A new game has sprung up from the depths which may make games like Rapelay look like Nintendogs. It's taken me too long to write about this game. Every time I start to, I get sick to my stomach and filled with disgust and impotent rage. Imagine the sadistic depravity of games such as Tsuki Possession, Rapelay, Virgin Roster, or 7 Sins and combine it with the real-film look of The Guy Game and you may be getting close to understanding the sick trash that is Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love (Released 27 May 2009).
Stockholm is an interactive DVD in which you play a sadistic and creepy (even though it's first person) kidnapper. The point, as the name may suggest, is to get your victim to fall in love with you. This goal is to be accomplished through fear using torture, rape, forced nudity, suffocation, gassing, etc. Charming.
Billed as "The Controversial Masterpiece that was Banned from Amazon", Stockholm doesn't just trump other games featuring the domination of women in content alone. There are some things which challenge my beliefs. I don't believe in capital punishment, but Ted Bundy is a man I believe wholly deserving of that and more. I don't believe in torture, an eye for an eye, but I believe that the creator of Stockholm may deserve it.
Remember that charming game where you have to shoot down gay men because they're supposedly going to rape you in the woods? I do! And I'm sure many others have the misfortune to remember that lovely game as well.
However, the Georgia based site originally hosting the game, Uzinagaz, just removed the game and issued this statement: "Our games are not politically correct. They're aimed at teenagers (12-18) and it's true that they're of a juvenile humour. I realise now that this one in particularly could be found shocking, but I believe that you should be able to make this kind of joke in the name of freedom of speech. Incidentally, not everyone in the gay community was supportive of banning the game."
Not much of an apology...I'm still all for free speech, but when it strips a group or person of their agency and incites violence against them, I don't think it should be protected. If you want to have a game called, "find the Bible passage admonishing homosexuals", that's great. And actually...
Biblical Tip of the Day: There are only 6 passages in the big, bad Bible that supposedly reprimand homosexuals but around 362 reprimanding heterosexuals. But rest easy, heterosexuals, God does not hate you (or homosexuals, for that matter). God apparently just has much more to say about how much you're likely to piss him off. Apparently, homosexuals can only piss him off 6 ways...instead of 362.
Anyway, a group called Gay Armenia is the one that pressured the site into removing the game. Not the UN, not GLAAD, or the HRC. Nope. It's cool though. The game has only been around since, what, 2002? So it's understandable. Besides, it only took Gay Armenia and I'm guessing countless strongly words emails 7 years to get it pulled. I mean, where would the dramatic tension be if any of the aforementioned groups had actually cared and stepped in?
So props to Gay Armenia for standing up and actually doing something to not only stop more affirmations of anti-gay violence, but for making the gaming world a little less sucky. That's one small step...oh wait...it's just one small step. But it is a step.
I'm assuming since many of you play video games, you have a healthy imagination. And I'll go so far as to infer that many of you are, like me, nerds who also enjoy fantasy/sci-fi cartoons/books/movies, etc. Maybe even a little anime once in a while.
And as different as those mediums can be, there is one element that they all have in common. The very element that allows all of those things to be successful: suspension of disbelief. And as far as that goes, I think that as gamers/nerds/whatever, our imagination is probably very developed. If our imagination could be toned, it would probably look like one of those unnaturally large bodybuilders. And if we can't suspend our disbelief for something, then it probably really sucks.
Here is the paper I presented at Queertopia! 2.0 today. This conference has been one of the reasons I have not been able to write as many articles lately. The other reasons all relating to finishing up my last semester of coursework on my MA program in Women's and Gender Studies. Is this a promise of more material soon? Yes. Yes it is.
"Queering the Game: Video Games, Queer Nerds, and Activism"
Presented at Queertopia! organized by Northwestern University's Queer Pride Graduate Student Association
The stereotypical gamer, that paste-white and pimple-ridden boy, unkempt and immature, can no longer serve to represent the gaming community as a whole. More and more, the gaming industry is discovering that this boy does not constitute the only demographic to market to. Time and again, articles in popular gaming, marketing, electronics, and communication magazines proclaim that, against all apparent odds, despite an industry which ignored them, women play games too. This industry has turned its eyes toward the female gamer, that elusive creature who defies the conventions of the 'standard' gamer. Academia had turned in that direction long ago but the market lagged far behind. With even more lag, the white skin of that prototype gamer is changing as well thanks again, in part, to game studies. One striking absence, however, largely remains both in academia and the gaming industry: Where are the queer nerds?
Over the past decade in particular, popular cultural LGBTQ representation has increased in television and film. The substantial discourse surrounding queer visibility in shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, or The L Word, however, has not made its way as prolifically into the video game genre of pop culture. Nor has that visibility transferred as noticeably to this medium. Queer nerds have begun to receive increased attention over the past decade, but not nearly with as much visibility as in other visual media forms. Whereas Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Brokeback Mountain, or Ellen have become household names, video games with queer content do not enjoy the same proliferation of visibility. Outside of the geek community, titles with queer content such as Fable, Fallout, or The Temple of Elemental Evil are not frequently dropped in everyday conversation. As it were, there is no “Fab 5” of the gaming world. While the positivity of queer representation in other media is disputed, queer representation in video games remains a largely unremarked upon phenomenon. Aside from this, the games I mentioned merely give the option of queer activity. Queer as a predefined, predetermined, or central aspect of gameplay, or presented as a definite in the overall plot, has yet to present itself in any salient way. Generally speaking, the presence of queer in video games is subtle and take the form of the ability to make “queer” choices.
The Timothy Plan is a "Christian financial planning" firm which "avoids investing in companies that are involved in practices contrary to Judeo-Christian principles. Our goal is to recapture traditional American values. We are America's first pro-life, pro-family, biblically-based mutual fund group." Intrigued yet? Their claim is that, "If you are concerned with the moral issues (abortion, pörnography, anti-family entertainment, non-married lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and gambling) that are destroying children and families you have come to the right place." Among the services they offer, they produce a report on video games and the "Top Offenders" of games which, apparently, lead down the long hard road to a hellish disregard and potential destruction of the coveted traditional American family. Truly, I wish that I could hate them more than I do. Their mission goes against my own. Their purpose in existing runs counter to anything I can really get behind. At the same time, however, it's difficult for me to hate them wholly or with complete vengeance as they feel that their mission is right...just as I feel my mission is. Unlike other standard Christian Right organizations, they seem to realize that their particular values aren't necessarily for everyone, stating regarding the video game report, "This is purely meant to inform parents who are concerned with the moral content/issues contained in video games and make available to them information which is not easily found."
That being said, I still feel that Christian Right values, in the variety of forms they take, are nigh completely conduits of hate. Whether the organization or individual itself pronounces their mission or views, through materials or speech, in more obviously hateful ways or not, hate still lies behind all of it. Fear, too. And, given all the recent activity in same-sex marriage/union laws in the past couple of weeks (with Iowa, Vermont, Colorado, and Washington DC - Read more at Huffington Post, I feel it is worth looking at now - even though the Timothy report came out last December. What do seemingly innocuous organizations contribute to hate? If The Timothy Plan takes pains to state that they don't mean to tell others what to believe, how can this be so bad?
It often feels to me that while the racism of today, that modern racism where people only use derogatory epithets in private, in whispered jokes, or start a statement with "I'm not racist, but....," is engulfed in attempts to hide it, the heterosexism and homophobia of today is still something which people feel entitled to. No, racism is certainly not dead, and perhaps attempts to brush it under the proverbial rug simply means that we have less ground from which to resist it, that people can more easily deny it, and that it isn't a concern for today. This being the case, I often wonder, though, if gay "is the new Black."
Of course, I don't mean by saying this that racism is always subtle, nor do I mean to imply that it is somehow "better" than heterosexism. What I do mean, is that heterosexism is more accepted and its manifestations happen to manifest more boldly, with more venom, and tend to have the 'backing of God' according to some, such as the "God Hates Fags" group.
And the way that I'm looking at this is in the la-la land of video games.
Under-representation in games is not news. At least, it shouldn't be. Neither is stereotypical representation. Web and Flash games have been the basis for much argument over free speech and video games and on Video Game laws springing up in Louisiana. Games like Ethnic Cleansing and Border Patrol are at the center of this debate (discourse has also focused on Rapelay).A search for "Ethnic Cleansing game" returns your standard fare of racist (insert expletive of choice) websites as does a search for Border Patrol, but both are mostly relegated to the racist websites. Border Patrol is slightly more prevalent in "non-racist" sites under the guise of anti-immigration commentary. Both searches at least return a number of sites, at the front of the search, which express outrage and concern.
There is another game, however, that has recently drawn my attention: Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!. In this game, you play a camouflage-wearin', gun-totin' hunter who is "under attack". Naked men crawl out from under bushes, tall grass, and trees and amble toward you in a zombie-esque fashion. These aren't zombies, though. They're gay men. If you let them catch up to you without shooting them, rather than trying to eat your brains, they rape you - thus the title informing you to "watch your back". Like all gay men, apparently, these men are attracted to unfashionably dressed straight men to such an extent that they simply can't control their sick, animalistic urges. You must then protect your man-hood in the only way you know how - to kill them. It's "smear the queer" with guns and a purpose.
So while I was checking an old email account on yahoo, I noticed a story in the little news section. It read: Transgender Wife gets 4 years for killing husband. And I thought to myself, what does her being transgendered have to even do with that? But I clicked it anyway and searched again for it to see what other news sources had to say about it. This actually made for an even more interesting discovery. If you search for this story on the MSNBC website it says "Transgender wife gets 4 years for killing a man". But on most other news sites of not so self proclaimed leftist views the title reads that she killed her husband. Kinda strange. It is possible that the only reason the story made national news was because it involved a transgendered person and LGBTQ (which I'll refer to as queer after this) tensions are high awaiting the California Supreme Court decision ? But what I think- and you can call me a pessimist- is that this story has national coverage because it paints a transgendered person in a negative light.
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