"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

On Samantha Allen and Online Harassment.

So today I was in Tumblr, just minding my own business, when I come across a blog with this screen capture:

Stay classy

Samantha Allen is an online writer who specializes in feminist topics and media, kind of like Anita Sarkeesian, except without a Kickstarter that gained 150K bucks for a 12 part video series that has only released four videos thus far. I took to her website, read a few of her articles, and to be honest, I was not impressed. Her writing style is to the point, but a good look at how she titles her articles makes it clear that she's not here to open up our minds to new ideas so much as she aims to shove her ideas into our heads. That, however, is merely my opinion and impression, and because I believe in letting other people make up their own minds, I offer this link which contains links to several of her writings:   http://samanthaleighallen.wordpress.com/games-writing/

So on June 30th, Samantha Allen wrote a tweet expressing disappointment in Giant Bomb hiring yet another white guy as a writer. Giant Bomb is an online gaming site that hosts game reviews, editorials, and such. Let's take a good look at that picture above: a feminist is expressing disappointment in a video game website hiring someone she does not approve of due to the color of his skin, and we have someone else asking her an honest question: what if the white guy was the most qualified?

Just for fun- An RPG With a Gay Lead!

A few months ago, I was watching the then latest episode of Game Theory, and it said that LGBT representation in gaming is, well...crap. It seems that for every game with a positive representation of LGBT people, there are 10 games with negative representation, and for every 1 game with any LGBT representation (good or bad), there's 55 games without it. For example, Poison from Final Fight has to be the most well known transsexual in video games (though FAR from being the only one) and not only is she a villain, she's just one of many, many mooks for you to beat up. Another example is "Shemale Bop" in Grand Theft Auto V, which, like most media, makes transsexuals and transvestites into little more than a joke. Anyway, my point is, we need better representation of LGBT's in gaming, and today, I am here to propose we make a game that does just that.


Here's my idea. We make an RPG, because this genre is the one that allows for the best storytelling, and that just happens to be my specialty. Anyway, here's the short synopsis: You have two characters, the hero and his boyfriend. The boyfriend happens to be a martial arts expert and is teaching the hero all about some skills. The boyfriend gets called by the mayor of their city to go to the local cave and deal with a monster, so he takes the hero along to test his skills. This is the tutorial dungeon, and the boss is a monster with about 300 health.

Damsel in Distress (Done Right)- Lunar Silver Star Story

Last entry, I talked about how the Damsel in Distress can be used wrong in gaming by showing how Joe and Mack used the trope as their back story. I argued that they used the trope wrong because they turned their female characters into precisely what feminists claim is wrong with the trope: objects to move the story along, trophies to be collected. This is wrong because the Damsel in Distress is part of a Heroic Narrative, of the hero risking life and limb for someone else. But as I said before, the trope is a tool for story telling, and just as it can be used wrong, it can also be used right. Today, we look at a game that made great use of the Damsel in Distress trope: Lunar.

The third of five different versions, and in the eyes of many, the best.

Damsel in Distress (Done Wrong)- Joe and Mack

If you've been paying attention to Feminist Frequency, or if you've at least been visiting websites that have any focus at all on video games, you'd know that Anita S. has released a trilogy of videos which can be summed up in two sentences: Damsels in Distress are common in games. And that's bad. Now, am I here to argue against Anita? Nope, I fully acknowledge that the Damsel in Distress is an all too common trope used in video games. Am I here to agree with her and turn this blog into yet another echo chamber for her thesis? Not at all. Although today's blog entry COULD be seen as me agreeing with her, it is just the first of a duo that aims to show that the Damsel in Distress trope is exactly that: a tool for story telling, that can be done wrong, and be done right. Today I explore a video game that shows just how badly this trope can be used: Joe and Mack.

Dinosaurs were HUGE back in the early 90's.

Between the Lines- The Al Bhed of Final Fantasy X and X-2

I was going to dedicate this post to analyzing the Al Bhed language of Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2, but then I started looking at the Al Bhed themselves, and I found myself fascinated by this fictional tribe of peoples. What is it they represent in the grand scheme of Final Fantasy 10? What parallels exist between this tribe and anything in Real Life?

Ajanouha uh dra vmuun!

Hello? Hell...o?- A Ghost Story...?

In the freeware game Hello? Hell...o? you play as Kazuki, an average man, with an average life. He works from nine to five, and how he pays the price! All he wants is to be left alone in his average home. So why does he always feel like he's in the Twilight Zone? And I always feel like somebody's watching me! And I have no privacy! Oh whoa oh!

Alright, jokes aside, let's talk about this game. Hello? Hell...o? is a short, Freeware horror game made in RPG Maker. And when I say short, I mean "takes you an hour at most" short. In it, as I said before, you play as Kazuki, a man who, one night, goes to a room and  sees several strange happenings around him. The room he is in is haunted you see, by the spirit of a woman named Akari. As the player plays through the game, some details emerge that help explain the haunting somewhat: basically, Akari used to be Kazuki's girlfriend before she died in a car accident.

Akari's ghost, who would probably fit in the Blue Man Group.