political tomatoes), the developer finally felt the need to make a rather lengthy post, containing some plot spoilers, about the nature of what is actually happening in this game and the nature of the violence in it and whom that violence can be done against (short version: not civilians).

Also, the dev isn't trans, despite some people making that assumption. I have no clue where they got that idea.

I just felt a need to get all of that out there before someone here heard about this from the wrong source. Now I'm gonna have a daiquiri and see if I can't calm down a bit. Let me know if you want me to put together a list of games for you folks to check out in the upcoming days and weeks.