Five Ways to Make Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 a Respectable Game

It’s been nearly a decade since gaming icon Tomonobu Itagaki of Team Ninja sprung his mad vision of an all-female Dead or Alive spin-off where the main is earning increasingly skimpy swimsuits to leer at on the world. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball raised a few eyebrows back in the day, and caused full eyerolls with its sequel -in which the ladies engaged in butt battles- but the awkwardness soon passed. Recently the now Itagaki-less Team Ninja announced a third entry and we’re left pondering the eternal question: WHYYYYYYY?! For anyone who needs a refresher on the las game, enjoy this trailer:

Yeah, move over Fallout 4, this is what REAL gamers want.

DOA has always been the red-headed stepchild of fighting game franchises due to the attractiveness of its female characters and their infamous breast physics. But the truth of the matter is that it sports one of the slickest, most thoughtful, and balanced fighting engines in the genre on top of being just plain fun as hell. The media’s focus on bouncing bosoms is unfortunate, considering the quality of the game itself, but hey, if nothing else, Dead or Alive is Japan at its Japaniest.

My personal feeling on the new Team Ninja’s output can be summed up with petulant rage and indignation over my headache-inducing experience with DOA 5, so rest assured that I’m not looking forward to seeing what they come up with here. But let’s just say for a second that they are striving to make a game that was really worth our while this time, even if the first two were shallow ogle-fests with gameplay that got old in a few hours. What would that look like? Here are five ways that DOAX 3 could (but probably won’t) surprise us.

Hey Hitomi-chan, wanna go straddle some logs with me?

Better Character Interaction

In spite of its cringey premise, the truth is that there is a decent game hiding in the Dead or Alive Xtreme concept. It just hasn’t been made yet. There was a relaxation factor and enjoyability to the original game as well as a competent volleyball engine beyond the T&A. Being a DOA fanboy, I actually really loved the idea of taking the characters we love and taking them out of their element. What is Ayane like when she’s not kicking all of the ass? Inquiring minds want to know.

The first two games actually had some pretty sophisticated hidden features regarding interpersonal relationships and the way certain combinations of characters interact together. For instance, Hitomi and Lei Fang are BFFs and work exceedingly well together as a team. Ayane and Kasumi, not so much as I found out. That is to say if you choose a volleyball partner your character doesn’t get along with, they won’t perform well. This is good stuff.

The problem is that the game doesn’t really inform you of this upfront, you just kind of have to “read the room” and work on building your relationships. And as far as working on relationships go, all you can really do is buy gifts for the characters you want to like you (90% of the time they just return them). The second game had some character specific dialogue during card games, but no ways to really involve the player beyond the game itself.

To make a real game out of the most interesting aspect of DOAX, they need to go full social sim and flesh out the girls’ personalities as well as make the player instrumental in building and maintaining relationships with more social and dialogue options as well as benefits and consequences beyond the quality of your volleyball partner.

So that’s what she’s gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside her trunk.

Genuinely Worthwhile Challenges

The first game was pretty much limited to a decent volleyball game in terms of things to do that weren’t having your virtual waifu model swimsuits for you. It was fun for a while, but to tell the truth, I had way more fun with Kings of the Beach on the original NES in terms of gameplay. That is to say that volleyball games hadn’t progressed much since the 8-bit era.

The second game added in a pretty sweet jetski race that brought back fond memories of Wave Race 64, but again with the comparisons to much older games. The only thing Dead or Alive Xtreme was really adding to the mix was boobs. I love boobs, but they aren’t the reason I play video games. And no, the ridiculous butt-battle minigame was not a worthwhile addition. At all. Ditto pool-hopping. Both were just plain not fun or rewarding and took up a massive amount of precious in-game time.

I’d recommend adding better incentives for the various mini-games like special discount coupons for stores or rare winnable items and some more interesting challenges like swimming or a virtual arcade where you could challenge other characters head-to-head for high scores on some old-school inspired classics. And there really needs to be more to buy. As it is, the swimsuits are tremendously costly and once you put them on it’s like “big deal”. More variety in items, gifts, and customization options (an in-game beauty salon?) would make it more worthwhile to slog through the various mini-games.

The base games like v-ball and jet-ski races could benefit from occasional tournaments with entry fees and great prizes to keep players incentivized to keep getting better and improve their relationships with their partners to stay at the top of their game. Little things like these would be simple to add and would greatly enhance the experience and keep it fresh beyond those first few of hours of “this is kinda fun, I guess”.

Cue Top Gun music.

Bring on the Men

Obviously, the biggest factor in the general disdain for this series is the fact that the entire premise is pretty much “OMG BOOOOOBS!!!!!”. And that’s a fair point. Take the ladies’ loveliness out and nobody buys this game. Ever. But then the idea of a male leering simulator is kind of creepy and ticks just about every sexism box.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the female body or anything unnatural about enjoying the site of it so much as that creating an entire game about it is kind of excessive and exclusionary towards those who may be fans of DOA but may not be as impressed by cutting edge jiggle physics. Some women may have somehow found a way to enjoy the game (Gamemoir co-founder Yesika Reyes among them) but the fact that this notion is a little baffling to almost anyone who hears it highlights the problem here.

The most obvious answer is to add male characters. Why exclude them in the first place? The main series has a great mix of male and female characters to appeal to all tastes and there’s no good reason it can’t be the same in the spin-off. A general leering simulator is significantly less creepy than one made only for males and where there’s equality, there isn’t sexism. Everything that applies to the female characters could be applied to the males and I’m sure there are some women out there who wouldn’t mind a gander at Hayate’s rippling muscles as he busts a spike in a speedo. You’re welcome for that mental image.

Everything is less embarrassing with friends.

Two Words: Multiplayer Options

There is some multiplayer in the first two games, but this aspect is really limited. Pretty much just one-on-one volleyball matches between you and your AI partner and an opponent and their partner. And the sequel removed local play even as it added jet skiing. But they were kind of going about it all wrong. First off: four player volleyball with co-op. Come on, man. The option to team up with other players should be a mandatory feature. Playing with a friend is why Kings of the Beach was so memorable for me. Ditto local co-op.

Secondly, the focus should be less on finding individual matches and more of a kind of open-world experience like GTA Online. Players should be able to navigate the island freely and join up in any activity with other players as game lobbies get created. We can probably skip the “relaxation” options since a bunch of male gamers with female avatars rubbing lotion on each other adds a whole new layer of mockability, but then again if you could play as male characters (see above) that’s another issue solved.

Once upon a time, there were two girls in see-through tops…

Tell us a Story

Now let’s just say for a second that nobody has any problems with a game where the premise is checking out mostly-nude chicks. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. Even at its most male-centric, gaming should still be about gameplay and fun. Attractive character models are a plus for sure, but it’s icing on the cake. Nobody over a certain age wants to eat a whole can of frosting. The biggest problem with Dead or Alive Xtreme is that it’s all icing and no cake.

<With the gameplay being as shallow as it is, being limited to beach-themed games, the obvious answer after beefing up the social sim aspect is to add a story. After all, gaming is quickly rising to the top of the entertainment industry largely on the back of interactive fiction elements that have helped legitimize it as a true storytelling art form with infinite potential. The main games have often had interesting stories surrounding the Dead or Alive Tournament and its surrounding intrigues, so why not incorporate this intoDOAX

I know it’s supposed to be just the girls relaxing, and that should still be an option, I guess, but as I stated before the whole thing gets old FAST and there should be more to hold players’ interest once they’ve already seen all of the canned jiggle animations a hundred times. Mysteries to explore and problems to solve could keep the tone light while still giving the player something interesting to do beyond grinding for swimsuit and gift money all the time. Individual stories for each character involving friends, rivals, and mini-games would go a long way in making the game interesting for everybody instead of just a shallow excuse to droll over digital bikini babes. Do that, and maybe, just maybe, the world can stop laughing at Dead or Alive Xtreme and actually enjoy it as a worthwhile video game.

Four Rules for Sex-Positive Gaming

Once again, it’s time for us to discuss the representation of sex in video games. As the average gamer age keeps gets older with more and more games being designed with adults in mind, and as gaming strives to find its place next to film, television, and music in the mainstream with more mature subject matter, we are probably going to start seeing more and more sexual situations in our video games.

In the past, this has been a bit of a sore subject, largely due to the public’s bizarre notion that any amount of horrific violence is good times for all ages, but a little bit of virtual lovin’ is going to warp the fragile minds of our children. Here in the present, it’s still a sore subject, but the focus has turned towards the inequity present in gaming’s roots as a pastime for young males. That is to say that positive non-hetero, non-male representation in these situations is often lacking.

With consensual sex being the pleasurable polar opposite to the unpleasantness of violence on the scale of real life social interactions, it’s baffling that in the virtual realm the roles have somehow been reversed with sex being seen as unpleasant and senseless violence a preferable pastime. But that’s a discussion for another time.

When I say “sex-positive gaming” I mean normalizing sex in a manner that portrays sexuality in a light that is desirable and/or relatable for mature adults within video games. So constant mindless barrages of bouncing anime girl boobs in your face and naked slave girls chained to walls desperate to show their gratitude to your big strong hero: not the object.

Contrary to popular online opinion, the answer is not to cover up all female characters in burkas and refuse to ever show them in a manner that could be construed as attractive or desirable lest an admiring male gaze shall be upon them. If people didn’t sexualize one another, none of us would even be here. Sexuality is the most natural possible thing, so let’s get out of the habit of demonizing it in the name of impressing internet strangers with all of the intellectual delicacy of Donald Trump and Hulk Hogan discussing race relations.

Instead, let’s embrace this biological/emotional necessity and genuinely delightful part of the human experience by learning to make games that celebrate sex as a (nearly) universal human experience while respecting those involved at the same time. These are the rules gaming needs to get on board with if it’s going to wash off the sleazy sheen of sexism and push the medium forward into the present.

Damn. There goes the sancity of marriage…Bye sanctity!

Be All-Inclusive

Once upon a time, girls played with dolls and toy ponies, boys played with military action figures and video games, and straight people assumed homosexuals were just doing it to piss God off. But these days grown men are openly worshiping My Little Pony, gay marriage is the law of the land, and women are carving out their section of the gaming market.

In order to make gaming’s transition from cartoonish violence for young boys to respected interactive storytelling art form, we can’t get by servicing only vanilla preferences. We’re definitely seeing a lot more diverse LGBT representation in modern games than back in the day when Final Fight was pointing out that the women you were beating to death were transgender, so the inevitable march of social progress is not passing us by, but we’ve yet to see it catch on the way it has in film, music, and television so there’s still miles to go. BioWare has arguably made more strides than anyone else in the modern era and The Sims series normalized same-sex relationships years ago but most devs haven’t jumped onto that bandwagon just yet.

That’s not to say that every game needs homosexual romances and a transgender protagonist, but with interactive entertainment becoming increasingly immersive and offering players more and more options and more realistic and complete worlds to explore, it’s important that companies keep in mind that gaming can and should be for everyone and as such, there should be representations that reflect the diverse world we live in. That’s not “SJW shit”, that’s just properly servicing your customers. And in the spirit of eliminating long-standing gamer stereotypes…

Who even does that?

Know Where the Line Between Tongue-In-Cheek and Creepy Is

Video games can be a great way to enjoy the ridiculous and sublime in ways that wouldn’t really be advisable in real life, but are fun in digital form. The occasional ironic, self-aware suggestive pose or sex-tinged satire is good times, but sometimes when it’s slammed into your face often enough, the ironic can quickly become earnest and gamers can seem like slavering creeps to anybody unfamiliar with these tropes.

Bayonetta’s sex kitten act is an ironic caricature right down to her oral fixation and is juxtaposed with her insanely ass-kicking personality to strike the right balance of having and eating cake. On the other hand, taking a character like Samus Aran, a Master Chief-like character most recognizable in her awesome power armour, and portraying her more and more in her skin-tight Zero Suit (as in “zero left to the imagination”) is definitely altering her image for the worst. As a game-ending slice of eye candy: good times. As her new default appearance begging to be leered at: unnecessary and distracting. Or taking the female characters of Dead or Alive and crafting an entire subseries based around collecting increasingly skimpy swimsuits, participating in extra-bouncy minigames, and gawking at them while they sunbathe. Really, gaming?

It’s cool to have a giggle at the occasional moe character or sex bomb presentation complete with gratuitous booty shot, but that should never be a constant thing. When a joke is repeated too often, it ceases being funny and just becomes an annoying trope at best and downright creepy at worst. And if we want more people to respect gaming as a medium and be willing to give it a try, we need to tone it down a little and grow up a bit. Which brings us to our next point…

So let me get this straight: is the entire game hot girls fighting or making out with each other?

Portion Control is a Must

We humans do enjoy a bit of eye candy, but just like regular candy, it’s not healthy to gorge yourself. I’m a big fan of exploitation films, but I’m not really going to enjoy a film that is just wall-to-wall T&A and genre cliches. Compare late night Cinemax to old Roger Corman movies, for example. One is a fun romp of sex, violence, and foul language and the other is just fap material for desperate people with no internet.

Don’t populate an entire game with nothing but scantily-clad female stereotypes moaning and flashing their panties all the time if you don’t want to look like a goon. Just like a movie can’t get away with 20 minute fake sex scenes and be taken seriously even as light entertainment, gaming needs to learn that a constant bombardment of sexual imagery limits its appeal and murders any attempt at genuine character development and atmosphere.

And just like in real life, half the fun of sex is in the anticipation and the spontaneity of the moment. Only an adolescent should feel the need to constantly stuff their eyes with cleavage and yoga pants. A little mystery and a few surprises beat constant in-your-face sexuality any day. Even if your only opposite sex interactions are with your 2D waifus, it’s got to feel a little condescending to have them constantly set on ten. Dial it back a little and make the characters a little more believable, yeah? And while we’re at it, let’s pollinate our minds with the following mantra…

Got something for everyone.

Equality, Equality, Equality

You may have noticed that I’m focusing on female representations here. Well, name me a mainstream game where men are portrayed as hyper-sexualized….. that’s right, keep thinking. Again, I’m not against sexualizing some characters. We’ve got no shortage of real live people who enjoy playing up their own sexuality and there’s nothing wrong with representing those people in-game. And as much as some female internet dwellers may pretend to be above such base vulgarities as sex appeal, we’ve all seen Fifty Shades of Grey and Magic Mike‘s sales numbers. Money doesn’t lie.

Speaking of which, Hollywood films and network television know the value of a nice six pack, as evidenced by any number of handsome male leads whipping their shirts off because why the hell not. And yeah, the ladies like. So where you at, gaming? Japan has its otome, but that niche is a tiny one stateside with all of Hakuoki: Stories of the Shinsengumi and Hatoful Boyfriend to choose from on consoles. Plus, women (and men who swing that way) shouldn’t have to settle for visual novels about dating pigeons to get themselves some interactive romance. Game devs should want to tap into this market, and as male gamers we should want the women in our lives to love gaming as much as we do, if nothing else. There isn’t really a downside here.

One approach to a sex-positive game could be found in Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed. While it definitely toes the line between funny and creepy (what with the combat being based around publicly stripping clothing off of your foes and all), it does do a pretty good job of being equally pervy towards its male and female characters with its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek. It both celebrates and pokes fun at the ridiculous images that otaku/gamer culture puts out in the name of adolescent fantasy and give both male and female players ample opportunity to let their freaky geek flags fly in a judgement-free environment. If you want to put a wallpaper of a blushing elderly man in his underpants as your in-game cell phone wallpaper, get on with yourself. You may not get another opportunity.

And really, that’s the whole issue with sex in gaming. It’s been too one-sided for too long and it’s understandable that women would want in and desire more and better content for themselves in the games. Just like a lot of men fear an imaginary dystopian future where every game is aimed at women -which will never happen since the male base is extremely established and going nowhere- a lot of women are hesitant at best to support an industry where nearly every single game is aimed squarely at men. It will cost us almost nothing to make gaming better for everyone, and the upside is massive. Once we clear that hurdle, maybe, just maybe, we can all stop being so uptight about sexuality in video games and create an environment where more of the mature, sex-positive games we as adults deserve to play can get made.

Rant Time: Why the Double Standard for Comic Books?

One of the most tiresome ongoing internet debates is the representation of women in various forms of media. While I would certainly argue that this is an issue worth addressing, the tiresomeness stems not from the topic itself, but from the approaches of the people doing the debating. Exhibit A: the recent kerfluffle regarding artist Milo Manara’s variant cover (shown above) featuring Spider-Woman in a classic Spider-Man pose in what I like to call the Spider-Woman Initiative.

The cries of sexism began long before the issue hit the stands, with the entire premise being that NOBODY would EVER draw a MALE superhero in that pose -the obvious response to anyone who has ever read a comic book being “whaaaaaaa?” because anybody who knows who Spider-Man is (a popular comic book character) and what Spider-Man does (whatever a spider can, I hear) has likely seen him in that pose, which is presumably meant to accentuate the spider-ness of the man (or woman in this case), countless times. I own a t-shirt that has Spider-Man in that pose. Well, that was easily settled. Thanks for playing.

But the hate kept coming….and coming…..and coming. It became so intense that Marvel Comics actually fired the artist from the upcoming projects he was slated to work on. And that’s exactly where I’ve personally got to draw the line. Internet shit talk is one thing, but damaging peoples’ careers is just plain wrong unless they are violent offenders like certain professional athletes. But spiteful crushing of another human being’s livelihood aside, the real issue I’m wondering about today is why is it specifically comic books that are singled out for sexualization of the female form when this is clearly an across the board kind of deal? We’ll get to that later. First, some observations.

Zoe Quinn: Internet Villainess or Victim?

If you’re reading this, I assume you’ve got an internet connection and an interest in video games so you most likely have heard of the ongoing firestorm surrounding independent game developer Zoe Quinn. If not, let’s recap. Ms. Quinn created a text adventure game called Depression Quest with the intention of putting an interactive story simulating the worldview and experiences of a person suffering from mental health issues into the world.

It’s a great idea, but the quality of the game isn’t the issue. It’s the tactics Quinn has allegedly employed to promote her game. Late last year, she pulled from feminist lighting rod Anita Sarkeesian’s playbook and began a campaign against a male-centric internet gamer stronghold  which led to the usual overwhelming troll backlash which led to the expected feedback loop of controversy and victimization. Things were said, posts were deleted, allegations were made, yadda yadda yadda. Business as usual. Welcome to the internet.

Fast forward to present day and Quinn’s ex-boyfriend starts a blog chronicling evidence that she cheated on him with several game journalists (the now-fabled “five guys”) in order to publicize Depression Quest. The internet officially loses its collective shit. While I personally would discourage people being unfaithful to their significant others, I’ve got to ask you something: would you bat an eye over a male who was accused of sleeping with female journalists? And how do you suppose the male gaming community would react to a spurned ex-girlfriend tearfully shaming this hypothetical man with an obsessively comprehensive blog?

A good guess.

To further muddy the waters, Quinn has been accused of using her ill-gotten clout in the industry to embark on a campaign of suppression towards all sites that publish pieces critical of her. Now, I don’t know if you or her know how this here internet works, but I do know that you can’t stop the proliferation of controversy once it begins. The attempted censorship of the net has only served to intensify criticism and bring much more attention to something that was never really worthy of it in the first place.

An up-and -comer in the industry used every means at their disposal to succeed, including sex and manipulation of social media? Call the ethics police! No aspiring businessperson has ever had such a breach of morality! THIS IS A BIG DEAL!!! No friends, I was joking. It’s really not. In fact, if you swap the star player’s gender, you don’t even have a story of interest. No great justice to be doled out here, folks. Just people being people.

So while I may personally disagree with Zoe Quinn’s conduct and handling of the issue, I really can’t pretend that all this nonsense spreading across message boards far and wide is worth our time. Even the time I took me to write this. I understand that there are people on the internet who get their kicks by trying to upset people with rape threats and other childishness and have nothing better to do than dox people and harass them by phone and email for any reason they can think of, but enough is enough.

While former Miss Troll-Me U.S.A. Anita Sarkeesian may have been a media parasite feeding on the gaming community by preying on peoples’ political insecurities without putting anything of value back into the community to change the tropes she so loathes, Quinn’s saga began by creating a game to fill a perceived gap. She’s not some outsider profiting off of us by tearing us down. She’s one of ours. As a woman in the industry, making games according to her own vision and publicizing them is the correct thing to do. Any shithead with a keyboard or webcam can criticize, but the only thing really worth doing when you feel everybody is doing it wrong is to get off your ass and do it right. She put up, and as such we’ve no right to tell her to shut up.

There’s a quantifiable and widespread discrepancy in gender representation in the gaming industry. One might argue that the male domination is due to men doing the most with the often generous portions they’re given to succeed. It’s an industry that a lot of people want to get into right now and if you want to stand out, you’ve got to work it.

It’s a bit disturbing that so many people on the internet expend the time and energy they do throwing virtual stones over petty things as often as they do. Are we the video game development ethics special forces now, sniffing out sexual misconduct in the industry wherever we find it (in a female)? Or are we just a bunch a bunch of bandwagon-hopping misanthropes whose insecurity is so out of our control that we resort to blatant sexism or self-victimization while disguising it as justice to make ourselves feel important? We can do better.

Ethics and success rarely share the same bed (hence my own perma-loser status) but until women can get on more equal footing with men in the industry, it’s fairly indefensible to take a female developer to task over her personal life. As long as she keeps attempting to push forward games as an art form, she can have sex with all of the men for all I care. Every. Last. Man. Out of all possible timelines, there’s no alternate universe where Zoe Quinn’s sex life is my business. Or yours. Unless, of course, you happen to be the boyfriend who kicked off this shitshow, and if you are I appreciate and understand the pain of being deceived by a loved one, but this ain’t the way to deal with it, man.

All right, he’s not all that bad, but as far as corruption in the industry goes: come on, guys. Please don’t tell me you’ve ever in your adult life believed that the media was some pristine purveyor of truth, transparency, and honesty looking out for your best interests rather than manipulating you for their own profits. And if you do believe that, I hate to be the one to tell you, but it ain’t so, kid. It never has been nor will be.

The video game industry is no different. It exists to make money off of you and me first and foremost, and it does so by playing off of our interests and perceptions. And there’s nothing we can do about it other than ignore it. We love playing video games and will pay money to do so. This makes us targets for people who want that money we are willing to do what it takes to get it. And so long as we are willing to pay for something they can provide, they’ll get our money. This is business.

Now along comes the digital generation; free information and an unlimited capacity to say whatever the hell you want to whoever you want with the entire world as an audience whether you know what the hell you’re talking about or not. Word gets out that large companies are disingenuous in their dealings with their customers and the media. Disillusionment sets in, but we don’t stop playing. We can’t. Time to burn off some youthful aggression instead.

Can anyone who loves kitties this much be all bad?

Can we take down the very companies who provide us with the things we love? Not so much. By now, we should all know that professional reviews and coverage are largely built on a pay-to-play model, but since bringing down massive sites like IGN and Kotaku isn’t really doable either, people have set their sites on something smaller. Say, a single person who was unlucky enough to get caught in the act of exploiting the system and exposed.

So does Zoe’s supposed “Quinnspiracy” of using industry contacts gained through nefarious means to suppress the hate campaign against her make her the victim, or the villain? Like with most things in life, the answer is likely a bit of both. Did she cross lines of ethics to publicize her game and screw over somebody who cared for her in the process? I don’t believe that’s in argument, so yeah, assuming it’s all true, she done goofed. But ironically, the very people who criticize her for playing the victim in the past have gone and made her the real thing with this futile tantrum of a smear campaign and the misogyny that it represents, and in doing so have taken the focus away from the issue of industry corruption.

If any or all of us were subjected to this kind scrutiny over everything we’ve done wrong in our lives, I don’t think too many of us are coming off smelling of roses. The shit-slinging is accomplishing nothing but making the gaming community look like naive, hateful children lashing out at whatever they can find because the world’s not fair. So let’s just step back, take a deep breath, and find something better to do where we can burn off all that excess energy and have a good time doing it. Rather than obsessing about the particulars of how they get publicized, I might suggest actually playing some video games instead and judging them based on how much we enjoy them. Just a thought.

Nepotism and media manipulation in game journalism isn’t going away any more than spawn-camping in first person shooters or corner-trapping in fighting games are. They’re all just unfortunate symptoms of human nature. So let’s do ourselves a favor and spend more time doing things to make ourselves happy and less time trying to make everyone else unhappy. Spreading misery amongst your own community is just shooting yourself in the foot.

And if you still feel the need to do something to show Zoe Quinn and her posse that you don’t approve of her brand of publicity without looking like a douche, do something positive and give some love to The Fine Young Capitalists, who are an equalist organization hosting an indie game jam for which they’ve accepted concepts for video games from female applicants with the proceeds split between the winner and charity in an attempt to induce more participation from women in an industry where only 2% of games are designed by them.

They claim Quinn has undercut them in an attempt to divert attention (and donations) towards her own similar-yet- unspecified jam and their site was suspiciously hacked when the anti-Quinn movement began donating to them. So rather than focusing on sex lives and industry corruption and social justice gone wild, how about channeling that indignation into something constructive instead and possibly helping someone get their game made in spite of said corruption? It beats raging across the internet about the unfairness of it all and accomplishing nothing.

Kill La Kill and Anime’s Fanservice Industry

 

Japanese animation is an entertainment medium that’s often associated with geek man-children in spite of the fact that it often features complex stories with themes and metaphors that dwarfs most of what we consider adult entertainment here in America. Part of it is the lingering fallacy that anything animated must be for kids, but there’s more; specifically anime’s preoccupation with female anatomy. Bouncing bosoms of bodacious bulk and predictably polarizing portrayals of puerile pantyshots often turn viewers off of the excellent stories and characters. But is it really inherently wrong or immature to portray the human body in such a way?

Enter Kill La Kill, one of the anime hits of the moment and another instance of an overseas animated property being snatched up for streaming on the forever-ahead-of-the-curve Netflix prior to being dubbed in English (Attack on Titan was previously alone in that honor). Watching the early episodes of the show, it appeared to have been literally designed to both mock and celebrate some of the most damaging anime stereotypes: the ridiculously over-the-top action, the overly serious characters, the overly wacky characters, and yeah, the fashion choices of female characters.

Dressing women up in the most revealing of clothing and/or putting them in the most compromising position with the viewer given the most advantageous view is typical here. Naturally, there are plenty who don’t take kindly to this practice. Kill La Kill sets itself up as a self-aware parade of these kinds of tropes, but as the story finishes, it accomplishes more than it’s willing to give itself credit  for in terms of providing context for this argument.

Are We Ready for a Farewell to Damsels?

Last week, I was watching the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, in which the heroine ends up in a dungeon and awesomes her way out, meeting the incoming dashing hero and telling him that nobody rescues her except her. It highlighted an aspect of the show that I hadn’t really considered before. For a show about classic fairy tales that typically regard princesses as things to be kidnapped and rescued, it’s more or less stayed away from the damsel in distress trope and it hasn’t cost it a thing. Are you listening, video games?

Given the current social climate and the general tiredness of that particular cliché, you’d think this concept would have caught on in gaming even before Anita Sarkeesian found a way for somebody with no interest in video games to make a goddamn fortune exploiting female gamers’ political insecurities without adding anything of actual value to the community herself, but no. We’ve been so bad about this for so long that’s it has come to that point. Time to handle our business like adults.

And no, I’m not here to declare that the pursuit of freeing captured females as a sinister conspiracy theory hatched by the Patriarchy, Illuminati, Freemasons, Whitey, or the Legion of Doom to keep our sisters enslaved. I’m here to say what we already know: that video games are girls’ fun too and more games should reflect that.    

I realize that with old-school game graphics, it was pretty hard to tell a compelling story. The simplest way to explain why you were doing what you were doing is have the big bad carry off a vaguely feminine-looking object which you would naturally need to rescue by jumping and climbing ladders and such. It’s simple. It worked. It gave the boys being wowed by these new toys called video games something to strive for.

But now it’s 2014. Women make up nearly half of the gaming populace and over half of the overall population in places like America, Europe, and Japan. They are literally the largest demographic in most of the gaming world, and they remain largely untapped. Traditional video game concepts usually mean male characters doing awesome things like shooting and punching stuff and generally being ridiculous power fantasies. I’m not against that. We all love a great power fantasy.

In keeping with that concept, when you -the male hero- get captured by the bad guys, how does it go? What do you do? Do you wait around for somebody to get you out or do you just kick so much ass that you cannot be contained? Exactly. Odds are, if you get locked in a prison in real life you aren’t going anywhere, but video games invariably give us a way to get out. Providing you are the almost-always male protagonist, that is.

The point is that there’s no good reason why we should expect that a female video game character wouldn’t have the same capabilities. It’s just weak storytelling. It’s been done over and over and it seldom adds anything interesting to the storyline. The general mentality has not progressed beyond that first generation mindset that you just need to have a chick to rescue and there’s your excuse to go kill stuff.

Do I have to? Again?

But gaming is better than that now. Or it could be. Easily. I’m not saying no female characters can ever get kidnapped again, but at this point it needs to be both integral to the plot and done much, much better. Or, here’s an idea: how about somebody kidnaps a MALE character and a female protagonist rescues him? Did I just blow you brains out the back of your head or what? Men like to be seen as manly, manly men and see other manly men do manly things. They apparently don’t like or expect to see men be unmanly. Seeing men be unmanly makes them feel less manly and how can a manly man be manly when he feels less than manly? Or something.

By this logic, are women expected to feel like prisoners because they’ve been subjected to story upon story where that’s what their gender representatives are reduced to? Gaming is a blank slate where we can create anything and anyone. It’s a place for silly fantasy and awesomeness and good times for anyone who wants them. I don’t see the possible upside of alienating or reducing the enjoyment of that experience for a demographic of this size. With limitless creative possibilities in front of us, why would we ever choose to be so lame and unoriginal?

Fiction has its tropes, of course, and damseling has always been one of the most leaned-upon to create drama. I get that. But I also get that seeing the same thing over and over again is the exact definition of boring. Can we not just kick virtual ass in order to stop bad guys from doing bad stuff? Do we even need a reason all the time?

I kind of love that the 8-bit indie game Hotline Miami just has you as a guy who gets phone calls instructing you (via creative euphemism) to go somewhere and kill everyone there. Why are you doing this? Because you’re playing a video game and the game tells you what to do. That’s how it works. That’s actually how it’s always worked, regardless of how they’ve dressed it up. This refreshing simplicity highlights the intent of gaming as a thing you do for fun just because you can. No damsels necessary.

Pictured: irl distressed damsel.

And guys, women are our mothers, sisters, daughters, significant others, aunts, grandmas, coworkers, and friends. Respect is mandatory. Females aren’t invaders from another planet trying to ruin your Call of Duty game by making the matches about kissy fights with Justin Beiber as the soundtrack. They’re just fellow gamers trying to game. Being an asshole doesn’t assert your manliness; just your assholeness. Not a soul is impressed, I promise you. You can better assert your manliness by being mature enough to give and receive respect.

Gaming is growing up as a medium for entertainment, art, and even social interaction, but this appears to be a big hurdle left to clear. But it will get cleared, one way or another. The Last of Us essentially attempted to trick male gamers by easing us into playing as an awesome female character and enjoying it. After hours playing as the zombie-killing gruff man’s man, Joel, the big guy goes down, leaving his game-long escort mission charge, Ellie, in the driver’s seat.

Where were all of those gamers whining about not wanting to play as a girl while Ellie was stalking adult male raiders with bow and arrow and slitting throats? LOVING IT. Why? Because the game did a great job of drawing you into the story and, more importantly, the character. Joel needed Ellie to save him; you needed Ellie to save Joel. And you were now Ellie. Was that so bad? In the DLC, you played as Ellie and when the inevitable sequel comes, I doubt there will be any resistance to Ellie taking the lead right from the get-go. Thanks, Naughty Dog.

The clear answer to kicking this habit is better-written female characters. When a woman is properly developed in her own identity, it actually feels like a robbery to have her get nabbed. The Witcher 2 is an example of this. When you spend the first half of the game in the company of a kickass sorceress and suddenly she’s kidnapped and gone from the game just because the writers couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything more interesting, it’s more annoying than anything else. It felt like a damn waste of a character. Hopefully with better characterizations, game developers and players are going to start to pick up on that and find better uses for female NPC’s as well as more female protagonists.

So yeah, I’m going to say we are not only ready to bid farewell to damsels in distress as an overused story trope, but we’re long overdue. It’s probably only a matter of time before women attain positions of power in gaming, take over the industry from within, and show us that we can get along just fine without reducing female characters to personality-free archetype trophies to be awarded to successful masculine protagonists.

Gaming is not (and should never be) just boys’ fun and while the female gender on the whole may prize character development and world-building above killing things in the nastiest way possible, I don’t see that as a problem. There’s room for everybody and I’m afraid we’ve hogged the couch for too long, guys. Time to scoot over and give the ladies a turn. You might be surprised by how good they can be.