Taking Back the Byte

by Richard Leader

For an industry which is completely dominated by men, the computer and electronic gaming business is overshadowed by a enormous sense of gender insecurity. While working in an office under the pale glow of fluorescent light might lack the mythic sense of masculinity as herding cattle, putting out forest fires, or whatever is considered rugged and blue collar these days, the traditional markers of manhood are both available and abundant: power and money.

Jerry Sanders, the CEO of AMD (Intel's chief competitor in the chip wars), has described his company's past desire for independence in their production lines with the statement, "Real men have fabs." While AMD is going to have to outsource in the future and Sanders is going to find a new way to bolster his ego, that feeling is not unique in the industry: "real" men are always in danger of becoming "fake," such is the danger of masculinity. However, money and power are not the only markers we have available to chart our progress--the most traditional of separating the men from the boys is to bring some women into the room, preferably in skimpy clothing.

While discussions of sexism in gaming do take place, they usually devolve into why it is wrong to stereotype 13 year old boys as horny and immature rather than why it is wrong to stereotype adult women as horny and immature, not to mention with all but impossible anatomies. These discussions also tend to exclusively focus on the misdeeds of game developers and advertisers, never holding our community (both print and electronic media, as well as the casual gamer) responsible for perpetuating sexism as well. So often, we get stuck on what is different and unique about interactions in the gaming experience that we forget that the same atrocious things are happening in the "real world" as well, things that have very real effects on over half of the world's population--and things are actually getting worse because of our complacency.

Even GamesDomain, the only mainstream gaming site (read: one without the word "women" in the title) to seriously take on issues of gender has undergone a paradigm shift.. From the past editorials on gender by Diana Griffiths and Farah Houston, where women were quite critical of the way females are portrayed in games to, well, editorials by men that are quite critical of the way females are portrayed--joking that the "anatomy" of in-game models is not accurate enough for their prurient desires or detailing the "evolution of Lara Croft" as if anyone cares how many polygons were added in each of its myriad sequels.

While most men will at least claim that they understand that Lara Croft is perhaps not the most judicious presentation of a woman and are able to go on and say that such portrayals do not influence the way they relate and behave towards women, the reality of it is a different matter. IGN for Men, (a gaming site which, by design, makes all but the worst of 13 year old boys look mature and sophisticated in comparison) once included a young Lucy Clarkson as their "Babe of the Day." They introduced the 16 year old model, who predated Angelina Jolie in the role of Lara Croft, with her father's commentary (which was originally placed on her own web site), "'You'd make a great Lara Croft,' he said to her while eyeing another Lara at some media event. No doubt. Mr. Clarkson's little pride and joy might be only 16 (Christ) but she is a womanly 32DD-25-36 -- measurements that could keep her out of fashion modeling but make her the perfect real-life Lara."

If the poor girl's own father sees her first and foremost as a sex object, what can we truly expect from other men? This cropped photo (that is widely available on the internet) of an E3 tradeshow appearance Clarkson made, is telling. I chose to crop it to focus on the reaction of the men--the entire row of guys in polo shirts and bad haircuts with their expensive digicams practically tripping over each other to take pictures of a minor dressed in skin tight clothing:

Most sickening, is IGN's closing comment by Adam Douglas, that he, "wants to be Lucy's womb raider (when she turns 18 of course)." Unfortunately, that bout of pedophilia is not a solitary occurrence. Kenneth Lockley, an executive for Core Design Ltd. which was responsible for producing the original Tomb Raider game, was arrested in London in 1999 for trying to procure a 9 year old prostitute for a third party via the internet, a watershed in British criminal law: he was jailed for 18 months. While some troubled individuals have deigned this appropriate to make jokes about, to the effect that that it proves that men are not completely fixated on "double D's," it is the same kind of attitudes about females that lead to all of them: the design of Lara Croft, teenage models in trade shows, and prostitution.

All of these things are not accidents; they are deliberate in their purpose: they inform women of their place within the industry as well as society at large. But that is said often enough, while this is not: they also inform us as men of our, that women exist for our benefit, and that the most successful and "worthy" of us have the unparalleled right to use women as we see fit. This goes beyond just the "Eidos girls" (most of whom are actually women) at E3 and other trade shows. It goes beyond the computer catalogs that show up on your doorstep each month with models wearing stylish head-sets pictured "ready to take your order" as if it were a phone-sex operation or the ever so slightly left of voyeuristic "X10 camera" ads that pop "under" with annoying regularity. It even goes beyond Lara Croft's virtual anatomy. It strikes to the core of how we see ourselves as men. We use women as a currency to cement the cracks in the hierarchies we make and to shore up our worth compared to that of other men. If that were not true, Gamers.com and 3DFX would never have plunked down so much money to throw a party at the Playboy mansion just to have the pleasure of not being able to invite everyone who begged to come.

You might look cheesy in the picture (from Firingsquad.com) standing around a woman wearing your company's logo--but most men would not think twice about it. Playboy promotes itself as a "lifestyle," not just fancy air-brushed porn for men who have the grand sum of $12 for an annual subscription. While Playboy might like to talk big, it is clear by the advertising within that they are not targeting the same men who might read more elite magazines, such as Polo (you know, that crazy English "croquet on horseback" sport) who can afford to buy advertised $4000 cuff links on a whim and actually have the cuffs to wear them on in the first place. We allow our preoccupation with a single and harmful aesthetic of "feminine beauty" to convince us that we should be accepting of the true inequalities in our society.

Sexism is not about sex, it is about power. The advent of the CDROM drive was a watershed in computer history as it allowed sexual media to flourish in the same way that the VCR did a decade earlier and broadband internet connections a half decade later. Popular computer magazines were deluged with advertising opportunities from the sex industry, and they took them, the final pages of nearly every magazine were filled with smut. This gradually changed, the readership objected to it and it ceased to be as profitable. However, this did nothing to stem the use of sexual imagery in advertising, which, today, stands far more explicit than ads for actual porn were in the past. If it is considered tacky to use sex to sell sex, then why on Earth is it appropriate to use sex to sell Palm PDAs? Many of you probably remember this advertisement in anticipation of Daikatana which was run in many print magazines:

Bearing the words "John Romero's about to make you his bitch" and "suck it down," the ad continued the whirlwind of controversy that was Ion Storm. Geoff Keighley, in his Behind the Games feature for GameSpot, quotes Romero as trying to distance himself from the ad, "Mike [Wilson] brought me that bitch ad and I thought it was funny … I told [him] people might take it the wrong way, but he just said, 'Don't be a p***y!' [sic] So I told him to go ahead with it, but I didn't want to do it."

It is interesting that being compared to a woman and female anatomy was allegedly enough to cow Romero into doing something he did not want to--an action that is parallel to the actual text of the ad--which is a double affront to the supposed masculinity of the audience, being compared first to women and secondly to homosexuals. It is also interesting that GameSpot had a problem writing "pussy" when few magazines seemed to have any issue with regards to printing the ad in the first place.

However, not everyone sees it that way. Keighley quotes Tim Schafer (designer of LucasArts' Grim Fandango) as saying, "People see John in the ads, yelling about how he wants to force you to assume a sort of female, canine relationship with him … I could see why people might see this as arrogance and machismo on John's part, but I honestly think it just flows from John's natural excitement for what he was doing." Naturally. I'd like to think that this kind of ignorance speaks for itself and that I do not need to comment further on it--but I do.

An informal poll at GameSpot revealed that while half of the 5000 voters agreed the ad was in bad taste, 37% believed that had Daikatana been a quality game that had shipped on time, that the misogyny and homophobia of the ad would not only have been acceptable but, in fact, appropriate--that "real men" are entitled to act thusly, but not "poseurs" like Romero evidently turned out to be. This is who we are as a community. We're failing. Miserably.

It is not just the fault of developers and advertisers. It is the fault of writers who would rather collect photos of models at shows than screenshots. Of gamers who decide to use the anonymity of the internet to be on their worst behavior on forums and within the game world itself, perpetuating sexism, racism, homophobia, and all manners of bigotry and hatred. And for the most part, we tolerate it. We have our fun, we ignore what bothers us, and we think that as long as we do not participate in it, well, that is good enough. No, it isn't. Not by a long shot.

Female gamers, especially, are often in the position of choosing the lesser of two evils lest they abandon gaming completely--often it is a matter of which game is least sexist, as a game free from sexism is out of the question. Even Lara Croft looks rather prim in comparison to many of the other characters that populate our virtual worlds.

From the Bad Girl contest site

Several female Quake clans have posted interviews with Paul Steed, the artist responsible for most of the representations of women within the series, on their web sites. While much of his work with Id was admirable (with the exception of his infamous "crackwhore" model) he went on to produce Betty Bad with WildTangent, sponsoring a contest for 3D modelers to compete in creating the ultimate fantasy "bad girl." When faced with commentary in the Polycount forum by a female gamer who stated that the definition of "bad" in question had more to do with demonizing women for their sexuality and maintaining unrealistic body standards which would, in most cases, leave a woman too weak and fragile to do any of the mayhem suggested by the contest, Steed responded:

"Ah, who cares. I want to see [your] picture. It's been my experience that someone so abrasive and obviously feminist is rather unattractive and generally bitter. You're not knocking the idealized female form because you don't have it perchance are you? Hmmmm....? I'll show you mine if you show me yours..."

Unsurprisingly, the Bad Girl contest was sponsored by ATI, the popular video card manufacturer. In an attempt to take back the enthusiast dollar from nVidia, ATI has largely managed to further alienate the same demographic through their corporate and manufacturing decisions at the launch of their Radeon 8500 part. The combination of shipping the product late which led to a disastrous PR fiasco when a pre-order deal from Dell for the card went sour (many of those who ordered received it months after it was available in stores), over-optimizing their drivers to sacrifice quality for speed in commonly benchmarked applications and games (as exposed by [H]ardOcp), as well as not clearly identifying which OEM (original equipment manufacturer, cards that come in "white" non retail boxes) versions ran at a speed substantially slower than retail cards.

But there is one demographic that ATI was never thought twice about alienating: women. Through their nonsensical "Brand yourself a radical" ad campaign, they sought to put a sexy spin on their brand image that has been traditionally associated with, well, great image quality and the most comprehensive feature set on the market, not bikinis.

Hardware enthusiast web sites are not immune to this either and frequently describe products in terms of female anatomy--with the assumption that they are writing only to an audience of straight men who might appreciate it if they did not know any better. When hardware sites first got their hands on Xbox consoles and were able to open them, the majority of the sites used pornographic language to label their pictorials "gynecological," "spread eagle," or even "beaver shots."

While Blizzard constantly talks about improving the Battle.net environment for Diablo 2, they are usually talking about lag or the elimination of cheats involving "duping," the duplication of desirable items that negatively effects the game's virtual economy--because that is what we as a community value in our online environment. That is all we seem to value in our environment. It is evident that our community places no value at all in an environment that is free from bigotry or misogyny. Or even just plain-old bad behavior as the Diablo 2 elder, Sirian, has found in his long effort to convince Blizzard to revise their player-killing system. Blizzard is not about to implement something as frivolous as more extensive language filters when creating character names (or hunt down the offensive misspellings that get through). But that is dealing with a corporation and is to be expected, what about at the grassroots level?

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Counter-Strike was designed as a "mod," an end-user created modification of Valve's popular Half-Life. Not only was it designed by our community, it is supported by our community--each of the thousands of dedicated servers out there is someone giving back to the hobby they love. While on the corporate level, things can be bleak as not enough steps are taken to keep us ahead of those who wish to cheat at the game, things are not always that rosy on the home front. "Clans" of players calling themselves "[SS]" or "[RAPE]" or hundreds of other things insist on their right to degrade other members of our community.

Rape is a violent and terrorist act that men in our country perpetrate on as many as one in three women, with many more sexually assaulted in one form or another. While it is possible to argue over the exact figures, the fact of the matter is that a single rape is one rape too many and it is nothing to joke about. Rape is not being overcharged at the drycleaners. Rape is not a "gib" or a headshot in a videogame. And rape is certainly not something you name a clan or yourself after. As of yet, the only major online game to take a stand against rape terminology has been Ultima Online (though their reasoning was rather halfhearted in that they were only banning the word because it was ambiguous, not because it is patently offensive) and they suffered enormous backlash from the gaming community in our various forums because of their decision, as male gamers are far more interested in their absolute right to free speech (often misunderstanding the legal basis for what is free speech) than they are in understanding how a sexist society frames the right to self expression. How many of our internet forums ban the use of words like "shit" or "fuck" and yet will allow a poster to describe graphically how they degrade and victimize a prostitute in Grand Theft Auto III in vivid detail, making categorical statements about women? The answer is: just about all of them. In fact, those who trot out the free speech argument on a moment's notice are often just as eager to push it back in the closet once someone confronts their misogyny, usually in favor of a "live and let live" philosophy where no one is allowed to comment on another's words or actions. So much for free speech. In fact, the female gamer that argued with Paul Steed at Polycount was banned for her feminist views, while a male gamer that said "fuck off bitch" and "swivel on my middle digit" to her was allowed to continue posting.

FGN, the news service of IGN, entitled their coverage of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the Xbox, "Buffy Laid Bare" and labeled the following screenshot, "He's Behind You (lucky devil)" casting the shot in a sexual light that all but says rape. And they think rape is sexy.

I confronted the individual in that Counter-Strike match, believing myself to be in a position of strength as I was the leading player on the scoreboard (Wurmcaster) by a wide margin. He was not impressed; to some, the score only matters when it is to his advantage. No one else seemed to be interested in our debate on whether or not his name was offensive, either preferring to be oblivious and enjoy the game, or worse, perhaps even thinking that his name might be acceptable had his score been more like mine--shades of the GameSpot Daikatana poll. As it often is, there was no administrator with "rcon" to appeal to in the case of an abusive player (and often the people with rcon are the ones behaving atrociously themselves). So, I said my view on the subject and I left that server. And I did not go back.

That is how much I value an environment free from that kind of garbage, and I hope that you do too--that you would be willing to sacrifice a decent score "ratio" and a good ping for your beliefs. Because, when it comes down to it, it is just a game, after all, and people are what really matter. We often speak about why there are not more girls and women participating in our community and what the industry and developers can do to change that. Maybe the games are not the real problem. Maybe it's us.