Monday, October 09, 2006

Monday Misogyny

Okay, everyone relax, this time, it's not our community (though I wouldn't be too surprised to find it here):
Why does every game that comes out nowadays revolve around a female main character? Yes I understand that you need female characters for eye candy.
It just gets better from there. (There's racism too!)

This is just one of the wildly entertaining links you'll find at Jade Reporting, a new blog that does for the gaming community what When Fangirls Attack does for the comics community.

8 comments:

  1. I do my "day job" in games journalism (I am legally required to add "lol" after that), and pretty much everyone I've ever met agrees that the forums on GameFAQs could be razed to the ground and the internet would be much better off.

    I'm 2006% sure that if you poke around the forums, you would not only lose around 20 IQ points, but every essay you ever got an A on in school would be retroactively downgraded to a D. They're that stupid over there.

    Those forums also skew pretty young, I think, even more so now that they've merged with GameSpot.

    I like that the guy mentions the DoA series as a series that was once stand-up... especially since the man he mentions as being a "main character" was an easter egg thrown in for old school Ninja Gaiden fans who hovers around the edge of the plot. The main characters are two (young) ninja girls and have been for the first four games. A new young female is the main for the next arc.

    This isn't so much "Monday Misogyny" to me as "Monday The Children Are the Future? These Children? No, seriously."

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd just like to say for the benefit of all that the Gamefaqs boards are just one of the places to find good 'ole video game themed mysogyny. Plenty of it abounds on the internet.

    Anyway, thanks so much for the Jade Reporting plug, Ragnell!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank the lord they're all females! How else would we get that topless spread of the video game vixens in Playboy this month?

    ReplyDelete
  4. See, Ragnell, told you that the GameFAQs board were the Barrens chat of the Internet. Oh, wait, that would be that the Barrens chat is the GameFAQs Board of World of Warcraft... anyway, the point is that it's your one stop trip for Teh Stupid (TM).

    But, yeah, thanks for the plug. Glad my pestering you for layout advice (I will get it finished, darnit) had a... uh... positive effect.

    David: Does this "day job" of yours have a URL? It's just not a good day for JR when I only have 300 new posts awaiting my attention.

    ReplyDelete
  5. tekanji: I don't want to spam up Ragnell's comments feed, but I work for Hardcore Gamer Magazine mainly. That's my heart, at least. It can be found in your local bookstore and online at http://www.luv2game.com

    The site isn't as informative as I'd like, and it's really kind of content-lite for now, but we do have free downloadable issues.

    (i also do other writerly work for a few websites, but that would be spamming outright, I think.)

    I think that we should talk, however! I couldn't find your e-mail address on JR, so want to do me a favor and send dbrothers at hardcoregamermag.com an email when you get a chance? Just a simple hello so that I can get back to you with some questions/comments/words in general.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You forgot to mention there's a taste of homophobia too! (Being familiar with Japanese console RPGs, there's lots of effeminate-appearing male characters and there always has been. How he can play these games without having his precious masculinity shrivel every time is beyond me.)

    And the off-handed comment about how he'd never let his girlfriends play video games was just creepy as hell.

    ReplyDelete
  7. heh. and here my guess was it was going to be Ubisoft's Paradise under discussion...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Chad: Yeah, I know what you mean. Our definition of "gender" includes commentary on homosexuality because homophobia has some roots in sexism. Like, "OMG, he's [insert "feminine" action here]. He must be gay!!!!111eleven"

    Which reminds me that I need to update the info pages and all that. Right after I go through the latest 600+ posts on my bloglines. *sigh*

    ReplyDelete