Check Your Privilege- But With Video Games This Time!

     So this was kind of a lax week for actual industry news. Next gen console release dates are in November and the XBONE can hook eight controllers up to itself at once. Which is really great-- if you want to split your goddamn TV into eight separate tiny squares while you play. So I did have something I want to talk about, because I've been trying to rush through Killer is Dead for a review and finding it longer than I'd expected. An issue has come up with some people online about a few games recently, before said games had even come out, Killer is Dead being one of them. I don't really enjoy arguing about any kind of -ism whatever, but when White Knighting is pushing its way through into my game deal, then I figure it's an alright topic. Sexism accusations have been cast on Skullgirls and the visually striking watercolor game Dragon's Dogma pretty recently, but I want to focus this more on Goichi Suda/Grasshopper Manufacture's games, because I feel like that's something I really know about and can more easily cite examples.

     All the way back to No More Heroes, Suda has been getting flak from bloggers saying that his games feature unfair portrayals of women and should be taken of the market. No More Heroes is a game about a loser guy meeting a contact to the Assassin Underworld by the name of Sylvia Christel, who changes his life dramatically, for better or for worse. She's shown to be incredibly competent in an industry widely populated by men (Albeit a honking murder industry) and her seemingly hoity attitude and untouchable doesn't define her character, but rather her ability to deal with angsty yet charming goon and pivotal guy Travis Touchdown as she starts to become more of a character. (Starting to see the parallels with the game industry?)
                                                                 

Sylvia doesn't take any shit yet doesn't come off as pandering

     Shadows of the Damned, the next game by Suda's development team, Grasshopper Manufacture, was a huge twist on the damsel in distress trope, and Lollipop Chainsaw, which I reviewed a year ago, had you in the role of cheerleader Juliet Starling, a character who the industry was sold on before the game even dropped, a rarity for a new IP. There was no clear division of importance between the sexes, and the game focuses entirely on the interaction between her and her decapitated head boyfriend Nick, instead of poking fun at her with typical degrading cheerleader jokes. Killer is Dead's sexist claims come from the game's "Gigolo Mode" in which you take girls out for drinks and ogle them, but the reality is the actual content in the game is far from objectifying women. It's still the same varied and interesting cast Grasshopper games have been known for. I'm not trying to discount the argument against sexism in gaming, because like every hugely popular entertainment medium, there are definitely less women featured, but in this specific instance, it's like voice actress Erin Fitzgerald said, the real sexism in the industry can be found in titles with "Hundreds of male characters and a pittance of female characters."

      Suda's games may be childish at times, but it's more to appeal to the youth in all of us than to discriminate, and the joke is never on a specific demographic. I'd like to offer up the opposite argument, and put it out there that Grasshopper Manufacture's varied casts are helping to push the industry forward much more than they're getting credit for. No More Heroes is one of the few games to feature a black female main character, and while it might seem like a no brainer to feature racially diverse women protagonists in games, it's something that's rarely done, instead going for the white, male protagonist. (Who is usually bald. And has a gruff voice. Usually.) So with this post firmly planted in my history, I'm never touching anything like this again. I just had to shoot out my thoughts on this. Without white knighting. Working through Killer is Dead to review it, and I'm pretty excited about getting to that. My bones are aching to review. My bones. I have like 200.