Jul 222012
I cover three topics in today’s podcast: Perception of War in games, a promising new indie game, and I tackle a bit of sexism too. (15 minutes ish)
Links from the show:
Matt Cowlrick’s DownUnder Voiceovers: http://downundervoiceovers.com/
Spec Ops: The Line: http://www.specopstheline.com/
Zero Punctuation on SO:TL: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6021-Spec-Ops-The-Line
Chroma by ClawHammer Games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3A_7ugn79M
Lighten Up by The Real Katie: http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/
8 Responses to “War, Indies, and Sexism”
Comments (8)
You do sound a lot less “radio announcer” in this one, so whatever your doing now is working. The podcast is interesting, though I miss the more “game development/design” centric talks of the DevVlog. Anyways good luck with Hello World.
Thanks Zenroth! I’ll touch on more development and design stuff as it occurs to me, I’ve just been… relaxing for a bit.
Spec ops actually sounds really interesting, and I’m not particularly into shooters.
I’m really glad articles like Katie’s are getting more attention. It’s sad, but some people will only listen when a man says sexism, especially subtle sexism, is a problem. And I agree with her, blatant sexism can be easier to deal with because you don’t have to explain why it’s not okay.
If I complain about how the ‘host’ characters in so many facebook slots games are female and sexualized (the host character for Slotomania, for example) even though there are more women than men on facebook and more women than men play social games, will anyone understand why that makes me unhappy? In Slotomania, the host is (more or less) wearing clothes, and she doesn’t actually shake her ass at the player or anything, so clearly I’m just being oversensitive and I should lighten up.
There are several followers of my blog that IM/Email me with things like “I don’t see the big deal about putting pinups in my cubicle” and things like that. I don’t really know how to respond to those, but I think this article did a bang-up job of describing it.
You know, besides just saying “lighten up”.
Oh god, I don’t even know what to say to people who think pinups are appropriate at work. You’re supposed to be working, not jerking off to tits! Pinups are also one more way of reminding women that they don’t belong here, that we’re supposed to be decorations, not coworkers.
And no, I haven’t made a stink about the sexualization of the host character for our slots game (ours is Slotorama, which is pretty easy to confuse with Slotomania). I’m not exactly great at confrontation, and I doubt anything would change anyway.
Triumph! I actually did bring up the sexualization of host characters in slots games with my manager, and he was awesome! He talked with the product managers right away and by the end of the week we had a focus group meeting with the product guys, art director, and the women in the office to get our opinions.
Also: *have* you brought up the sexualization of the characters at your new job?
Someone pointed me towards two great Extra Credit episodes on this sort of stuff too. Check these out:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/propaganda-games
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/call-of-juarez-the-cartel