HOW DIGITAL SPACE HAS MASKED REALITY THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MALE FIGURE IN GAMES
INTRODUCTION
Through this essay I want to explore how the male figure has been effecting or developed by the progression of digital space. I want to show how the male figure has changed during the past 2 decades with the freedom that we now enjoy. How when games were first made a lot more imagination was needed, the games were more story driven, using arcade values, it wasn’t about how you can be your character and how it looks, that progression is effected how we perceive reality. I also want to compare to the female figure and how there is just as much gender stereotyping in the male characters as in the female figures. The other point is how technology has grown we have made these characters to what we perceive as real, they look and feel real but no one is an Adonis, no one truly looks like this, no one is 6ft 2, athletic, god-like it’s just what humans want to be, it’s a certain set of peoples. It’s easy to see how people idolise these characters. Perception of reality can be altered and get sucked in by games.
Also need to show how this phenomenon is growing its allowing people to create personas and alter egos for themselves, such as becoming a different gender, masking reality. People are choosing their gender roles using stereotypes according to social standing in a game, e.g. If you’re a woman character you may be viewed as not as good but you also might be treated more courteously, helping you get ahead in the game.
DIGITAL SPACE
Over the past decades we have been able to watch this young media flourish into a phenomenon that captivates more people worldwide than even film or any other media. With the advancement of next generation‘s realistic qualities, it calls into question ‘what is real?’ the call that everyone wants is reality, but this ‘reality’ is games that immerse the player in an almost real space so they can feel like its them doing those impossible things, the whole point in games is escaping reality, which is contradicting, they want the game to look and feel as real as possible even though they want an alternative to their reality. Players want to fight dragons and fly through space but really feel they are experiencing these things. If we are not too careful people won’t want to accept reality over their game, e.g. World of Warcraft who die playing games[1] or people who just can’t distinguish between the two. This could be people with mental issues but also anyone, the human mind can be susceptible to the fact that everything feels real, you can kill but there are no consequences to your actions. This brings problems from the games world into the real world. But fundamentally is it the same as TV, books and film? Not really, the difference is it’s you who is controlling them, you act and react with them, it isn’t scripted out, and you are doing it for the character. Act out our wildest fantasies and ambitions, exercise masochistic tendencies we wouldn’t think about in day-to-day life.
Through the ages digital space has progressed, it has gone from early realms of arcade addiction. Games where there was never an ending, there was high score games where the aim is to win but there was no finish post, they were rather cruel way of gaming but it did the job of drawing people in and becoming very addictive.
The difference is these days, more goes into making a game, more goes into the art direction and the programming but ultimately the game can be completed in less than a day, even by a non-hardcore gamer. It’s the same in all walks of modern life. People get bored easily, and rather than putting more money into making a game that lasts, the developers would rather create a short, beautiful game that can have many sequels, thus making more money! They like to show off what they can do with technology and that’s how the male character has developed into a much more realistic being, like humans, with an end point, making it even more realistic.
MASKING REALITY
No matter how real games become it will always be a place to escape reality and take on personas. Games companies attempt to create realism. For example LA Noire another step to realism[2], using facial gestures to work out whether the character is lying or not, no matter how good this becomes it will never be truly real this is because the game is set in Hollywood’s golden age, if you really wanted reality the ‘cop’ would be sat at his desk, filling out paperwork and then go home. But people want fantasy, to be something that they are not. So the realism is to concrete their fantasy in their heads, making the player more immersed and the fantasy more believable. The story mechanics play on this, every little boy wanted to be a policeman or a cowboy or in the army and it gives you a chance to relive experiences, in games you can do all these things and still live a mundane life. Playing on emotions puts a mask over reality, the truth is these jobs never look like this, for example a massive Clint Eastwood fan might play red dead redemption to play out their fantasy in a way that watching a film can never do.
When the first generation consoles came about, they were such a huge leap from the 32bit systems, they could contain a complex storylines, the technology felt so real, but now looking back at these games its laughable that we could ever perceive these characters as real. Digital space has always masked reality; our perception of reality is altered. E.g. the male character in Duke Nukem, when we saw him, we knew he was a man, strong, rugged, and as we had no other comparison then that was our digital mask, now his skin looks like skin, he has fingers, his face isn’t square and made of 4 planes, we perceive this as reality now but in the future we don’t know how the Duke Nukem character could develop into more of a reality.
MALE FIGURE / COMPARE TO FEMALE
I want to talk about the fact there is just as many stereotypes directed at men as there is at women, games have become a temple to male vanity in recent years with the advancement of digital aid. All men in games are action heroes, women are tiny waist, large breasted and men have the 6 pack, square jawed Adonis, there are a few which break the mould, normally Japanese RPG, compare mass effect to final fantasy where the males are quite feminine in appearance, this seems to be an art direction of ‘square enix’ [6]
However, the differences between the 2 cultures are: western ideas of beauty and masculinity are big strong army men and east consider beauty is conveyed by “innocence”. A male with long and flowing hair is considered more attractive than the western version of short hair and enhanced masculinity.
Either way each culture is trying to convey their ideal and it is irrelevant what they look like specifically, the point is that both cultures are trying to escape reality into what they want to look like.
Comparing stereotypes in male to stereotypes in female characters; Stereotypes in games haven’t changed much from the very beginning, still muscular men who create a one-man army, like Duke Nukem. It’s something that the typical male player enjoys playing.
The difference between male and female is the female has become very strong minded, intelligent, powerful and strong. The gaming demographic has changed, there are a lot more female players and it’s become harder to get away with the blatant sexism. Huge increase of women players, empowering femininity, because of her strong-minded, strong willed personality. Before the woman was the damsel in distress, a supporting role, the healer not the fighter. Despite every now and then we have an alternative way; ultimately it is usually still sexist and hasn’t changed much.
“Attempting to create something for "girls" as a category obviously navigates a
Dangerous border zone between personal, specific, lived experience, and generalization. 'Girls' are as diverse in their interests, abilities, and tastes as any other category of people (e.g. "students" or "the French"). In gender research in the games industry, designers must be able to work towards gender equity without falling into stereotyping traps, realizing the inherent breadth and contradictions of categorization.” Especially seen as “a mere 10 percent of all game industry workers in the US are women, and most of these do not have their hands in the design process (even fewer are programmers) (Hafner 2004)”[8]
The point is that girls don’t want something different, equality in the sexes has taken off and female players want to play the same games as men without feeling inferior, this is why gender stereotypes have changed for female characters but stayed the same for male characters, because as times have changed one has had to where the other hasn’t.
GENDER STEREOTYPES
Online game play is such a recent phenomenon, it’s another world that exists beside our world we live in, it is used and played in everyday by millions of people. For example World of Warcraft is played 24/7, players have to create their persona to become someone else, they can chose their species and their gender, I want to use this video clip from ‘how I met your mother’ as an example:
It’s making light of the fact the dainty, sexy woman is the male in reality and the big butch beast is the female in a comedy sitcom watched worldwide. This also shows how integrated games are with our lives, parodied on daytime TV.
Another example is Halo; people will change their gender according to how they want to be treated within the game. A lot of men can become hostile towards being beaten by women, Halo being a very macho game, therefore women will disguise themselves as men, making themselves as masculine as possible in order to fit in with the gaming community. In turn men can become female to annoy people. In games like Halo and other 1st person shooters, egos are everything.
The online community is a perfect place for us to wear our digital masks and pretend to be something we are not, for whatever reason, whether it is to be treated more fairly or to become something we aren’t or even to become someone we would want to be with!
On the other hand there might be reasons why fantasy games are beginning to have more male stereotypes than female, “According to the Interactive Digital
Software Association’s 2003 survey, 72% of all video game players are male.”[11] This means the majority of games are trying to appeal to males, the reason female stereotypes have become less so is because they did used to be quite sexist and that did need to change, male stereotypes on the other hand have stayed the same because they work, looking at what female players like:
Case study: Hayley Turnbull, to elaborate more on this I used Hayley as a case study to see what games I could play with her that she would enjoy playing, I found she had more enthusiasm and enjoyment towards realistic games like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto and then towards puzzle games like portal than games like Halo and Call of Duty for which she had a lack of interest, then games she enjoyed watching for the story but didn’t enjoy playing like Dead Space proved this sort of fantasy world bored her after a short time and although she could appreciate the beauty, the game play of 1st person and 3rd person shooters wasn’t appealing. [12]
“The most popular games have larger- than-life settings, and the goal is to overcome an enemy and win rather than to experience new cultures or build relationships. In other words, success comes from eliminating competitors, not making friends. These games allow the player to act out fantasies, which include becoming a successful football player in the NFL, being a professional skateboarder, or testing one’s bravery as soldiers fighting an elusive enemy. Brunner, Bennett, & Honey [2] conclude that most popular computer games emphasize “victory over justice, competition over collaboration, speed over flexibility, transcendence over empathy, control over communication, and force over facilitation” (pp. 81-82). These qualities make most games more attractive to boys than to girls.”[13]
So most fantasy games aimed at males can use masculine, stereotypical characters because it proven to be what male players enjoy playing with.
CONCLUSION
Despite our obsession with the beauty of the modelled character and create a likeness, we also want a character who is easily connectable to ourselves, for example, games where you are able to customise your character are always more popular. Halo for an example, the character is always masked, meaning the imagination that goes into becoming your character more.
Maybe it would be more successful for a character to be more androgynous so that it’s easily accepted by both genders. The problem is you can’t change the fact male and female players have different aims in a game and to make a game that suits both, though profitable, it would be difficult and could lose that 72% of players that are male so things are most likely not going to change. It is something for the future to consider though.
The conclusion is the aim of games is to appeal to the market, the 72% of players want a fantasy character that they can both relate to and become, masking reality and the male character in a game needs to be stereotypical male, Adonis, strong and god-like because it’s what the player wants to become, they want to be a one man army and act out their fantasies, becoming more macho examples of themselves, more than female players male players want to act out a fantasy and escape reality which is why now male characters have become more of a stereotype than female, as time has progressed and more players have become female the developers have changed the characters to become more appealing to female players but the male characters were already appealing enough and have not needed to change in digital space.
Bibliography
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Two-Fanatic-World-of-Warctaft-Gamers-Have-Died-Becouse-Of-WoW-11821.shtml
2 http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/
3 http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/
6 http://www.square-enix.com/na/manga/
8 Troubling 'Games for Girls': Notes from the Edge of Game Design
Flanagan Mary
June 2005 Changing Views: Worlds in Play
9 How I met your mother season 3 episode 5: October 22, 2007
10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf4qTxALRKU How I met your mother season 3 episode 5: October 22, 2007
11 Girls Creating Games: Challenging Existing Assumptions about Game Content
Denner Jill, Bean Steve, Werner Linda
June 2005 Changing Views: Worlds in Play
12 Hayley Turnbull May 8th 2011
13 Girls Creating Games: Challenging Existing Assumptions about Game Content
Denner Jill, Bean Steve, Werner Linda
June 2005 Changing Views: Worlds in Play
Kafai, Y.B. and others ed. (2008) Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Media Industries: Roles and Practice
Intro
In this document you will find:
· Introduction
· 2K Games Description
· The Behemoth Description
· Compare companies and the way they work
· Compare their impact on world media
· Bibliography
Introduction
I will be looking at two very different types of games companies, the AAA title; 2K Games who have released games such as ‘Bioshock’ as well as many others, including a lot of games based on Hollywood films[i], and another small indie games company called The Behemoth who have become a cult favourite, rising to fame making free flash games on sites such as www.newgrounds.com but now famous for arcade games for numerous platforms[ii].
In this essay I am going to compare the different styles and approach into the games industry by 2K Games and Behemoth games, what games they have released and how they produced them and compare the effect both companies have had on the outside world through advertising and promotion, including websites and sales. I will be concluding how two very different games companies one AAA title (2K Games) and the other is a small indie games company (The Behemoth) work and what kind of successes have been made.
2K Games Description
2K Games was founded in 2005 in California, surprisingly it has only been a working company for 6 years, when compared to Behemoth’s 9 years, it is surprising the amount of releases but like many of the big games companies, 2K is a subsidiary of Take-Two interactive which also own Rockstar games. Take-Two interactive is a huge company that works in all sides of the games industry; publisher, developer and distributer meaning they work in the millions of dollar profit margin.
The first game released by 2K was ‘Sid Meir’s Pirates’ for the Xbox and Microsoft, a remake of a classic 1980’s title. From their early days they have gone on to make some brilliant titles such as Oblivion, The Civilization sagas, Bioshock, Mafia and the new, hotly awaited, Duke Nukem game.
They operate over many different platforms from PC to Xbox, handheld consoles and PlayStation, mainly working on AAA titles selling millions across the world. 2K are big enough to be on all platforms, their company expands across the world having offices everywhere from Europe and America to Australia and Asia.
It is an extensive company but despite their consumerism, creating family favourites to go with popular films, they have still produce some unique, innovative and brilliant games.
Behemoth Description
The history of Behemoth is more brief but somewhat interesting. It is a small company in San Diego, California, starting life as a couple of animators; Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin. The two worked on a small flash game Alien Hominid; which came to public attention on www.newgrounds.com in 2001, Behemoth started as a company in 2002 after the popularity of Alien hominid which was soon put onto consoles. After the success of this, Castle Crashers was released straight to arcade on Xbox 360 and PS3 and about the same time Alien Hominid was released as a HD version for the PS3 and 360[iii].
Behemoth is small team of artists and designers, now led by Dan Paladin. It is classed as an ‘indie’ company being small, different, alternative and independent, it is unique in it’s art direction.
Despite its size and limited amount of titles, what the company has released is original and very popular, the games have quite a cult following.
Compare companies and the way they work
When you look at these 2 companies there is a very obvious size difference. The sheer size of 2K and it’s vast releases in the past 6 years verses Behemoth who in the past 9 years have only released 2 games. There are 2 reasons for this, one is the physical size of the company and the way they work and the other is the fact 2K is a subsidiary of take-two interactive which means a client base is already formed and a lot of the beginning struggles of a new company have already been overcome.
The workflow, 2k has an extensive amount of people from script and concept to development and art work to PR and advertising, from the 1st stage each game is made by hundreds of people, each with their own role, like a production line, which maximises time and efficiency. Shown in the diagram is a small workflow diagram by the artists of Bioshock to show one small part of making a game.
When looking at Behemoth the whole game comes from the art direction of Dan Paladin where they come up with an idea, like it and make it collaboratively. Publicity-wise on forums and blogs you hear a game is being made and you wont hear from the company until it is released[v] like shown in this very personal interview with Paladin (see v). Where as 2k create a huge advertising campaign around their product to constantly keep the consumers interested, this is the difference between an indie company and an AAA title company.
Compare their impact on world media
As I have begun to talk about previously, their impact is very different. 2K will dedicate a whole website to a game, create forums, TV advertisements, attend gaming events like E3, print advertisement and even public teasers to keep it in the public eye. And even after release advertising continues, often changing to a style of ‘everyone’s got it/best selling game’ to create a consumerism frenzy and convince the public they ‘need’ this game.[vi]
Behemoth, on the other hand, are more underground, would announce they are making a game and put their heads down and work hard behind the scenes to make it, they don’t have the man power or the money to pump into advertising. They are just releasing to arcade, they wouldn’t be made for the shelf and therefore doesn’t need shelf stance. It works online via blogging and social networking, it gets helped by a cult following. Fans create free promotion, which is often good enough for a small company (see [vii]).
blogs such as this [viii]The behemoth website is arty, its almost a portfolio of the artists work with limited information about the company and history, forums and blog, its much more personal, showing the cult following. 2k is full of flash, huge advertisements of their new titles with links to family companies and the individual games WebPages, news updates, a huge merchandise store and a jobs link showing they are constantly recruiting, a big, powerful company that have newsletters and personal logins, its another advertising campaign a type of direction that makes everyday people notice them, you don’t have to be a keen gamer or artist to get involved, apply for a job or appreciate the games.
Conclusion
Despite the huge differences in practise and style, each company has their own success and their own market they create for, I can imagine Behemoth could become a much larger company due to the success of modern hand held consoles like the iPad. It may take off even more in future years looking at the popularity of games like ‘plants vs zombies’ and ‘robot unicorn attack’. It is already showing growth. Whereas 2K has it’s mass followers, like I said before, a type of direction that makes everyday people notice them, you don’t have to be a keen gamer or artist to get involved, apply for a job or appreciate the games.
Despite the pros and cons of being too big or too small they are each in a suitable area of the market and making a successful living for their employees.
Bibliography
[1] http://www.2kgames.com/#/about-2k/, About 2K, accessed 20/2/2011
[1] http://www.thebehemoth.com/ Timeline of Behemoth, accessed 20/2/2011
[1] http://shogungamer.com/news/exclusive-interview-dan-paladin-art-director-behemoth-and-gold-ps3360s-boot-0 accessed Feb 2011
[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gIBCHyqizBcJ:gdcvault.com/play/289/The-Art-and-Technology-Behind+workflow+bioshock&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google.co.uk as a PPT file “The Art and Technology Behind Bioshock's Special Effects” accessed Feb 2011
[1] http://shogungamer.com/news/exclusive-interview-dan-paladin-art-director-behemoth-and-gold-ps3360s-boot-0 accessed Feb 2011
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vndhYvQ3WPM accessed Feb 2011
[1] http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/castlecrashers/index.html accessed Feb 2011
[1] http://www.awesomeallday.com/?p=843 Rory Toolan, ’Awesome all day’ blog accessed Feb 2011
Other sites used:
Games Industry Biz. [Internet] from: <http://www.gamesindustry.biz> [Accessed 26 February 2011].
2K Games [Internet] from <http://www.2kgames.com/#/> [Accessed 26 February 2011].
2K Games info [Internet] from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2k_games> [Accessed 26 February 2011].
The Behemoth . [Internet] from: <http://www.thebehemoth.com/ [Accessed 26 February 2011].
Behemoth info [Internet] from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Behemoth> [Accessed 26 February 2011].
Interactivity
Practical Games studies
What is interaction; an essay on the Zieman Theory
The Zieman theory is all about trying to understand how media makes us interact, how we interact with it, involuntary, subconsciously or consciously. Games uses this interaction heavily through the choices the player makes and the amount of control the player has over the characters and the amount of control the game has over the player. Zieman is a modern philosopher who did a study about 20 years ago about the games industry and how it is a serious contender to be taken as seriously as films, books and television, it is a brilliant narrative tool, under estimated by the public and especially in the days of this theory. Now gaming is becoming far more important and this theory is being noticed as more relevant.
Introduction
What is interactivity?
Interactivity is something we do on a day to day basis without even realising, in this document I want to explore how different media leads us to interact, especially games and their influence on this modern world.
Here are the questions I am looking to answer:
· What is interactivity?
· Are all Medias interactive?
· Cognitive interactivity (how you feel within the fictional world your in, how you connect emotionally with a game.
· Explicit interactivity making choses
· Difference between films and games
What is interactivity?
Interactivity is defined by interacting with something else; person or object, speech and anything that involves communicating with someone or something else, in very broad terms.
It doesn’t just mean one thing because we spend all day interacting, I am looking at how interactivity is the very essence of what a game is.
Are all medias interactive?
The short answer to this is yes, because no matter what we do, whether it be an advert we walk past, we still read it and absorb the information and therefore interact with it. Its very easy to feel you don’t interact with medias around us because much of media out there is subliminal, but this also comes under the ‘what is media’ question because whatever we call ‘media’ is, in essence, interactive.
Cognitive interactivity (how you feel within the fictional world your in, how you connect emotionally with a game.)
This is incredibly important when designing a game or even writing a book, you have to create a whole world that the reader/player can become involved with and find an outcome, this is linked very strongly to narrative, you can create a scenario that the player reacts with using the genre like horror or characters or other elements. The player must connect with the story because without that connection the player will reject the game, for example; the games controls must respond in a recognisable way or this could cause the interactivity to not take place.
Explicit interactivity, making choices
This is where you as a player make the choices throughout a scenario, these choices are what separates a game from films and books, with a game, unlike these medias, you decide the direction although you are stuck inside limitations and the boundaries of the game. The environment you are in can lead you to this decisions or scripted events, for example in ‘metal gear solid’ you have to think about how you want to move through the level either going in all guns blazing and make a run for it or sneak around cleverly in order to kill silently from behind.
Difference between films and games
This leads me on to talking about the differences between films and games, games are essentially stories, like films, that you can change, make your own and interact with. Technically a game is like a film, but the emotional attachment is a lot stronger, the decisions made lead you in certain directions and pull you into keep playing.
On the other hand it can be completely different, looking at arcade games there is no real ending, the ending is surviving for as long as possible, these games break that narrative mould, some are very basic with a single goal or outcome but the more complex the game gets the more it turns back towards a narrative.
The main difference between films and games is the decisions you make depending on how the game makes you feel, you can feel far more involved and want the best or worst for a character where as a film has a single outcome, you react but don’t physically interact.
The important thing is you do still interact with books, films, newspapers or anything else used for communication, it is not a direct communication but it’s intention is to communicate and this is in a way their similarity because even though games seem more interactive they still are scripted and still have limitations.
Back to this theory, in conclusion I feel that the Zieman theory is correct in his thinking about games as more than a past time, it is the new media that we have to look at like books, they are just as important and need to be noticed, they have a much more powerful effect on people because of this interaction, it makes you feel you have made these choices and almost blur reality, it has been in the news a lot recently in a negative light with people killing because of such games. Zieman realises that we have to understand how the interactivity affects our lives to stop this negative press whilst keeping players enthralled. Think of games in the same way as any other media, review them, talk about them and play them as another way of interacting with objects and now other people.
Bibliography:
Lecture with Mary Clare Isaaman | November 12th 2010
Website: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/3/4/3/p113438_index.html
