In the year 2013, Keiji Inafune, director of the highly celebrated Mega Man series of games, had come out on Kickstarter announcing that he would create a new property, a spiritual successor to the Mega Man franchise. The name was Mighty Number 9, and all Mr Inafune asked for was 900 thousand dollars to help get it made. Fans of Mega Man flocked to Kickstarter and gave him his 900 grand, and then to show how much faith they had in him, they gave him another 3 million, 100 thousand dollars. Expectations were very high, but there was a slight bump in the road.
A controversy arose when a girl named Dina Abou Karam made a piece of Fan Art of the main character of Mighty Number 9, Beck, as a female. So far, no big deal, this is common in Fan Art, and it even has a name: Rule 63. (There is always a female version of a male character, and vice versa). Then, Dina made a comment, asking the makers to make Beck a female robot because, well, why not? Seriously, that was her argument, "why not?" More on that later.
Dina Abou Karam's rendition of Beck, from Mighty Number 9. Many people have called it awful, but I think it's an alright drawing. Nothing special, but alright.
So far, no big deal, just a random girl on the net posting fan art of a project she's supporting and asking, rather nicely it must be added, for some changes in aesthetics. But then, something happened. Dina got hired for the project as a community manager for Mighty Number 9. Her job? Manage the community. That means that she goes to the message board, looks at what the people are writing, and takes that to her higher ups. If there's spam, she has to delete it. If there's harassment, she has to deal with it promptly. She's basically a mod.
And this is where the proverbial shit hit the fan. Up until that moment, Dina was the girl who kept posting fanart of Rule 63 Beck on the message boards, going on and on about "caring about women's representation in gaming". How did people respond? Well:
A lot of people were not happy with Dina's new position. They were not happy because they did not know Dina as a member of 'their' community, but as a "Social Justice Warrior" who came to this game and support it not because she loved Mega Man, or that she believed in what Keiji Inafune wanted to create, but because, by her own admission, her boyfriend was working on the project. By her own admission, Dina has never played Mega Man. This was a Kickstarter supported by fans, donated to by fans with the expectation, the PROMISE, that this project would be worked on by veterans of a franchise that is very much beloved across the world. And here, suddenly, is a woman no one had heard of before, managing a community where she made herself unwelcome because she expressed that she was never a fan of the franchise that this project was trying to honor.
And now, a little logic. Should that matter? Logically, no. It should not matter that a person be a fan of a franchise in order to monitor and moderate a message board, because that's literally one of the easiest jobs ever. All you gotta do is enforce the rules. But Dina isn't a 'mod', she's a community manager. She does more than moderate, she represents a link between the fans and the work crew. She represents the crew to the fans, and the fans to the crew. And here is where we see why the fans would have a problem: she does a piss poor job at doing both.
Dina tweeted on her Twitter that she was no fan of Mega Man. When the community showed this evidence, what did Dina do? Lock her Twitter, delete her tweet, and act like nothing happened. Ladies and gentlemen, this is rather unprofessional and immature. You know, it's one thing to admit to never being a part of the fandom whose board you are moderating, but to try and act like you never admitted such a thing, and try and delete all evidence that you did? That just shows that you are incapable of owing up.
And really, this whole debacle speaks poorly not just of Dina, but of Comcept (the company making Mighty Number 9) as well. Yes, Comcept made it clear Dina had NO influence at all in the direction the game would take, but let's ask a question: was this enough? To me, this should have been enough to assuage the backers who were worried (needlessly in hindsight) that this known Social Justice blogger would influence the direction of the game. The worries that Dina's philosophies would steer the direction that the game would take should have been put to rest by this official statement. And, in all honesty, had that been the ONLY issue with Dina and Mighty Number 9, then everything would be fine. But it's not the only issue.
There's the cronyism, the fact that Dina got her job because she knew people working on the game. There's the abhorrent representation, of Dina editing, and sometimes deleting, posts made by those who make it clear they do not like her.We have a community that feels poorly represented, by someone who has not only admitted to NOT being a fan of Mega Man like they are, but has done everything in her power to make herself untouchable from criticism, even when a LOT of this criticism is legitimate.
And then, the inevitable White Knighting arrives. Ian Miles Cheong, a video game journalist for Gameranx put in his two cents with his article "Be Respectful and Considerate: Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter explodes with misogynist rage". Here's a link: http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/19333/article/be-respectful-and-considerate---mighty-no-9-kickstarter-explodes-with-misogynist-rage/. Already we know whose side Mr Cheong is on by the title of his article, but it does not end there. We also have the typical Tumblr drama, such as this link, which reduces the complaints of the community into pure misogyny: (Edit April 20, 2015: The link has been dead for a while, so I deleted it.)
To be certain, and let's be fair here, there is indeed a lot of "crying wolf" about Dina and her position, a lot of hyperbole, slippery slope fallacious arguing that, when viewed dispassionately, one can see it for what it is: hysteria. THIS is what needs to be addressed and criticized. But, these hysterical arguments do not, in any way, shape, or form, represent the community's unhappiness with Dina and Comcept, and to dismiss the dissatisfaction of an entire community that has invested 4 million dollars in a game on being entirely about ONE woman's feminism, is a disservice to each and every backer that gave their hard earned money to this project on good faith.
This isn't about anti feminism or misogyny. This isn't about Patriarchy, or any of that nonsense that Social Justice Sallies like to spew on Tumblr or Reddit or any other website. It's about customer satisfaction, it's about community, it's about gaining a position by earning it with your skills vs gaining a position via cronyism. So, why reduce it to be about misogyny?
There IS sexism in gaming, and this is a fact. Look at how many games reduce their female characters, needlessly it must be added, to be little more than sex symbols just to boost sales. I've spoken about this before here: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-thoughts-on-sexism-in-games.html. And yes, there has been some sexism here too. The sexism, however, was expressed by a few backers ONLY. It was expressed by the most hysterical, the ones who were certain that Dina was going to force her feminist agenda into the game and ruin it, RUIN IT, by making it feminist friendly. People, having a feminist do a work does not mean the work itself will be terrible. I need only point to Lauren Faust, a well known, proud feminist who has made animated works that have earned well deserved accolade. Her work on My Little Pony has made its latest iteration, arguably, the most popular, most well received incarnation.
But what shouldn't be done is to simply take the words of a minority and then paint it as what EVERYONE feels like. This is what Ian Cheong did. This is what Screw Attack did. They focused so much on the sexism of a few, that they swept the dissatisfaction of the many. The people who were unhappy with how Dina acted were, in effect, silenced because of a few crazies that needed to be ignored. Edit April 20, 2015: Thanks to Gamergate, we now know why. This was a precursor to the "Gamers are dead" articles of August 2014. We should have seen those coming.
We often fail to understand a position because we take the works, the words of a few, and then assume everyone else feels this way too. And you know what? This goes both ways. We trivialize sexism in games because ONE internet critic had been caught lying about her credentials. We completely ignore the legitimate complaints of women in the industry (such as the ones that suffer sexual harassment) because we focus so much on the Social Justice Sallies that complain about how Peach doesn't have a game to herself. We can't keep doing that.
This whole debacle regarding Dina and Mighty Number 9 is not an isolated incident; it's yet another manifestation of a bigger symptom in gaming culture: our failure to communicate, and to listen. We have to listen, clearly and dispassionately, in order to get anything done.
Edit April 20, 2015: Dina Abou Karam has quit her position in Comcast.
This isn't about anti feminism or misogyny. This isn't about Patriarchy, or any of that nonsense that Social Justice Sallies like to spew on Tumblr or Reddit or any other website. It's about customer satisfaction, it's about community, it's about gaining a position by earning it with your skills vs gaining a position via cronyism. So, why reduce it to be about misogyny?
There IS sexism in gaming, and this is a fact. Look at how many games reduce their female characters, needlessly it must be added, to be little more than sex symbols just to boost sales. I've spoken about this before here: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-thoughts-on-sexism-in-games.html. And yes, there has been some sexism here too. The sexism, however, was expressed by a few backers ONLY. It was expressed by the most hysterical, the ones who were certain that Dina was going to force her feminist agenda into the game and ruin it, RUIN IT, by making it feminist friendly. People, having a feminist do a work does not mean the work itself will be terrible. I need only point to Lauren Faust, a well known, proud feminist who has made animated works that have earned well deserved accolade. Her work on My Little Pony has made its latest iteration, arguably, the most popular, most well received incarnation.
But what shouldn't be done is to simply take the words of a minority and then paint it as what EVERYONE feels like. This is what Ian Cheong did. This is what Screw Attack did. They focused so much on the sexism of a few, that they swept the dissatisfaction of the many. The people who were unhappy with how Dina acted were, in effect, silenced because of a few crazies that needed to be ignored. Edit April 20, 2015: Thanks to Gamergate, we now know why. This was a precursor to the "Gamers are dead" articles of August 2014. We should have seen those coming.
We often fail to understand a position because we take the works, the words of a few, and then assume everyone else feels this way too. And you know what? This goes both ways. We trivialize sexism in games because ONE internet critic had been caught lying about her credentials. We completely ignore the legitimate complaints of women in the industry (such as the ones that suffer sexual harassment) because we focus so much on the Social Justice Sallies that complain about how Peach doesn't have a game to herself. We can't keep doing that.
This whole debacle regarding Dina and Mighty Number 9 is not an isolated incident; it's yet another manifestation of a bigger symptom in gaming culture: our failure to communicate, and to listen. We have to listen, clearly and dispassionately, in order to get anything done.
Edit April 20, 2015: Dina Abou Karam has quit her position in Comcast.
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