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Saints Row IV and gender issues
Sep. 15th, 2013 03:00 pmYeah, gender issues in gaming has been on my mind a lot in the last few years. Lots of voices out there calling for improvement, and pointing out that we don't *have* to be as sexist as we (regrettably) usually are. Case in point: Saints Row IV. If you're only a little bit familiar with the Saints Row series, a mayhem simulator which started life as a Grand Theft Auto copycat, you might expect me to be about to lambaste the latest installment for being a typically misogynistic mess. And you'd be wrong.
Saints Row IV is getting lots of great (and well-deserved) reviews, the tone of which can be summed up as "Gloriously dumb". But this SR4 is *not* the sort of dumb made by dumb people, or the sort of so-bad-it's-funny dumb; no, this is well-crafted dumbness, made with deliberate care by extremely smart people. It's the sort of dumb that takes many tired videogame conventions and turns them on their head, with never-ending (if silly) meta-commentary, and turning gameplay limitations into advantages by being clever about how their deliberately silly fiction is crafted.
And one of the ways that craftsmanship is on display is that this game, while being full of over-the-top violence and crude sexual humor -- actually manages to avoid being sexist. I mean, it's not 100% perfect, but it's *way* ahead of the pack on this.
It starts with the player character. There's a wide variety of customization options. You can be male or female, and there's even a slider for "sex appeal" that adjusts the size of your package/breasts. You can choose from a wide variety of voices, male and female, and of several (implied) racial backgrounds. There's a vast array of clothing available, in a wide variety of fashions and gender-coding. Crucially, the game is almost completely agnostic to your choices in this regard. Male, female, transsexual, transgendered -- mix and match as much as you please. The game insists that the protagonist is an Awesome Badass with a long history of violence, but everything about their sex life is up to the player.
You can "romance" certain NPCs (in a system that is a hilarious parody of how Bioware games handle such matters). Again, the game doesn't care which gender you are presenting when you do it, you'll get the same results. When you ask Pierce for some casual sex, he'll reply "I don't normally swing that why, but what the hell," regardless of what gender you are presenting at the moment.
Perhaps more significantly, they manage to avoid some classic trope traps, but discussing those is a bit spoiler-y, so have a cut:( Read more... )
Saints Row IV is getting lots of great (and well-deserved) reviews, the tone of which can be summed up as "Gloriously dumb". But this SR4 is *not* the sort of dumb made by dumb people, or the sort of so-bad-it's-funny dumb; no, this is well-crafted dumbness, made with deliberate care by extremely smart people. It's the sort of dumb that takes many tired videogame conventions and turns them on their head, with never-ending (if silly) meta-commentary, and turning gameplay limitations into advantages by being clever about how their deliberately silly fiction is crafted.
And one of the ways that craftsmanship is on display is that this game, while being full of over-the-top violence and crude sexual humor -- actually manages to avoid being sexist. I mean, it's not 100% perfect, but it's *way* ahead of the pack on this.
It starts with the player character. There's a wide variety of customization options. You can be male or female, and there's even a slider for "sex appeal" that adjusts the size of your package/breasts. You can choose from a wide variety of voices, male and female, and of several (implied) racial backgrounds. There's a vast array of clothing available, in a wide variety of fashions and gender-coding. Crucially, the game is almost completely agnostic to your choices in this regard. Male, female, transsexual, transgendered -- mix and match as much as you please. The game insists that the protagonist is an Awesome Badass with a long history of violence, but everything about their sex life is up to the player.
You can "romance" certain NPCs (in a system that is a hilarious parody of how Bioware games handle such matters). Again, the game doesn't care which gender you are presenting when you do it, you'll get the same results. When you ask Pierce for some casual sex, he'll reply "I don't normally swing that why, but what the hell," regardless of what gender you are presenting at the moment.
Perhaps more significantly, they manage to avoid some classic trope traps, but discussing those is a bit spoiler-y, so have a cut:( Read more... )