Yesterday, I gave two examples of what I consider a feminine aesthetic in video games: Prince of Persia (2008) and Silent Hill 2. Today, I’m going to clarify what I mean by a feminine aesthetic, then I’m going to give examples of what is not feminine and why it’s not feminine.

I changed the name of my series from ‘Femininity in Video Games’ to ‘The Feminine Aesthetic in Video Games’ to clarify my intent. This isn’t about how many games portray women or notions of femininity within games. It’s not about how to get more women to play games, or even how women react to games differently than men. However, those are all good ideas for posts… Give me a second while I write them down.

As I related previously, the seed for this series came about when Craig Graff of BioWare posted the Breathe Me trailer for Prince of Persia (2008). It struck me as feminine, as did the game when I played it. This series is my attempt to clarify and define what a feminine aesthetic is when it comes to video games.

Despite my use of the term feminine, I am not suggesting a system in which all games fall into a masculine or feminine divide. This is just one of many. I use the term aesthetic because I focus on stylistic choices as opposed to pure gameplay or genre elements. A first person shooter could use a feminine aesthetic, though I cannot recall any that have.

Lastly, why use the word ‘feminine’ when it comes to this aesthetic? Because I see it as a necessary counterpart to the hyper-masculine aesthetic that dominates many games. There’s nothing wrong with making a video game version of the 300, but there’s nothing write with it either.



(I considered calling this the Persian Aesthetic after the Prince of Persia games and they were the counterparts to the Spartans in 300 and Halo, but that’s too obscure and not evocative enough.)

When I say ‘feminine’ in regards to video games, a few examples might pop up in your mind. These examples might involve large amounts of pink, Barbie, or games about riding horses or vet hospitals.

No.



These are game designed, marketed, and (mostly) consumed by young girls, but ‘feminine aesthetic’ is not about what women (or girls) traditionally like. Moreover, most of these games have a very simple aesthetic at work: cute, cute, and cute. Cute isn’t feminine, it’s infantile. Puppy dogs, kittens, seal cubs, and human babies are cute no matter what their sex. Wikipedia is never wrong.

Feminine aesthetics also has little to do with the common depiction of women in video games, which tends to play up their hotness. Bloodryne or Ivy, for example do not show a feminine aesthetic in as much as a sexualized one. One could even suggest that the imagery here is masculine in style.

There are also games with elements that may overlap with a feminine aesthetic but are from a preexisting style. Some of Japanese and Korean games, such as Ragnarok Online are based on manga and anime, which has its own history as well as refined visual and storytelling elements. Likewise, there are Western games that borrow heavily from cartoons, Clank and Ratchet for example.

I could continue along this vein: the Fallout series shows a post-apocalyptic aesthetic. Many science fiction games envision spaces of the future as an unholy cross between a dentist’s office, a mall, and a trailer house – the main difference between different settings is whether the dentist’s office is a clean and shiny place that you’d take your kids to or some dingy, back alley place where they use a wrench for extractions. So, we could say Halo and Mass Effect have a sci-fi aesthetic. And let’s not forget how much horror games tend to have in common.

After a post in which I explain what the feminine aesthetic is not, I feel the need to add that there’s no reason why these elements and styles can’t co-exist in the same game. While ‘cute and girly’ games are not inherently feminine, mixing in a feminine aesthetic is possible and might improve the games.

First through, I’d have to pin down what I mean by a feminine aesthetic. That's part 3.

The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective

"Steampunk! Variously described as an aesthetic, a genre within scifi/fantasy that sprouted from cyberpunk, and a subculture vaguely related to the goth counter-culture. Like many other things with vague origins and a tenuous identity that overlaps with others, it is hard to pin down what steampunk is.

The only that we can all seem to agree on is the aesthetic involved. In a way, it’s a lot like the SCA’s medieval roleplaying, trying to recreate the past with all the good stuff and none of the bad. For other steampunks, it’s a lifestyle movement, in which they transform practical items into works of art and live their lives with exquisite manners."

Femininity is a complex subject. What it means and what it is and how it’s created is a subject women much smarter than I have analyzed and commented on. Feminists are usually portrayed as being against femininity, but in my experience, feminist are against the idea that femininity is essential or ideal for proper womanhood.

Any female gamer who has played multiplayer Halo or Quake can attest to the fact that some men simply don’t believe women can play Halo or Quake. Only men, the argument goes, posses the prerequisites necessary to play these games because the ability to use a keyboard and mouse (or gamepad) while tracking objects on the screen comes from deep within the testicles. If a woman is playing a FPS, it’s because she’s 1) not really a woman, or 2) not really playing.

I’d suggest that femininity isn’t the problem; insecure assholes are the problem. Insecure dudes feel the need to devalue women and femininity, and it’s very easy for non-traditionally feminine women to fall into the trap of blaming femininity when others devalue them. ‘If this standard didn’t exist,’ goes the thinking, ‘others wouldn’t measure me by it.’ True, they’d measure you by a *different* standard and you’d still fail. A woman who plays against an insecure guy will always fail in his estimation whether she wins or loses, whether she wears a pink dress or a t-shirt and jeans. When it comes to those types, the only way you can win is to be sexxxy and not challenge him. (Apply to non-gamer topics as needed.)

As I quoted in my previous post: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."”

In this post, when I say femininity, I do not mean womanhood (the physical, mental, and emotional attributes of a grown woman). I do not mean being stupid and shallow. I do not mean naïve or suffused with a delicate and virginal purity. I do not mean rushing to the department store to buy pink handbags for your Chihuahua to ride around in.

I want to talk about femininity as aesthetic and feminine elements in video games. What does that mean?

Hell if I know.



I hope you’re not surprised here. I am Lesbian Stripper Ninja not Lesbian Artist Scholar. The newest Prince of Persia inspired this post. From the first time I saw the Breathe Me trailer, it struck me as strongly feminine.

I played the game, and everything felt feminine to me.

Why did it do so? I wracked my brain for another game that felt feminine and it spit out the oddest thing: Silent Hill 2.

Those of you who have played Silent Hill 2 may be wondering where they can get some of the high quality pot I must be smoking. For those haven’t, I pity you but will explain. Silent Hill 2 is a horror game in which a man searches for his dead wife after receiving a letter from her. You don’t gun down zombies; in fact if you want to survive, you quickly learn to run from fights when possible. It’s pure psychological horror.




In order to create an abstraction of feminine aesthetic, it seemed a good idea to compare these two and see where they overlapped. I could also have a few examples of non-femininity in video games. Given enough of these examples of feminine and non-feminine, and I could conjure up a definition, or at least a set of identifiable traits.

Sounds like a plan.

Overlord II – examination

Note: As of this write-up, I’m 4/5ths through the game and about to begin a section called The Last Battle. This review contains spoilers.

The Introduction:

In 2007, Codemasters released a Triumph Studios game called Overlord. It was a third-person puzzle game in which the PC as the titular dark Overlord, gathered a group of minions and enslaved or destroyed the populous of a fantasy setting. The setting itself was a spoof of stereotypical fantasy settings, and the game had many comedic elements.

Despite this premise, the Overlord is ‘the good guy.’ The antagonists of the piece are the seven heroes who slew the previous Overlord and have since become corrupt with power, their particular vices based on the seven deadly sins.

It was an interesting game. Solid puzzles, a fresh idea, and engaging plot made this one of the best games of 2007. At the same time, it could get a little monotonous. I managed to make it through a single play though, but I only finished because I wanted to see the ending. Sometime after the fourth (or was it fifth?) boss battle I got bored with the gameplay.

Overlord II is set several hundred years after the original. The old Overlord mysteriously disappeared after the magical Great Cataclysm and the world is currently ruled by the decadent and magic hating Empire. I suspect a twist ending, but haven’t reached that point yet. I’ll amend this post when I do.

Other than the plot, it’s the same game: You are an Overlord; you use minions to fight and solve puzzles; you collect a variety of resources so you can upgrade your minions, armor and weaponry, and your Netherworld Fortress; and you have mistresses who give you a bonuses and a sex scene. There are a few additions: minions have mounts now, dominating a town makes resource collection easier, and the graphics have improved.

But, is Overlord II as good as its predecessor? Is it better? Is it worth shelling out money if you enjoyed the original?




The Good:

Yes. Yes. And (you guessed it) yes.

Not only is it as good as Overlord, it’s better. For one thing, it’s more puzzle-centric. In the original Overlord, you could slaughter your entire group of minions in a big fight, run back to the spawn pits to get more, and then finish the fight with fresh recruits. In Overlord II, a fight is either of easy or normal difficulty, or it’s a puzzle. If your troops are being slaughtered, it’s because you’re doing something wrong.

Some players might object to this – what’s the use of having 700 brown minions if there aren’t fights that grind them into ground beef? – but a puzzle game ought to reward problem solving and punish you for trying to just muscle your way through combat. It’s far more satisfying to replay an encounter several times until I get that mental click, at which point things become easy, than to scrape through an encounter with 1 HP and all the minions I’ve leveled up and equipped dead.

Overlord II also avoids the monotony of the original game. The puzzles are much more varied; there are only a handful of sections where you guide your minions through a dangerous maze, which happened in Overlord every 30-45 minutes. Overlord II has sections where you possess a minion, usually to sneak around, places where you take control of catapults and war machines, and even places where you steer a ship. These game play shifts are well integrated into the story and gameplay, so they don’t feel like random mini-games.

The ability to control towns is a smart move. Towns provide you with a steady source of money, equipment, and lifeforce. They also feel ‘right’ for an evil Overlord.



The Neutral:

The story isn’t as interesting as the first game. It’s not bad, but at least with the Seven Deadly Sins theme, it felt slightly cohesive instead of a series of unrelated puzzles in different locations. I don’t care about defeating the bad guy because he’s only a face. I don’t care about saving everyone because I’m an evil Overlord. I have no personal stake in the matter as the main character has all the personality of burnt bread (burnt bread in hulking, evil armor.)

It’s supposedly a comedy game, but it’s a weak form of comedy. It’s sort of like a five-year-old coming up to you and doing a silly dance: it’s not so much funny as something you smile at because it’s cute and they made the effort.

So, the minions put random stuff on their head, drink beer, and piss loudly afterwards. Haha? They club baby seals and the elves talk in a California accent while defending all that’s cute and fluffy. Haha?

Part of the problem is that when it comes to books, their ‘spoof’ is dated. In 1996, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones, made most of these jokes about elves, dwarves, and other common fantasy tropes, but even then they weren’t all that common. Overlord II is a bit like a comedian making jokes about big-hair, neon green legwarmers, and Flashdance. The tropes it makes fun of are mostly confined to DnD and a handful of cRPGs.

Someone once said, “Most game developers have read one book – Lord of the Rings – and seen two movies – Star Wars and Aliens.” If you’re like this, you probably believe the Overlord series contains barbed satire of the fantasy genre. If you’re like me, you probably wish the jokes weren’t so stale.

I also find it strange that Overlord II insists you be a hero of sorts, yet again. Dungeon Keeper never told you that while you appeared to be crushing everyone around you, you were truly saving the world from a much greater tyranny. This is the second time the series has you playing a dark savior. Why?

I’d rather the main antagonist was a good, pure-hearted soul that I stomped under my rusty, iron boots.




The Bad:

Overlord isn’t a perfect game by any means. If you want cool stuff, you have to spend hours farming for resources. Instead of having fun, you get to run around areas you’ve already visited to kill gnomes or destroy the scenery with your minions yet again. It’s dreadfully boring. If you’re going to make farming mandatory, at least try to make it interesting.

For some reason, there’s a ‘Kill 1,000 gnomes’ quest in your journal. It’s an achievement and unlike the other quests, there’s no benefit to it. Achievements are not quests. They should not be listed in the quest log. Another tedious ‘quest’ is the kill/dominate 100 townsfolk for two of the towns. At least this one has some benefit, as dominated townsfolk produce weaponry.

But again, instead of solving puzzles or fighting things, I waste my time farming. This isn’t WoW, and the game is long enough without this element. Why not ditch the farming aspects altogether?

Like the first game, you have ‘good’ or evil choices. More like evil and less evil, really. There are times when the ‘good’ choices are difficult to make. For instance, I run around an elven commune attempting to dominate everyone as they toss pumpkin bombs and swear up and down they’re not rebelling. The AI has no sense of self-preservation though, and several times the elves toss pumpkin bombs into a group of elves or into their own house and blow the crap out of themselves. After they do this a few times, the game decides that I’ve subdued the village through ‘destruction’ even though I haven’t attacked or harmed anyone.

Lastly, on a politically correct note, this game hates fat people. It’s bizarre. There’s even a cut-scene where the camera lingers on a naked fat man while Gnarl, one of the minions, rants about how disgusting he is. I’d write this off as a writer missing his medication one day, but it’s not an isolated incident.

When I was in college, I knew a few girls who’d lost a large amount of weight and obsessed about fatness. For them, being heavy was equivalent to necrophilia. Parts of this game makes me wonder if some of them might have made it into game development.

In my previous post, I said I disliked irony in the casual sense. I used the word sense instead of meaning as words and phrases have no meaning. They have senses – impressions and associations. Words do not denote, but connote. They do not have meaning, but imply meanings.

To borrow from Humpty-Dumpty: "When you use a word it means just what you choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

Meaning comes from the speaker and listener, or if you prefer, from the act of communication, but words themselves are only the medium meaning passes through.

Irony in the classical sense is ‘is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to the character's knowledge and that of the audience.’ (I copied and pasted this shit from Wikipedia, so it’s accuracy is assured.) Irony in the casual sense is ‘any comment produced by someone who wants to be witty and urbane without engaging in any intellectual heavy lifting.’

You were raised in a tiny village in Japan as part of an ancient Ninja Clan. When you were but a child, a demon came in a destroyed them all. You were taken and sold into slavery. You were eventually sold to an erotic club where they taught you to dance. But as soon as you got a chance you escaped, swearing vengeance on the demons who enslaved you.

You came to America, the land of freedom, but being a Ninja was a hard way to make a living. So you danced the pole some more, eventually getting enough money to have a new sword forged. You met your master, and he is helping you find the demons that destroyed your people.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, you’ve fallen in love with one of the other dancers, who is totally hot. The two of you have decided to leave the dance club forever to hunt the demons, with her by your side there’s nothing to fear.

Quote: "Not only have you dishonored my people and my clan, but you are a lousy tipper. For that, you must die."

From Madman

In regards to the name of the blog, you might be wondering if I’ve titled it ironically. The answer is no, I dislike irony in the casual sense*. However, any reader should keep in mind that like the Holy Roman Empire, Lesbian Stripper Ninja is neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire.

*See next post