About a week ago Dragon Age 2 player Bastal posted an impassioned plea on the official Bioware forums asking the developers to think of the poor straight male gamer. Basically, Bastal feels that Bioware games in the past been have “designed for the [straight] male gamer in mind” and that this trend should be continued indefinitely. Bastal senses that he is not the only target market for DA2 and is quite put out about it, going so far as asking for a “No Homosexuality” toggle.
A few different responses come to mind:
1) There are no options for straight males in DA2?! One of the potential companions is Isabella, a hot busty rogue chick in a thong. It’s hard to get more direct than that! Bastal dismisses her as being “exotic”, which sounds suspiciously close to “not white enough”.
2) DA2 is a role playing game. I am entirely straight in real life, for example, but in-game my female Hawke is knockin’ boots with Isabella because that’s what I imagined her character would do. A role-playing game does not have to reflect real-life preferences.
3) I am utterly confused by Bastal picking DA2 of all things as his masculinity hill to die on. Anecdotally, 90% of the people I know who bought the game are women! Bioware knows their market better than I do, but Dragon Age (and Mass Effect, for that matter) has always struck me as a franchise that would heavily appeal to a wider array of gamers than usual.
In short, in an industry where the vast, vast, vast majority of products are catered to the interests of one group, it’s insulting to complain that you don’t have 100% of that market’s attention.
Of course, DA2 Head Writer David Gaider answered Bastal better than I can, particularly with this bit:
“You can write it off as “political correctness” if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They’re so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don’t see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what’s everyone’s fuss all about? That’s the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.”
My favorite response, though, has to be this snarky one posted in a MetaFilter thread on the subject: “I’m not a gamer, but it sounds like pretending to be straight is hard when there are other options.”
Geisha Boy from the TF2 Wiki
Sure you can shoot people in the game, but really this move just cements Team Fortress 2′s legacy as the ultimate hat economy simulator. (Are you a victim of the virtual economy? Try this “Definitive TF2 Trading Guide“.)
PS: In all seriousness, please consider donating to the Japan quake/tsunami relief efforts over at the Red Cross.
Further to our rant about the Dragon Age 2 DLCs earlier this week, IGN just posted a review of both new “expansion” packs and found them to be wanting. Huh, the DLCs seemed light on content? Well color me surpri– oh, no wait, that’s exactly as I expected. Thpppppbbbbbbbbpt.
(On a different topic, we have a Prolixity Facebook page now! Please friend us if you’re so inclined.)
The much anticipated Dragon Age II launches today in North America. RPG nerds, rejoice! Most of us probably won’t get around to playing it until after work tonight, but you’d better hussle because the first DLC content pack is already being promoted.
Wait, what?
That’s right, the company that brought you the haggling NPC in Dragon Age: Origins has topped their previous levels of irritating shilling by releasing the full game and promoting the first DLC at the same time. Remember when DLCs were actual packs that extended content after a game had been out for a while? Is there any reason to believe that The Exiled Prince isn’t just content that was ripped out of the main game to be sold for extra money later?
Bioware makes excellent games, and are widely known for the making of said excellent games, but their attitude towards DLCs is getting insulting. I just want to hit some trolls without feeling like I’m being shaken by the ankles for any spare change.
But don’t just take my word for it: Rock Paper Shotgun is downright curmudgeonly about The Exiled Prince pack.
There better be a lot of combat micromanagement, sideboob, and charming British princes in DA2 to make up for this mess, or I will TOTALLY consider not buying Mass Effect 3. For a few minutes, anyway.
I actually defended the original dickwolves comic to people who were upset by it. The core of the joke as I saw it — that MMO players have a callous disregard for anything not listed in their quest — was funny and true, even if I’m kind of leery of jokes about rape. The follow-up comic, the blog posts, and the t-shirt, though, have really put it over the line for me.
Gamer culture has been INCREDIBLY homogeneous for many years, and the guys behind Penny Arcade in particular have been quite vociferous about helping to invite others to the gamer table. Regardless of what they think they’re doing, their reaction to the “dickwolf” controversy and particularly those shirts are just going to alienate more women from a community that they really have only just started to participate in fully.
The welcoming of women, non-whites, and non-straights to the gaming scene is still pretty fragile and should be handled with care, and the PA guys should have the sense to put that over defending their own egos.
There were about a million points they could have backed away from this. Like, the second comic, or telling the commenters on Shakesville that they were being silly, or drawing a dickwolf at a popular panel and having a good laugh at anyone who was uncomfortable with it, or making those ridiculous t-shirts. The PA guys repeatedly and with great intention poked this hornets’ nest, and now they’re claiming that it was all just a big misunderstanding which I think is disingenuous at best.
Basically Penny Arcade, the organization behind the great Child’s Play charity and the PAX gamer con, sided with the Internet dickwads on this one, which is kind of confusing and really disappointing.
Anyway, whether you have an opinion on the Penny Arcade “dickwolves” mess or just want to learn about it, the Debacle Timeline is a pretty good source. It mostly stays out of picking a side and just links to various relevant posts and resources as they happened.
And also on this topic: Fat Ugly or Slutty. Contains a lot of NSFW language, most of it by jerkwad young men who can’t handle being beaten by a woman in a video game.