"Tom Clancy's Bonestorm"- A rebuttal

So on Thursday, I wrote a blog entry decrying the undue harassment that Samantha Allen had received following her critique of Giant Bomb's decision to hire another white guy. Today, however, I put aside that in order to critique a writing of hers, named "Tom Clancy's Bonestorm 2014, and why video game titles need to grow up". Why do I do this? Because I believe in debate, I believe in civil discourse, and also, because I believe she deserves to see that whatever criticism she gets is well warranted. This blog entry will contain her original writing uncensored, copy pasted directly from a link that will be provided at the end of this paragraph, with a break between paragraphs to offer my rebuttal. Anything she originally wrote will be in bold, and my rebuttal will be written beneath that. The following is done for educational and critical purposes, and thus is protected under copyright law. Her original work can be found here: http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/27/5841360/the-problem-with-game-names

It’s been almost twenty years since Bart greedily eyed the fictional game Bonestorm through a glass display case on The Simpsons.

Bonestorm was a hilarious prop precisely because it captured the puerile adolescence of '90s games, games with ridiculously masculinized titles like Duke Nukem or Doom or Diablo or Command & Conquer, that catered to boyhood fantasies of violence and domination.

I recall that episode, it was the one where Bart Simpson got caught shoplifting a copy of a video game and Marge spent a good chunk of the episode being distant from the boy because she thought she mothered him too much, but at the end of the episode Bart learns that he has taken her love for granted and thus tries to redeem himself to her. "Marge be not proud" was the name, fantastic episode. Anyway, Samantha Allen misses the opportunity to here to point out that the fictional game Bonestorm also serves to make fun of the then growing trend for video games to be getting exceedingly more violent, while also playing up the growing concern parents had over this violent content. Bonestorm specifically makes fun of the Fighting Game genre, which at the time was best known for two games: Street Fighter 2, and Mortal Kombat. If you would recall, Mortal Kombat at the time was causing quite a bit of controversy over it's violent content (mostly blood and cartoony violence which these days are, to be frank, laughable). The entire decade was known for its violent media, and video games were no exception. Other violent video games of the time were Pit Fighter and Killer Instinct. And for the record, another joke from that episode was naming off several games with content and titles similar to Bonestorm, which apparently already came before the eponymous game. If I recall, those names were Bonebath, Bloodbath, Bloodstorm, and Bloodbath 2.

Samantha Allen here points out that titles like Duke Nukem, Diablo, Doom, and Command and Conquer are "ridiculously masculinized". Quite a few problems with that assertion, so let's go at it one by one. First, Doom is a concept, meaning inevitable destruction or ruin. Diablo is the Spanish word for the Devil. Command means to give orders, and conquer means to subjugate others to your will. So, how is this masculinized? By saying that names like Doom, Diablo, and Command and Conquer are given masculine traits, Samantha Allen is indirectly admitting that doom is something inherently male, that women can't command or conquer (I have one word for you: Boadicea. Look her up) and that the Devil is a male.  She also completely misses the point that the title Duke Nukem is intentionally masculine AND over the top because it reflects the over the top nature of the game itself. Samantha here also implicitly states that all boys fantasize about violence and domination. What's that called? Oh yeah, stereotyping, and it is just as harmful as saying that all girls dream of getting married and have kids. Can't believe I have to pull a "Not all Boys are Like That" here, but this is ridiculous. You know, not all boys dream about killing things and blowing things up. Some boys dream about being heroes, like firemen or cops. Some boys dream of being doctors, while others want to be, and get ready for this shocking revelation, teachers, husbands, and dads. And another thing: using the term "masculinized" as a negative kind of implies that being masculine is inherently wrong. Would you like it if I used the term "feminized" as a negative as well?

In the two decades since Bonestorm, video games have reached new levels of cultural and artistic legitimacy. Both the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the Grammys now recognize the artistry of game makers. Video games are now featured in museums around the world from The Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian to the recent Alternative Voices in Game Design exhibit at the Museum of Design and Architecture.

I am glad to see online critics recognize how far video games have gone to be recognized as an art form as well as a commercial enterprise.

But one overlooked aspect of games hasn’t changed nearly enough: their titles. Even though games now have better writing and art than ever before, they still tend to be given titles that are boorish at worst and bland at best. Bulletstorm, after all, is not a far cry from Bonestorm. And while Spec Ops: The Line does something a little deeper than Contra, you wouldn’t know it from its title.

Oh really? Bulletstorm sounds like a shooter, while Bonestorm sounds a bit more vague to me. Yes, both games sound over the top and violent, but guess what? It's because they ARE. Take a look at the name Bulletstorm, it sounds like a shooter, and guess what it is? A SHOOTER! Wow, it's almost like the game developers wanted you to know what kind of game it was, so you'd know what you were buying!

I absolutely adore that Samantha states that Spec Ops: The Line does something a little deeper than Contra, but she doesn't say what it is. I am left to assume that she refers to the original Contra, a game on the NES about a pair of commandos shooting guns at aliens. Spec Ops: The Line is about a team of commandos who go to Dubai in search of survivors from some kind of disaster (I've not played it, and yeah it kind of shows, but I DID look it up). But Contra was released in 1987 while Spec Ops: The Line was released in 2012, so of course the latter will be able to do things the former wouldn't be able to do. And also, take a look at the titles: Contra is a reference to the Nicaraguan Contras, a militaristic group that opposed the Sandinistas, a group of social democrats. The name would be fresh in the public mind due to the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Oliver North would illegally sell Iran weapons so the US government could fund the Contra. It is also the Spanish word for against. Spec Ops: The Line is much easier to figure out: Spec Ops means Special Operations, and The Line is a reference to the fictional Line between right and wrong, good and evil. So basically, one could expect a military game where good and evil, right and wrong play a major theme in the story line. I wonder, is that "a little deeper" than a game about shooting aliens?

As video games mature as a medium, they need better titles, titles that are beautiful, evocative and unburdened by sequelized numeration or copyrighted phrases. In order to help aid this process along, I want to outline some of the most common pitfalls of video game titling conventions before presenting some examples of titles that take video games seriously as an artistic medium.

Alright boys and girls, we're about to be struck by the mighty fist of EDUCATION!

THE FUNCTIONAL TITLE

Many game titles are completely functional: the title describes the main action of the game or the protagonist of the game. Bionic Commando is a game about a commando with a bionic arm. 'Splosion Man is a game about an exploding man named 'Splosion Man. Grand Theft Auto is a game about stealing cars. You play as an elite sniper in Sniper Elite.

These functional titles are all denotation and no connotation; they tell you what the game is about and nothing more. Nothing is left to the imagination. What you see is what you get. No one bought a copy of Spec Ops expecting a fanciful platformer and no one goes into Gears of War expecting to pluck daisies.

YOU PLAY AS AN ELITE SNIPER IN SNIPER ELITE

The straightforwardness of functional titles allows them to function as streamlined, marketing tools. No one driving by a billboard or standing in a store aisle will be confused trying to figure out what your game is on a fundamental level. The title of the work becomes nothing more than a tool for communicating content to an audience.

But functional titles are boring, uncreative ways to communicate that content. The right title can suggest the thematic content of the game without spelling it out entirely.Sleeping Dogs, for instance, evokes the turbulence of criminal life without being called, say, True Crime: Hong Kong.

Wow, it's almost as if video games were also products to be purchased, like the video game industry is a collection of companies, big and small, and run by people that are trying to make money! Have you ever heard of a thing called advertisement? It's when you tell people what your product is about. False advertisement is against the law; you can't lie to people about what your product is. 

Video games are titled, named, so that people will know what they are. Like you said, no one is going into Gears of War expecting to pluck daisies. THAT'S THE POINT. The game maker wanted you to buy the game, so they gave it a name that would tell you what to expect. The thing you missed out on is that they also gave it a name that could also leave an impression. Gears of War evokes the image of war and gives it a sort of machine like characteristic, as if war were a machine whose gears kept it running. And that leads to the question: "What are the gears of war?" Say Samantha, did you just kind of made your own point moot by including this example?

THE ADOLESCENT TITLE

Adolescent titles are often built around a nostalgia for a certain kind of straight male adolescence that accompanied the rise of the video game medium in the 80s and 90s. Many adolescent titles make explicit reference to death, blood or gore (e.g. Left 4 Dead, Splatterhouse, Red Dead Revolver), the cultural mainstays of young boys in the action movie-obsessed '90s.

I just LOVE how Samantha is using the term adolescent as a negative here. And not just that, she explicitly masculinizes it by tying it to straight male adolescence, as if straight teenage boys are the only people capable of enjoying works with lots of gore, blood, or death. Because it's not like straight teenage girls enjoy watching Friday the 13th, or that gay teens could sit down and have some fun while watching Hatchet, or Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh yeah, teenage girls didn't see ANY of that, no they ALL read the Babysitters Club, they ALL watched Jem, and they ALL stayed away from such HORRID franchises like GI Joe, Rambo, Star Trek, Star Wars, and every other male oriented franchise. Boys watch boy things, girls watch girl things. And yes, I am being sarcastic, and I say this because, in my experience, sarcasm is much harder to convey on print than on spoken dialogue.

Also, Samantha here seems to forget that these titles are functional, and are built as more than just "nostalgia for a certain kind of male adolescence". Left 4 Dead, for example, is rather clever because on the onset it looks like it's using the number four as a replacement to the word for, but it's in reality a sly reference on how it's a 4 player game! Left 4 Dead: there's four people, there's zombies, you're alone. You're four people left for dead. Clever!

And what of Red Dead Revolver? It almost sounds like a title to a Western, like High Noon, A Fistful of Dollars, No Country For Old Men, etc. And when I looked it up, guess what it turned out to be: a Western. You get cowboys and shootouts, the stuff you'd normally see in a Western film. So, it sounds to me like not only was the title functional, it was also rather artistic.

It's almost as if Samantha is ignoring the positives in favor of presenting the negatives in order to prove her point. Hmm, sounds dishonest. Academically dishonest.

More subtle still are adolescent titles that simply evoke values, concepts, or ideas that are traditionally associated with a certain kind of masculine power (e.g. Dishonored,Destiny, Titanfall). These titles don’t explicitly evoke violence and death but they still carry the weight of traditionally masculine ideals of power and honor.

I think this is the third, maybe fourth time that Samantha has implied that traditional masculinity is a negative to be avoided at all cost. You know what that reminds me of? Little boys who refuse to play with dolls because it's "too girly", or little girls who won't pick up a Transformer because "it's boys stuff". Not only is Samantha reinforcing traditional gender roles, she is demonizing the male. Moreover, she explicitly states that power and honor are masculine ideals, implying that these are not ideals women can have without resorting to masculinity, therefore sacrificing some of their femininity. That's misogynistic, because it completely erases the many women in history who have held power, to name but a FEW: Queen Isabela of Castille, Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Victoria, Nefertiri, Cleopatra, Boadicea, Leonora of Aquitania, Anne Bonny, Sayyida al Hurra, Ching Shih, Margaret Thatcher, and so on! And what, women don't have honor? Women can't strive for honor? That's the sort of thing one could expect to hear from wife beaters, not from professional women who owe their entire career to the sacrifices of the women who refused to bow down to a society that demanded they be barefoot and in the kitchen.

Adolescent titles often accurately reflect the content in the game itself: Splatterhouse isn’t exactly a game that deserves an arthouse title like Being Rick. In these cases, video game titles do serve as an indicator of the maturity of the medium.

This is one of the most disgusting paragraphs in this entire essay, and it paints Samantha Allen as an art snob who refuses to acknowledge that people might enjoy Sharknado as much as they'd enjoy Citizen Kane. Furthermore, Splatterhouse is a Beat 'em Up that takes inspiration from schlocky 80's slasher films, like Friday the 13th. The name also evokes the Exploitation films of the 70's, the same way Quentin Tarantino did for his double feature, Grindhouse. In this case, the developers picked a fantastic name, one that not only tells the gamer what they're getting into, but what they are buying. Had the game been called Being Rick, barely anyone would want to play it, because no one would know what it was about.

But compelling games are sometimes saddled with adolescent titles in a bid for mainstream appeal. The title Red Dead Redemption, for instance, suggests a lethal quest for vengeance when the game itself functions as a tragic rumination on the hollowness of revenge

And what would you have named it, Samantha? What name would you have given this game that would not just tell people what it was about, but would also give it an identity AND reflected its themes at the same time? Because really, I think Red Dead Redemption was the perfect title. But that's just me.

There’s a recent trend, too, of video game developers "ironically" deploying adolescent titles like Bulletstorm or Broforce. While these titles can be cute, there’s only a hair-splitting difference between the actual adolescent game and the "ironic" adolescent game. Even the most discerning of video game outsiders would react to a title like Bulletstorm in the same way that Marge Simpson reacts to Bonestorm.

How do Sci-Fi outsiders react to a title like "Tales of Earthsea"? How would you react to a novel called "Ready Player One"? Or a film titled "The Beautiful Country"? Or a TV show called "How I Met Your Mother"?

Samantha here had a brilliant idea and she threw it away in favor of acting condescending to the video game industry. She could have made the point of how a title can grab the attention of someone unfamiliar with the genre, or even the media, and help them familiarize themselves with something they were unfamiliar with previously. She could have made the point that a good title alone can help generate enough buzz for a work that could otherwise been dismissed, like Snakes on a Plane, a film that managed to score the acting talent of Samuel L Jackson by virtue of its title alone. She had the opportunity to open some REAL dialogue in regards to the practice of naming games, and she wasted it.

THE RESTRICTED TITLE

Restricted titles are boring amalgamations of intellectual properties, brands, and sequel numbers. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 or Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 are perfect examples of restricted titles that read like a list of bullet points on a corporate memo. They are required by contract to include Tony Hawk and Tom Clancy in the title, they must reference a particular brand for marketing purposes, and they must differentiate the game from its predecessors.

Restricted titles reflect the way in which large-scale video game developers produce content: iterate, iterate, iterate. The leap in title from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, for instance, shows that developers often let market share and brand awareness control the title. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a bid for players of the first three numbered Call of Duty games.

But once the Modern Warfare brand gained massive cultural awareness, the Call of Duty numeration was dropped altogether. Restricted titles, much like functional titles, feel as if they were produced by a machine rather than a creative team.

Again, this needs to be said, and I'll expand on it: Video games are not just art, they are a business. These are real people who work long hours, sitting in front of a computer, typing away, coding, trying to release a product to be sold within a deadline. Game developers are under a lot of pressure to produce a top quality product AND release it on time. If they fail to do so, they not only risk having the product pulled (and thus losing their jobs) but also risk inciting the wrath of their consumers (which could lead to the game failing WHEN it's launched, IF it's launched). Word of mouth, like any business, can make or break a product.

This was yet another wasted opportunity to point out the perilous balance that media must have between the creative force and the bottom line. Video games, like all forms of entertainment media, require creative people to come up with ideas constantly. BUT it also requires people that put technical work into the product, therefore one man's labor of love becomes another man's source for a paycheck, and therefore a living. And thus sacrifices are made on both ends, with the technical people putting in long and grueling work hours to achieve the creative people's vision, and the creative people conceding to business folk control in order to generate money for and from the project. That's why we often see games like Medal of Honor get numbered sequels: in order to make money, there needs to be brand recognition. It is simply more cost and market effective to churn out Medal of Honor 2 than to make the same game but call it Reflections of the Front Line Soldier.

THE ARGUMENT FOR GOOD NAMES

Video game titles don’t have to be functional, adolescent or trademarked into oblivion. Video game titles — even mainstream game titles — can be artful, creative and memorable without sacrificing descriptiveness or clarity. Here are some examples of recent video game titles that got it right.

Mirror’s Edge is a beautiful title, perhaps one of the most captivating mainstream game titles in recent memory. Mirror’s Edge could have easily been given a functional title like "Runner" but, instead, the publishers opted for a name that evokes the precariousness of parkour and the glassy exteriors of the game’s futuristic skyscrapers.

Black Rock’s Pure bucked the trend of ATV games with ridiculous functional and adolescent titles like ATV Offroad Fury or MX vs MTV: Alive. In addition to being an exceptional game, the title Pure communicates the beauty of the game’s natural environments and captures the rush of launching off a cliff on an off-road vehicle.

She's got a point. I agree with her, game developers CAN be a bit more creative with their titling, and there are several good examples of creative titles out there in the market. That said, I cannot agree with her once again using the term adolescent like it were a negative.

Beyond the obligatory brand tie-in, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs has an excellent title. The subtitle A Machine for Pigs is dark, mysterious and unconventional. It sparks the imagination while creating a hushed conversation around the game: "What could this possibly mean?" It would have been so easy to call this game Amnesia 2 but The Chinese Room decided to showcase its creativity instead.

Other games like Journey, Gone Home and The Last of Us respect the depth of their content with unique titles that capture the essence of their respective games without overexplaining. But positive examples are all too few for this point in video game history. If you scroll through upcoming releases for 2014 you’ll be hard-pressed to find a mainstream game title that doesn’t fall into one of the three categories outlined in this article.

All forms of mainstream media demand critique, and I personally feel that gaming culture should not be restricted to simply what the big name companies churn out, the same way cinema should not be restricted by major studio productions. I think the mainstream gaming scene should be seen as what it is: a business that occasionally churns out a masterpiece in between truly commercial products, much like Hollywood. In fact, that's exactly what it is. Every now and then Hollywood will release a thought provoking, moving masterpiece of a film, but it'll be sandwiched between the sequel of an action film, a forgettable kid's film, yet another Rom-Com, and another R rated comedy. The gaming industry does exactly that as well; every game like Gone Home will be released alongside Madden 20xx, FIFA 20xx, Tom Clancy's FPS number X, and Zombie Massacre yet again. THIS is something we CAN criticize, something we SHOULD talk about.

But Samantha didn't. She didn't open up this dialogue.

As video games continue to go through their growing pains as a medium, as writing and characterization improve, and as more talented storytellers are drawn to game development, it’s important that studios choose thoughtful titles that respect the creativity of the work.

After all, a rose by any other name might smell just as sweet, but only a very limited audience would stop to smell a rose called Bonestorm.

As I explained before, the video game industry is one that walks a thin line between its creative and business obligations. This is something that needs to be acknowledged, which is something Samantha didn't do.

Samantha failed to so much as mention WHY a game company would be interested in having titles that serve more as a marketing tool than as part of the art: Money. Money is the bottom line. The programmers aren't sitting on their butts all day making sure that Ellie's hair from Last of Us looks as natural as possible because of a 'creative vision', they're doing it because it's their job, it's what gets them paid. And to do that, someone must have invested money into the game, to hire all these people to bring the game to life. Game making takes a lot more than programmers, these days it takes composers, voice actors, marketing specialists, play testers, PR people, scriptwriters, the list goes on and on and on! And of course, it takes MONEY. 

Samantha Allen had the opportunity to talk about how the gaming industry should give the art back to artists. She could have spoken about the dichotomy between art and business, about how gaming, and ALL media, walks a thin line between artistic expression and marketing. She could have spoken about how the gaming industry sacrifices artistic vision in order to make a buck, and used the concept of how companies title their games as an example and as a lead in to this conversation.

But she didn't, because she chose instead to use this opportunity to dictate what she thinks is right. She wasted an opportunity for dialogue in favor of wagging her finger at an industry she has zero stake in. She chose to demonize the male instead of presenting ideas. She chose to stick her nose in the air and go "tut tut" instead of offering solutions beyond saying "do better". 

Critics are looked down on because they are seen as incapable of creating what they criticize. But, as the Mysterious Mr Enter has once stated, to be a critic what you need is a passion for what you criticize. What good is a critic that only gives a token nod to the good but viciously always points out the bad? What good is a critic that does little more than nitpick? Criticism is more than just pointing out the flaws, it's pointing out why these flaws bring down the work, and why it could have been better. 

Samantha Allen's article doesn't criticize, it nitpicks. It ignores the realities that forces game companies to make the decisions they do. It demonizes the male, in an unjustifiable manner. It is intellectually dishonest, condescending, and insulting to not just the gaming industry, but to 53% of the gaming population. You know, the male gamers.

Samantha Allen would do well to remember that a title does not affect the quality of the work, only how the work sells to the public. After all, Beethoven's best work is simply called Ode to Joy.