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Though the player has to play each level twice, once with each character, the creators of “Folklore” have done a good job at making the levels seem different. They accomplished this by making Ellen incredibly terrible at combat, and making Keats ridiculously amazing. The moves each character does come from the monsters, and even though the monsters are mostly the same each run of the level, they do different things for each character.

For example, there is a “World War II” level (yes, every game has to have a reference to WWII). The monsters are either goblin-looking infantry, or bizarre steam-punk machines. When Ellen uses an infantry character, it will pop out, shoot three times, and disappear. When Keats uses the same character, it pops out, and will rapid-fire until the player stops pressing the button. Enemies can’t even approach him.

Similarly, many of Ellen’s abilities require holding the button to “charge-up” to maximum damage. When the player needs to fight a large group of enemies, this becomes maddeningly frustrating. Combine this with the shoddy combat camera, and playing as Ellen becomes something of dread. If anything even starts to get difficult with Keats, the player can just use his “transformation” ability, and wipe the screen in short order.

Technically, Keats is supposed to be Ellen’s “Guardian,” whereas Ellen is the “messenger of the dead.” Using video game logic, this would imply that Keats would be the more aggressive, hands-on type of fighter, where Ellen would be more ranged-based, magical type of fighter. Further, one would imagine that Ellen’s moves would be slower and more devastating, with Keats giving faster, lighter hits. In most ways, Folklore’s combat system follows this trope; it’s just that Ellen’s slow attacks do not seem to hit any harder, and enemies never seem to feel like dying when she’s around.

In Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces, I came across something interesting in the section entitled, Gendered Games / Gendered Books: Towards a cultural Geography of Imaginary Spaces. The author investigated parallels between the written and digital mediums (books and games) and how gender is defined in both.

Henry Jenkins noted that, at in the nineteenth century, quite a few literary genres had women in mind, since they were usually associated with reading and were the wider audience in the world of the written word. Quite a few of these books were written by women. Keeping in mind that their audience was focused towards women and girls considering to the content of the genres, where domesticated drama and exploration of coming-of-age women’s tales ran free. Meanwhile, the men and boys of the world didn’t have much interest in such things, as they were going out and actually doing things that didn’t involve reading Jane Eyre. So, in the interest of getting them interested in reading, authors started churning out books that appealed to boys. They were full of adventure, which is just what boys needed apparently.

I then noticed that games are on the opposite side of the spectrum. In fact, until reading this essay, I’ve never really paid much attention to the catering that is done to appease both genders in multiple media. Games cater a lot more to boys than girls for the same reason that books catered to girls moreso than boys.

The interesting part, though, is watching how both mediums try to cater to their respective opposite sexes. Those who produced content for both mediums ended up relying on stereotypes about them. Exploration (of the calm and slow kind), domestic conflicts, romance, and slice-of-life activities seem to be common elements of games and books focused towards the female audiance. Adventure, immediate danger, face paced action, and challenge (difficulty of gameplay).

Quite interesting indeed.

In this week’s reading, “Complete Freedom 0f Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces,” the author Henry Jenkins discusses the idea of games spaces and the difference between boys’ and girls’ culture.  One thing I found interesting about his article is that he typified “boy games” as being plot heavy, linear adventures, while “girl games” were more character based, slower paced, and a meandering plot, if plot was involved at all.  In terms of film, television, and literature, it is the character based stories that become critical darlings.  Granted, character based stories allow for a greater exploration of the human psyche, and therefor are more intrinsically “artistic,” it was just a funny thing to think about, for me anyways.

At the end of the article, Jenkins wonders what a type of “genderless” game space may be, where both boys and girls are free to explore in any way that they want to, be it interpersonal relationships or shooting things.  I think the MMO world could be the genderless game space Jenkins dreams of.  Most have a focus on adventuring and combat, but there are also overarching plots that unfold, and players are free to explore, for the most part, any part of the game they want.  There may be points that involve level requirements, or skill requirements, or payment of some kind, but the player is not penelized (by the game itself, anyways) for their individual game styles.  In fact, the MMO “EvE Online” is essentially one giant sandbox, players are free to explore a massively universe, and can focus on things like exploration and clan management over things like combat; it’s possible to play the game without ever fighting, if the player chose it.

Also, there are plenty of “genderless” games in the independent community.  Like most artistic communities, the real gruntwork is done on the peripherals.  I thought Jenkins ended his article with a “gee-whiz, I sure don’t know how designers are gonna pull this off” kind of thinking in terms of genderless game spaces, but I believe this challenge has already been met since the time this article was written.

This is a response to an article on thumbbandits.com called Best Femal Game Characters of 2008. They made a list of 10 women they were proud to have in gaming (the site being run by all female gamers) and three women that they felt were runners up. The list goes as follows: Zoey from Left4Dead is number one for being the only female survivor in this zombie appocalypse. The ladies at thumbbandits appreciate her for being a horror-film-junkie-college-student which they felt made her respectable and badass at the same time. Second on the list is Lara Croft (Tomb Raider: Underworld), third is Daddy’s Little Girl (Fallout 3), fourh is Kendra Daniels (Dead Space) -i thought this was a wonderful choice, I loved Kendra, even if she does take a liking to backstabbing- fifth is Sparrow (Fable 2), sixth is Faith (Mirror’s Edge), seventh is Dr. Tenenbaum (BioShock), and the last three characters are women reveiled to appear in games that have not actually been released yet but the women at thumbandits believe they show potential. Those three are Kate Wilson (Hydrophobia), ‘Female Detective’ (Heavy Rain), and Yakencan (Damnation). And finally, th three women awarded runners up are as follows: Maria Santiago (Gears of War 2), Meryl Silverburgh (Metal Gear Solid 4), Elika (Prince of Persia 2008)

I’m not sure how much I agree with this list. After reading the descriptions by each of these women that thumbbandits hand selected I started to feel like i was reading an article about Female Game Characters written by angry resentfl women gamers who feel that women are portrayed poorly in video games or not even portrayed often enough. Although I would agree that I like the feature of being able to choose a woman hero in Fallout 3 and Fable 2 I don’t think that that option alone warrants an award as “Best Female Game Character ‘08″. Also, I thought it odd when they would throw in commentary next to the women’s portraits such as follows next to Kendra’s from Dead Space – ” You’ll hear her more than see her and we can’t say too much, but we liked her addition to Dead Space. Shame the masked character of Isaac couldn’t have had a non gender specific name since we only see him suited up until the end of the game.” I don’t relly understand how they could expect all games to be either gender nuetral or have a woman hero option, that’s like giving a bad review to a book because the hero in it was male. Pure sillyness- stop your whining thumbbandits, we all know men wouldn’t even play these games if it werent for the irresistable women characters! ^_-

The original article can be found here.

Tracey John, blogger for “MTV Multiplayer,” recently had an interview with the creative director and senior producer for the upcoming “DC Universe Online” MMO.  In the interview, the developers explain how they think they are making their game “female-friendly.”  Basically, they give half-descriptions of their healing, buffing, and group management roles, because “they (women) usually like to play the stuff that’s not so up-front combat-wise.”  I guess the developers think girls don’t like to throw down with us dirty, smelly boys?

The very next paragraph, he describes DCUO’s “knock-out” feature, in stead of dying, the character just gets knocked-out, and can return to action faster than in other MMOs.  See girls?  You aren’t really dying.  You just need a second wind, that’s all.

I found those comments a little condescending.  Most of the girl gamers I know are just as likely to play combat roles as anything else.  I did notice a trend towards ranged-combat, but then again, this is just my observations of very small group; I am not going to even pretend to speak towards trends at large.  In any case, it seems as though, at least through their words, the developers are making a judgement call on females as gamers.  We have to make the group management roles interesting so the ladies have something to do.

That’s not to say that those roles don’t need to be spruced up; it’s always hard to find those crucial group members because they’re so boring to play.  The players tend to not feel like they are “a part of the action.”  I think those roles really do need to be made more active, to be more than just watching those little red bars shrink, while pressing a button or two here and there.  However, I do think it’s wrong to say that this aspect of MMOs needs to be improved for the women-folk.  I also don’t think we need to make the combat portion of a game faster and more active for the men.  Any person should be able to enjoy any portion of the game.

As long as DCUO steers clear of the “Women in Refrigerators” problem that plagues most super hero comics I think the developers don’t have to worry about making their game “female-friendly.”

When first given the assignment to discuss an assigned blog I was a little stuck in my ways and wanted to write reviews about the blogs I follow on my own time such as GamePolitics and GayGamer but after a few days of moping and procrastinating I decided to give these other feeds a look. Well what do you know, on my list was a site called ThumbBandits and it immediately caught my attention. It wasn’t until reading through a couple of the threads and reading bios for the admins that I noticed this is a gamer blog written by and for female gamers. Being a female gamer myself, I was a excited and at the same time thought it was a little silly that I had found such an attraction to a site aimed specifically at women.

One of the threads that gave me a good chuckle is mention of how Fable II won the most Animal Friendly Award given out by PETA at their 6th annual Proggy Awards. This award makes sense, I cna’t think of a single game that would be more deserving of the award; Animal rights awards are not a common goal amongst game designers. But the part that made me grin was a reply from one of the subscribers saying ‘wait, isn’t this the game where i got an achievement for killing/kicking a chicken?’ no love for the virtual chickens of the world.

As I have mentioned in previous weeks I have reached a plateau in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise. I am no longer leveling with great ease. It takes a lot of grinding now to gain experience. I either have to mate the same species of piñata several times or get more exotic piñatas to mate by increasingly complex methods. While I could still do this for several weeks, it has become mundane, and I am curious about other aspects of the game. For example it is possible to feed your piñatas certain foods and creating unique variations of the typical piñatas. The problem is that I have dozens of piñata species and dozens of food options. Trying to feed every piñata ever type of food could take eleven week on its own. However if I had the strategy guide, or used a web site, I could create every variation with relative ease. This begs several questions. Is this cheating? Does this taint the game experience? Should games be made so that a strategy guide is necessary, or should players be able to achieve all goals without a guide? It is my opinion that strategy guides aren’t cheating if they are used the right way. For example when I played GTA4 I purchased a strategy guide. I didn’t use it word for word to get through every mission (which I could have done). Instead I used it when I was stuck or to learn helpful hints that only become obvious after hours and hours of play. Why spend 3 hours trying to beat a mission when there is another 30 hours of story following that? To experience everything in these massive games you need lots and lots of time. Time, I as a student and adult, don’t have time for. I think getting tips or cheats, when you are stuck, is fine. It allows you to experience more of the game in less time. In this way strategy guides (if used right) can enrich the games experience.

I’m a guy, so apparently I want a game with a vehicle, a big gun, no map, and a higher score for ignoring emotions and getting lost. Oh waits, that’s just what GrrlGamer says I must want because I have a Y-chromosome. Since there are so many lists about what girls want in games, they did exhaustive research that show what men want in games, read list all the male stereotypes. I hope Megan Parker is being tongue-in-check, because otherwise she’s no better than any of the magazines that say girls, not women, only want casual games aimed at teen and pre-teens. I forgot to mention, apparently I also want to either save a princess in skimpy clothing with breast like those I talked about last week and a pea-sized brain, or if a member of the team has to be female, than she looks like the princess I would normally save. This list is more of a masturbatory fantasy than the plan for the “perfect game for men.”

I like breast as much as the next man, but unless I’m playing a surgery game where I have to give a breast enlargement or reduction, I don’t need to have a character that I want to stare at with the control in one hand and the other…well, let’s just say on the “joy stick.” An article on GrrlGamer about breast physics says that that breasts that big can cause back pain, poor posture, and breathing problems. The writer is talking from personal experience, needing to have a breast reduction because she had trouble breathing, sleeping, and walking straight. Now, this might have been a unique experience, I can’t say, but apparently head developer of Team Ninja Mr. Itagaki thinks that breast physics need to be realistic and beautiful, which apparently means having 40DDs bouncing around in skimpy bikinis. Sorry, but when I’m playing a game, I care more about getting through the levels and accomplishing goals than seeing boobs bouncing around like a pair of Slime Kings.

Title: Gamer Stereotypes
Author: Didi Cardoso
Address: http://www.grrlgamer.com/article.php?t=gamerstereotypes

All gamers are fat and greasy, wear glasses, snort when they laugh, eat corn dogs, and say things like: “I attack your 13th level Orc with my 17th level Elven mage.”

Who doesn’t love a good stereotype now and then? I know I do!

This was a great article about stereotypes and how wrong they are. I never really thought about how much more difficult it would be to be a girl gamer. Didi brought up a good example, referring to her Everquest days. She mentioned how people would ask if she were a real girl, and once she answered yes, the immediate question was: “Wanna cyber?” As funny as that is, I still see stuff like that happening in real life, usually on the Red Line. So many times I’ve see a random guy walk up to a girl who wants nothing to do with him and be like: “Sup b*tch. Ever been with a real man?” So, I was curious if that ever worked, and according to her example, I would assume the answer is “no”. Rather, I would hope that the answer is “no”.

This is just a guess, but I’m assuming that men outnumber women when it comes to gaming. This could be a reason why it’s such a spectacle when we actually meet a girl who plays. It’s not that guys are trying to make girls seem like they’re animals to be gauked at, if anything, it gives gamer guys a glint of hope that their soulmate, a girl who games, just may exist. I guess it’s like a guy who listens. You’ve heard about them, but never really saw one before. So if you meet one, you’re like: “wow…” It kinda gives you hope.

A good question would be where these stereotypes come from. I blame it on movies from the 80’s. Look at Revenge of the Nerds. That probably wasn’t the best publicity for gamers. I think it’s funny that gamers are instantly stereotyped as nerds. It seems like a majority of the male population plays Halo. That being said, a good number of them probably play football or box or do whatever guys do, ya know…beat stuff up? I dunno, I’m a musician, so it’s kinda hard for me to empathize. Either way, I think as games are becoming more mainstream, gamers won’t have to worry about stereotypes as much.

-Dan