Accommodation, Resistance, and Ranged Roles in Games

In our discussion last Thursday, we talked some about the stereotype that women always play "background" roles, like healers, spellcasters and other ranged positions. There is also a stereotype that these roles are not as strong or important, which is probably linked to how gendered "female" they tend to be. Being a healer in particular is often a thankless job.

In many major games there are essentially three different roles for players. First, there are the heavily armored, slash and shoot frontpeople who can take more damage than others-- often called "melee". Second, there are the "ranged" folks who do damage, like often lightly-armored spellcasters. Lastly there are the healers, who do the least damage and focus on keeping the group healed and prepared.

These sorts of delineations in roles are common in games with team play, like the massively multiplayer World of Warcraft and the single-player but squad-driven Mass Effect. The roles are often inspired by table-top RPG's, like Dungeons and Dragons.

In Mass Effect, Adepts are biotics specialists. They wear light armor and use abilities like telekinesis and spatial distortion, harming enemies from afar. Liara, pictured here, specializes in biotics. Players can choose to be an adept.

When discussing women playing the ranged and healing roles, I was constantly reminded of my own experiences. While playing both a mage and a healer in World of Warcraft, I am often confronted with sexist comments like "oh, of course you play a healer, you're a girl". I don't think there is actually any truth in the statement that more women heal than men, but I think that there is an important gender dynamic occurring with ranged roles and the women who play them.


As a healer, I feel a large sense of power and control. The role is always varied and exciting. I get to literally have the lives of my team in my hands. This is a challenging and sometimes nerve-wracking experience, particularly with new encounters, but I think that I handle it very well. While healers often cannot do much damage, they are very important to a team.

I think that healing allows me to enter into the gamer space as a women and play a role that is powerful without being relegated to the heavily-armored, "slash and burn" roles that are often associated with men. In a way, the stereotype of "women as healers" or "women as ranged" makes me feel confident and strong in my healing role. Playing healers or ranged characters may allow women to carve out their own space in gaming communities, where they are strong, necessary components of the game and retain some sort of femininity.

The Priest crest in World of Warcraft. 
Priests are primarily a healing class.

K noted in our last meeting that often times when she plays with a team of women, they are more interested in communicating and strategy than men. I would agree with that based on my experiences as well. I think that because women are often socialized to value relationships and communication, they work well on teams in video games. Communication, strategy, and ranged ability are valuable components of gaming and women may find these skills to be gender affirming in the gamer space. Rather than becoming "just like the men" and taking on traditionally male roles and strategies, women may carve out their own space through an interplay of accommodation (choosing roles that are seen as more feminine) and resistance (making these roles their own, taking control of important team functions).

While women can and certainly do play both ranged and melee roles, the women who are playing ranged roles are not simply accommodating the stereotypes. In many cases these women are actively creating a space for themselves in an often women-hostile environment. These roles may allow women to become powerful and important members of a team without the insistance that traditionally masculine roles and strategies are the only way to be valuable or strong.

-H

Many & None: Gender for the Asari

An interesting discussion brought to mind the concept of Sex versus Gender. In this way, I mean to say the line between biological sex and societal gender. The people over at Penny Arcade touch on this lightly in their Extra Credits: True Female Characters video, explaining that biological sex may determine the physical construction of a female (or male) character, but it is the constant assumption of feminine gender social constructions that continues to allow the creation of cookie-cutter princesses and token girlfriend characters.

So, if the World Health Organization puts forth these definitions:

"Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.

&

"Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

Then how can we observe these in a well know video-game species such as the asari? How can gender and species play into a fictional alien species with only one ‘sex’, but many (or by some ways of thinking, no) ‘gender’ expressions.

The Codex within Mass Effect describes the asari as an all-female race, but on the updated online official information site for the game the asari are considered a “mono-gender race—distinctly feminine in appearance and having maternal instincts”. By this they mean that the outward appearance of the asari would be considered very female by human biological sex standards. While the asari do appear female, they are non-gender specific with no concept of gender differences. The primary asari in the game, a teammate and talented biotic fighter, Liara, identifies her species as “mono-gendered” (which refers to mono-sexed in the terms laid out here) and that “male and female have no real meaning for us [the asari]”.

Due to the mono-sex of the asari, they are meant to have no concept of social gender pressures. The ‘women’ of the asari are everything anyone can be; fighter, politician, assassin, engineer, stripper, broker, chef, everything. There is no stigma, no idea that an asari must dislike the idea of being a soldier because some asari must be soldiers, some asari must be anything a species, a civilization, needs to have reached the whole of the galaxy, to become the most powerful species currently on the Citadel (a place of power for the galaxy).  They have no exclusionary bi-sex or poly-sex distinctions. (They also appear to have no internal asari ‘racial’ distinctions based of their varying blue to purple complexions.)

Although they are the most common species to be seen as consorts and strippers, this falls into the created world in a rational way, not just as a joke for the sake of sexy strippers.  The asari are physically attractive to the humans (for body shape), the turians (for cranial extensions), and for the salarians (for skin color). The asari are a populace species, with a home planet and many colonies throughout the galaxy, as well as asari dispersed throughout other populations. They have had the long-term exposure needed to become identifiable as ‘attractive’ to other species. They were first of all the species to reach space and reach the Citadel. In fact, on the Citadel (at least in ME3), advertisements feature asari as the means of ‘sex sells’ sales attempts. The asari are many, and just as in the diversity of humans (or turians or any other species), an asari can choose to be a consort, a stripper, a thug, or a crime lord.

The asari are also a wonderful study of sexuality. They have no distinction between male and female in those species that have them. Due to this there is no stigma against an asari choosing to be with a male or female of another species. (The asari have the ability to ‘meld’ and thus reproduce with any species, but the child is always asari and comes from the asari mother.) No stigma means that an asari has no social restrictions as to sexuality and may choose whom to hold a relationship or intimate encounter with based purely on attraction, emotion, and/or love.

Aria T'Lok: Crime Lord, Omega

The only social restriction placed on the reproduction of an asari is inbreeding. This means that societal pressures are placed upon asari to reproduce with members of other species (such as human or turian).  Asari-asari offspring are considered ‘purebloods’ which is considered to hinder the advancing variation of the asari species. The story’s main asari, Liara T’Lok, is a ‘pureblood’ and this is given as a reason for her social outcast. Also, the creators of the asari also created a type of asari called an Ardat-Yakshi. The genetically mutated Ardat-Yakshi are dangerous, highly sexual, ‘purebloods’ which are thought to be the result of excessive inbreeding. Thus, they have created both a social and biological reason to place one restriction on the sexual lives and choices of asari.

There are others who see the asari in a different light. Mass Effect and all that it includes is open to several strains of interpretation. For a different take, check out this Gamerism.

-K.

Bringing Parents Up to Date

In 2008 Fox News aired this segment entitled “‘SE’XBOX? New Video Game Shows Full Digital Nudity and Sex”.  Newscaster Martha MacCallum, states that a new game enables players to engage in graphic sex. Cooper Lawrence, a good intentioned psychology specialist, discusses the damaging effects sexual content in games can have on their players. Lawrence states, ““Here is how they’re seeing women. They’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality and it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.”

It’s true that many games depict women in an overtly sexualized manner. After seeing this occur repeatedly in games, it does give the impression that a woman’s most important attribute is her sexuality. But out of all the games that are guilty of treating female characters like sex objects (and there are a lot), the one they decided to grab their torches and pitchforks for was Mass Effect, one of the few games that provide not just one but multiple examples of strong, competent female characters.

"Mass Effect? Is that what kids are calling it these days?"

The folks over at Fox News assumed that the game is a sex simulator in which sex is an active mechanic. Brenda Brathwaite explained in Sex in Video Games (2007), that “an active sex mechanic allows the players to directly control the action” (2007:3). In Mass Effect, players have no control over the “action”, making the situation passive for the player. The scene is brief, only shows partial nudity, and implies sex rather than graphically depicts it. It’s nothing more than what one would see on an evening television drama. For those interested, one of the scenes and the lead up to it can be found here.

But enough about that. Many people online have already addressed how ill-informed the people in the segment were. What I’d like to talk about today is the context in which the discussion of the game took place. The people in the news segment make two assumptions in the video. The first assumption is that video games are for children.

The entire discussion about Mass Effect revolved around a “think of the children” mentality used to instill moral panic in parents at home. It focused on the negative repercussions sexuality and violence can have on kids. Sure, the game is rated for mature audiences but the assumption is that children will ultimately be the ones who get their hands on it. This is an assumption widely held by people who have not played games since the original Pac-Man (at least one panelist in the segment admits to this). Games have evolved far past winning and losing. They have branched off into complex narratives with set plots and characters. Arcade-style games still exist but that is in addition to a huge variety of other game types.

Super Mario is enjoyed by fans of all ages.

Video games are seen as toys for children and I can see how the mistake would be made. Many parents are probably familiar with getting their child a Game Boy as a gift. They might also be familiar with child friendly game titles such as Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog. But historically video games were not created with the explicit intention of being toys for children. As a new artistic medium, one cannot expect every video game title to be child friendly just as one would not expect every film to be for children.

The second assumption being made is that only males play video games. They were not concerned with children in general but impressionable adolescent boys. They cite studies that only take males into consideration and discuss them as the only group “at risk." According to this article by Jamie Frevele over at The Mary Sue, the Entertainment Software Association reported that as of 2010, 42% of gamers are female. Despite this, the assumption that only males play video games still pervades.

In the Fox News segment, the speakers operate under these two assumptions while readily citing examples to the contrary. As one woman states only adolescent males play video games, another admits (perhaps with a hint of judgement) that “there’s a lot of grown men that love video games, lets be honest here.” As Lawrence rhetorically asks, “Who is playing video games but adolescent males?”, one of the men in the panel discussion talks about playing a princess video game with his daughter. The contradictions are readily apparent but go unacknowledged.

Why does this matter? This matters because when the mass media discusses games it is almost always in a negative context. They are written off as being too violent or being too sexual without many people even taking the time to play them. This matters because news segments like this shape how games are perceived by those who don’t play them. They inform legal decisions about censoring or banning video games. This matters because it reduces the issue of sexism in games to “all sex is bad and therefore should not exist in games” (a blog post for another day). The way the conversation is currently framed within the mass media makes it impossible for a truly critical and informed discussion about video games to occur.

So to bring everyone up to speed...
1) Video games were not explicitly created as children’s toys. To think of them only as such ignored their depth and limits the medium.
2) Contrary to popular belief, females play video games. As a matter of fact, “women 18 and older make up more of the gaming audience than boys 17 and younger” (Frevele 2011).
3) There are many types of video games today. Not all games are like Pac-Man nor are all games bloody and violent like Mortal Kombat.
4) Playing video games is a valid form of entertainment. View it as watching a favorite movie or tv show instead of treating unproductive, waste of time for nerds, slackers, and shut-ins. 72 percent of the American population plays video games and that number will only increase as time goes by (Frevele 2011).

- J.

Brathwaite, Brenda. 2007. “Chapter 1.” In Sex in Video Games. Class River Media.
Frevele, Jamie. 2011. “New Round of Gaming Statistics: Gaming Audience Getting Older, Slightly More Female.” The Mary Sue. http://www.themarysue.com/gaming-statistics/.