HNRS 353

Yes the title is correct and yes I am a dude.  But I did find the feminists reaction to the Tomb Raider game very interesting.  The quote I liked best was “Some feminists view Lara the female Frankenstein monster as a disturbing trend in computer gaming culture.”  So feminists are comparing Lara Croft to Frankenstein??  As a male I find that quite strange because I would consider Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) the exact opposite of Frankenstein.  But I forget to take into account how this character looks to females and feminist groups.  “She embodies an impure history quite distant from the networked, non-individualistic and non-competitive, community oriented values being promoted by some cyberfeminists on the Internet.”  Wow that seems like a harsh statement at women but is it true?  I think when it comes to video games, yes it is true.  But I’m hoping thats not how feminists feel about the real world.  The article keeps mentioning how this game can be the first step for women to play video games.  For two reasons; one being that the main character is a woman, which is rare enough; two being that with the ability to patch games (edit some of its content), women can edit games to have new gender configurations.  The main character seems to always be a man which may cause women to automatically associate video games with men.  As we can see with the patch of Nude Raider, people know how to edit the content of the game.  I feel like women should come up with a patch that reduces the size of Lara Crafts “curves” to make a statement that females shouldn’t be a “fetish object of the male gaze.”

In Schleiner’s article about gender and gender-roles in video games, she points out early on that before Tomb Raider, characters were “almost exclusively male, with the exception of the princesses offered as battle trophies…” and while Lara Croft is most definitely the heroine in her games, she is also, according to Schleiner, “an idealized, eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well-trained techno-puppet created by and for the male gaze” with “Barbie-like proportions”. I’m pretty sure we have all realized that Barbie does not look like your average woman, so why does this character, described as “a highly educated and adventurous upper-class British woman”, have similar proportions? Is it because people thought that the only way to sell a game centered around a female character was to have her look like that? And if she were less well endowed, would the Tomb Raider games be as successful? I would like to say yes, after all, gameplay would not change at all; the only change would be in the character design. Do you think the Tomb Raider series would be as successful with a Lara Croft that had a different body design? After all, the face of Tomb Raider would be the same, the game of Tomb Raider would be the same, the only thing that wouldn’t be the same would be the character’s proportions.

Once I got past the initial control awkwardness of Façade I was fascinated by the game. In the game the player controls a friend of a couple who has been invited over for an evening. The couple starts to argue, and the player is able to interact with the characters and change the development of the story. Façade was the first game to cause me to feel awkward. Because the game lets you say anything to the couple I felt more attached to the characters, and watching them argue was weird.

Façade had another interesting element. There was a story being played out, one that could be altered depending on what actions you take. There was no possibility for failure. The story may be different if you agree with one of the characters over another, and there are puzzles to be solved if you are going for a specific story, but there is no death and no failure.

Playing Cyber-drama is a truly novel experience. Prior to this I have played many games that have branching stories. The difference here is that the story was the focus of the game. Other games usually focus on game play and puzzles, with an interesting story laid on top, but that was not the case here. The story of this couple’s relationship was the most important part of the experience.