Let’s get a little controversial all up in here!

There was a big todo in the blog world this week about skimpy gear on female characters, and it’s kind of been making me cranky. I feel like the conversation has unfortunately fallen into a common rhetorical trap, and I dislike it when things that are variable and complicated are phrased in very cut-and-dry, “us vs. them” ways.

The crux of the matter, as outlined in this article about “slut plate” over at Apple Cider Mage, is that “[c]hoosing to wear something skimpy in real life or World of Warcraft should be because someone wants to, because it makes them happy, and should not indicate anything other about a person’s personality or sexuality other than what they wish it to indicate.” Hey, swell. I can totally get behind that, and agree that the phrase “slut plate” is dumb and should be discouraged.

As usual, though, the ensuing conversation conflates the choice with the action itself. Women should be able to dress their characters in anything they like without others assuming they are “sluts”, and I will happily defend that choice as a feminist act. However, this does not mean that dressing your characters in revealing clothing is in itself a feminist act. The issue becomes skewed away from the issue of choice and becomes a message of “celebrate in-your-face-sexiness or you hate women”. In fact, under this paradigm dressing modestly is seen as patriarchal, unfun, and something to be avoided. The choice has yet again been taken away.

The point is not the plate booty shorts. The point should be the CHOICE to wear them.

Every day we are shown women being sexualized in the real world. From the moment I leave my apartment in the morning there are girl butts on taxi ads selling beach vacations and botox injections. I am shown sexy ladies all day long in advertisements. There are ladies in skimpy clothing as NPCs in my game, on login screens, dancing on my mailboxes. By the end of the day, I want to play a game and not worry about it. I’m tired of having sexy sexuality blasted at me all day, co-opted or not, which means that in my group you, Black Mageweave Elf, can sit this one out.

(And, like, what is the external difference between a 15 year old boy playing a mailbox-dancing nelf in her underwear and a woman playing a mailbox-dancing nelf in her underwear? Because if you’re just walking by, there is no difference. Can someone tell me if I should be offended or not? I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE.)

My point is: dress your character in skimpy clothes if you want to. Seriously. I will dress my characters in modest clothes if I want to, and both options are equally valid. No one should make any assumptions about your sexuality or personality from how your elf is dressed, but I am perfectly within my rights to think your outfit is tacky and to select a group member who chose to wear pants.

The above image was taken from the front page of the Firefall website.

You know, after years of playing video games and reading fantasy novels I’m used to inhuman physiology in related artwork. I can overlook the fact that this woman’s right shoulder doesn’t seem to exist. (Seriously, try and figure out where her right shoulder is. It hurt my brain after a while.) Her head also doesn’t seem to be attached to the rest of her body, but hey, space combat is perilous stuff.

And truth be told, I didn’t even blink at the robot halftop. Sure, it covers her arms and legs yet leaves a wide expanse of open skin over the part that carries all our important organs. It does kind of serve as a giant “insert pointy thing here” advertisement, but at this point I am quite used to croptop armor.

But that BOOB WINDOW. Look at it. It is, in fact, the most ludicrous boob window I have ever seen, and I do not say that lightly. It doesn’t even look comfortable, much less sexy. Maybe if they hadn’t spent the time and resources lovingly manufacturing boob windows in armor they would have already won the damn war against the aliens 200 years from now in the dystopian future. Yeah.

This post is pretty much entirely speculation and thinking out loud.

I think at this point no one can deny that SWTOR has been incredibly polarizing. Quite a few people are enjoying it and will defend the game, and the folks who don’t like it… well, let’s just say they really don’t like it. I’ve seen people call SWTOR the “worst game ever made” and predict that it will be completely dead within six weeks of launch. They don’t just dislike the game, they hate it with a zeal that to my mind borders on fanaticism.

So why the strong feelings? Certainly part of it is just disappointment after a prolonged period of hype. Part of it, I think, is burnout with WoW-likes. But my hypothesis here is that maybe — maybe — part of the problem is that Bioware never intended WoW’s core audience to be the exact same as SWTOR’s core audience, and that makes people unconsciously angry.

Who is WoW’s target demographic? This, of course, is hard to pin down exactly, but I think you can make some assumptions by looking at Blizzard’s advertising campaigns, the features they bring in, and their corporate culture at events like Blizzcon. WoW’s target audience is straight white dudes, probably college-age, who are the Achiever and Killer types of players. Blizzard has emphasized things like raiding and competitive PvP over features such as an appearance tab or guild housing. In fact, they’ve always been pretty dismissive of guild housing as unnecessary twaddle, and until the recent downturn in subscriptions acted the same way about an appearance tab. Please don’t mistake any of this as derogatory — the straight white raidin’/PvPin’ dude market is large and historically critical to a business’ success, and I in no way blame Blizzard to trying to target them.

However, the unfortunate Cannibal Corpse video at Blizzcon last year just showed that Blizzard hasn’t put a lot of thought into their GLBT players. (I don’t attribute the video to maliciousness, just terrible cluelessness.) The company’s surprise at the reaction to RealID shows that they’re not good at thinking beyond their target audience, not to mention the fact that apparently as a female NPC the more important you are, the less likely it is that you’re wearing pants.

Okay, so: who is the target demographic of Bioware RPGs? I think it becomes a little more clear when you read Bioware writer David Gaider’s official response to a complaint that Dragon Age 2 was ignoring the “straight male gamer” demographic. (You probably read about this when it happened last March. The part most relevant to my post is this: “[Our games are] for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention.” Bioware is pretty commonly considered to have a diverse playerbase, and to cater to some of that diversity. Part of the success of SWTOR is predicated on the company turning some of their diverse RPG audience into a dedicated MMO audience.

Perhaps SWTOR was designed with some of this in mind. The game shipped with personal housing (your ship), NPC romance, and appearance controls (orange moddable items), all things that Blizzard has written off in the past as being too frou-frou and not something their target market would enjoy. There are humanoid NPCs who are not white. Storytelling is definitely emphasized in SWTOR during the leveling process, and players are encouraged to create a bond between themselves and their character. Even I, someone who is usually far too cynical to truly role play, find myself coming up with little stories for Panacea’s background, or turning down a dialog option because it just doesn’t “seem like something she would do”. The game even launched without damage meters or a competitive PvP meta-game. People who play MMOs for the serious raiding or PvP experience (most Achievers and Killers) are unlikely to receive satisfaction on this front.

So why are people so angry about SWTOR? Perhaps it is in part because without even realizing it, they are angry that a game is not entirely oriented to their market and their playstyle. Perhaps the makers of SWTOR wanted to create a game meant to appeal to the Bioware target audience, who is arguably more diverse than the Blizzard target audience and who enjoys different activities. That’s not to say that there are NO straight white raidin’ dudes who play and enjoy SWTOR (this is absolutely not the case), but it is not a game that caters to that market almost to the exlusion of others.

Maybe, blogosphere of mine, when you sit down to write that rant about how SWTOR is the worst game in the whole history of the universe, you should take a moment to reflect that it might not be meant for you.

I had a really facinating discussion on Google+ earlier this week about the use of casual homophobic slurs in gaming and why it should be actively discouraged. It made me think about this blog, and how I am hugely into the “politics” side of gaming but I rarely bring it up here. In retrospect, it seems dishonest of me to believe in something related to gaming so passionately and yet not ever mention it.

So, enough. For an inaugural political-ish post, let’s debunk some popular defenses of casual homophobic slurs in gaming.

No one cares if I use it.

I do. My friends do. Lots of people do, in fact, but they may not have the self-esteem and motivation to say anything to you. This to me is the most obvious argument against hurling slurs around. Isn’t life crappy enough? Do you actually intend to bully people, or are you just not thinking about it? Because you are. I cannot stress that enough: whether you choose to believe it or not, someone is hearing you and someone is hurt. It alienates people of all orientations. It drives them away from games. Smooth move, ex-lax.

For me, when I hear someone use “gay” as a perjorative I don’t actually think that you’re homophobic, although you might be. What I think is that you sound like an ignorant hick. I imagine you as someone who is poorly educated and possibly who has a loving relationship with a farm animal. Everything you say to me from that moment on for the rest of your life will be tinged by my image of you as one of the hillbillies in Deliverance. Maybe you’ll never see me again, but if you keep making that impression on those who cross your path.. one day it’s gonna catch up to you, Jethro.

I met a gay dude at a party once and he said “gay” derogitavely!

Cool story bro. Believe it or not, gay people can be homophobic too. But beyond that… the minute you become a member of the LGBT community, this might be a valid argument. Until then, shut it.

Gay means (kindling, happy, annoying), not gay like people.

As a wordsmith and writer, I think this excuse makes me the most sad. Yes, language grows and changes over time. Your intentions aside, however, it’s safe to say that lots of people still use “gay” as an insult to mean “gross like a gay man”. I’ve heard that plenty of times before (oh, trade chat) and I am hardly looking out for it. Given that, let’s look at the word’s usage:

Homophobic Dude: “That fucking gay rogue stunlocked me until I died!”
You, subverting the vocabulary system: “That fucking gay rogue stunlocked me until I died!”

Huh. Looks the same to me. Sounds the same to me. What is the difference? IS there a difference? Because I do not see one. What I see and hear are two people using slurs. There is a saying in the social justice community: “Intent is not magic.” I cannot read your mind, and if it looks like a slur and quacks like a slur, it’s a slur. It doesn’t matter what you meant.

(Honestly, I am pretty sceptical of the whole “gay means annoying now” argument anyway. If you meant “annoying”, why didn’t you say it? No, you used a slur because it is a word with a lot of power and you are REALLY angry about that rogue. Stop pretending that you’re just on the forefront of the English language and admit that you chose it specifically to be a showstopper.)

They shouldn’t bring their sexual orientation into the game anyway.

This excuse is really just plain homophobia, but I find it interesting because it’s a jumping off point to examining just how heterosexual most games are. I think sometimes straight folks don’t realize how much of our sexual orientation is in almost every game, even if we’re not jumping up and down and shouting about being straight. How many games have a quest that involves a male and female in a romantic relationship? That’s hetero. There’s our sexual orientation, right there, hanging out, forcing others to acknowledge it.

Remember when 4.3 hit in WoW and we all attended the Space Wedding of Space Thrall to his Space Woman? Talk about rubbing your nose in it! It is almost impossible to play a game that doesn’t feature heterosexuality in some way. Straight folks are pretty good at putting our sexual orientation in everything we do! Let’s stop being so hypocritical with the whole, “But stop flaunting YOUR orientation!” argument.

Get over it, it’s just the internet.

And this is the most frustrating excuse of all. I don’t even really understand it. It tends to go hand in hand with someone saying, “People are too sensitive now,” which I also don’t get. Is sensitivity some kind of non-renewable resource? 150 years from now, will future generations grow up callous and cold because we used up all the raw civility? (Huh. Be right back, writing sci-fi novel…)

There is something particularly unsavory about someone insulting you and then telling you to like it. If you insult me, I’m going to be upset! I’m going to think less of you. I may or may not call you an asshat. If you don’t like that, maybe YOU should get over it.

In short, using casual gay slurs while gaming makes you appear uneducated and cruel. It hurts people around you, whether you see it or not, alienates your fellow gamers, and brings up bad memories and sad feelings.

And if you see someone use a homophobic slur, call them on it! I am bad about this myself on occasion, but making things socially awkward for the slur-er is the best method of enacting change we have.

With a shiny new MMO out everything old is new again, and that includes discussions over the necessity of an automated Looking For Dungeon group-matching tool. I have seen a fair number of posts on other forums lately that start out saying something like, “Well obviously everyone agrees that a LFD tool is necessary…” and it makes me want to bang my shoe on a table or something.

Perhaps we can all agree on some common ground: cross-server LFD tools remove a reliance on the local server population. Yes? Right. This, I think, is a bad thing.

Plenty of people will say, “People were jerks before LFD!” and of course they’re right. However, a vibrant server community means we all know who the most egregious of those jerks are. In the pre-LFD days of WoW I would frequently know who the most progressed guilds were on the server, who the nicest guilds were, and who was a ninja. We recognized our opponents in a PvP zone. The official server forum was humming with posts and people chatting between guilds. LFD meant we no longer had any interaction in the game, and contributed mightily to the death of community in WoW.

The vacuum left by the death of intra-server activity and interests was filled by anonymous group content and, well, asshattery. Anti-social behavior, such as ninjaing or being cruel, no longer had community consequences. In LFD, the people in our groups were of no more value than digitized sprites. Give people tools by which they can monitor each other’s progress (damage meters or gearscore or whatever) and tell them that they’ll never see their teammates again, and asshattery reigns supreme. Now instead of a server community, there is just a automated channel for antagonizing.

You know what other game is famous for having an abrasive playerbase full of jerks? League of Legends. And what does LoL do? Randomly matches a huge group of people up from a lobby for the purposes of playing together for a short period of time. It is almost as though there is some correlation between people being anonymous jerks and lack of reprocussions for anti-social behavior!

An unlimited LFD system is almost indisputably bad for the community of a game. However, I understand that standing around Ironforge or the Imperial Fleet for an hour looking for a group is not fun. Personally, I found my groups in WoW and in SWTOR by asking in general chat or grabbing guildies, and my ideal answer to the LFD question would be, “Get a good guild”. (Seriously, this would solve most problems.) However, seeing as I can’t tell everyone what to do (yet) here are my two guidelines for a cruelty-free LFD system:

1) You can have either damage meters/gearscore/player monitoring system OR an automated Looking For Dungeon lobby. Not both. I think MMO players have handily proven that we cannot handle the “absolute power” of monitors and anonymity.

2) LFD should not cover new content. I understand that in a year fewer people will (presumably) be leveling in SWTOR and it will therefore be more difficult to find a server-only Mandalorian Raiders run. I say wait a year, and then stick it on the LFD. When there are tiers of level-capped group content, put the PREVIOUS tier on the LFD. Let the server community take care of the most recent content, and let LFD help new players and alts.

Thus far Bioware has said that they are not adding a cross-server Looking for Dungeon tool, and I hope they stick with that. Not everyone agrees that a LFD tool is necessary in an MMO or even a healthy thing to add to a game, and in fact I am rather at the point personally where an unlimited LFD tool would make me quit SWTOR or any other new MMO. Developers have a duty to balance convenience with the integrity of a game, and consumers have a duty to… well, to basically not be asshats. We’re still working on that one.

For months I have been telling everyone that SWTOR is going to be a bust. End-game is dubious, the graphics are cartoony, and themepark MMOs are so 2009. Plus, I’m not a huge Star Wars nerd. This game, I declared once, is not for me.

And I still could be entirely right about all those things, but what I didn’t account for is that it would also be a wagonload of fun. I’m not saying it’s the greatest MMO ever, or it’ll kill other games, or that it’ll be awesome still in three months. What I’m saying is that thus far on my level 13 Jedi Knight and level 12 Smugger, the game is a freaking blast to play and I can’t wait for it to go live.

Mea culpa, my friends. Mea culpa.