Feminist
Pro-Queer
Anti-Racist
Gaming

Not to jump on the bandwagon here, but I find myself unable to resist the urge - I need to say something about Fat Princess. Call it feminist compulsion.

If you haven't already heard about this game featured at E3, it's expected to be released this spring. So far, it seems to be drawing only rave reviews. Except that, for whatever reason, feminists seem to have their bloomers in a bunch over this one. With a title like Fat Princess, however could that be the case? Reviews at IGN and Joystiq state that the gameplay is engaging, that the graphics are colorful and cool, and that the game is all-around awesome. Fat Princess is a capture-the-flag type game. At the game's start, each team has already captured the other team's princess and is holding them captive. In order to make it more difficult for your opponents to rescue their princess, your team for your opponents to rescue their princess, your team must feed their princess as much food as you can find. Why? So that she gains weight and becomes more difficult to carry off - obviously. Charming. Why can't she walk off on her own once her team infiltrates the castle? I guess because she's a princess.

So what could possibly have those feminist bloomers bunched?

Follow up:

Ideally, I wouldn't have to answer that question. Considering the feminist bashing circulating the web, though, I guess it merits mention. The most charming of the feminist bashing comes from Jim Sterling on Destructoid - "Feminists sh*t all over Fat Princess, real people laugh". The article title a sort of play off the classic joke, "How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Any takers?
"That's not funny!"
Truly though, humor isn't lost on me. The light bulb joke makes me snicker sometimes. It plays off a feminist stereotype we all know: the angry, hairy, ugly, humorless ball-buster. Classic.
Anyway, in his so-clever, witty, and intelligent piece, he bashes both Feminist Gamers and Shakesville:

This is classic. Proving that you can't dare to say or do anything these days without it offending someone, a bunch of gamer feminists are up in arms over the "fat-bashing" PSN game, Fat Princess. The game's premise is that the princess you must rescue has been stuffed so full of food, she now needs a team to haul her copious backside to safety -- according to some mini-Germaines out there, that's simply not on.
[...]
Even worse is a writer at Shakesville, who took time out of doing her husband's laundry to write this: "Congrats on your awesome new game, Sony. I'm positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative assholes." As you can see, she uses "words" like "heteronormative" to sound clever and informed, a tactic which invariably fails and makes one look presumptuous and pretentious.

A commenter on IGN adds, "Yet if this game was called Fat King it wouldn't receive any complaints at all. Stupid Feminists."
Hmm. Where to start? I could here point out what is obvious to me - that a game called Fat King would be different because of the differing expectations of men. It's the classic Double-Standard, boys. Keep up. That Joystiq updated to say that "Titan Studios' art director, James Green, emailed in to say: 'Does it make it better or worse that the concept artist (who designed the look, characters, everything) is a girl?'" makes it all better to be sure. Now that I know it was created by a woman I can retract my proverbial claws. Or not.

Perhaps a different approach than the standard:
It isn't so much that the game concept itself is terribly wrong or offensive. What it truly comes down to is the culture and society behind it. This game is built on gender-specific stereotypes and attitudes. Tes, Fat King would be slightly different but not because it would be more politically correct on its own. It's just difference because the sets of attitudes toward overweight men are different than those for women. Watch some commercials or sit-coms and pay attention to them every so often. Take a look at how many overweight men are playing the husband to a much hotter wife. Fat men are not viewed with the same rancor, the same critical lens. Men in general aren't viewed the the same critical lens...at least not straight white men.

Is the premise of the game creative? Sure. Could it be funny? Yeah, sure. In itself, is it wrong? Not so much. Are the beliefs and values that it reflects fucked up? Yep.

I didn't make this site to say that games are wrong and game designers can take the high road to hell. It's that the stuff in video games serve as a reflection, to some extent, of society itself. They pull up stereotypes and prejudices that are already present in society and then they feed it back into society. If people weren't buying into the stereotypes and attitudes, then games would have to change to keep turning a profit. Bloomers get bunched in part because video games are a powerful medium. Their influence is more pronounced than other media as they allow you to take part in the story and content through interacting with the world they present in ways that aren't a part of other media. I pick on video games because I love them, because they have so much influence, and because they seem to lag behind in social progress. You can't really blame us angry feminists for wanting change.