Final Post!

For this post, I’m going to analyze my own blog, as done last week, by taking a look at the ethos, pathos, and logos of my own posts.

Ethos – In most posts, I’ve provided a works cited and in-text citations while talking about video games, crediting other websties for the information that I’ve gathered, as well as crediting the video games that I play and gather information from.

Pathos – As shown on my about page, the blog is focused on a topic I am rather passionate about: video games, and how video games are geared more towards boys than girls. The goal of the blog is to bring attention to how such a popular medium is catered towards boys and to create a desire in people to want to bring about a change to that.

Logos – In my arguments about why video games appear to be designed to appeal more to boys than to girls, I present examples such as explicitly provokative character poses and games explicitly designed to be cater towards guys just being guys, while also writing about games with strong female characters to show that it’s possible for games to feature women and still be able to cater to a larger audience.

Polygon Review

This week, I’ll be taking a look at and analyzing a gaming website frequented by many gamers, Polygon, and analyzing the ethos, pathos, and logos of the website.

Launching in 2012, Polygon has since become a reliable source of information for gamers on the internet. From reporting about Black Friday deals for this upcoming Thanksgiving to reviewing recently released games, Polygon reports swiftly and accurately about almost everything related to gaming interests, from video games themselves to even anime.

Ethos: Polygon was created by the larger company Vox Media, which had already established a reputation as a company dedicated to “digging deeper” to report. This established credibility for Polygon as a website dedicated to “deeping deeper” to report about gaming.

Pathos: Polygon publishes a great many reviews of recent video games, but for the most part they are fair reviews that express valid praises and concerns for new games. In the recent review for Fire Emblem Warriors, a game that’s been met with much criticism by fans of the Fire Emblem franchise, the article expresses concern about the frate rate drops during gameplay and the lack of diversity in playable characters without being hateful about the game itself(something that many Fire Emblem fans have not been able to accomplish). The article gives a solid 7.5/10 rating to both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS versions of the game, while still giving an unemotional review of the game, its graphics, and its mechanics.

Logos: In Polygon’s game reviews, they talk about the mechanics of the games before mentioning story and characters, focusing on what a normal person would assume a game review should be about: how the game plays. While each person enjoys different games in different ways, Polygon’s reviews give readers a chance to find out exactly how new games work and whether they’ll be enjoyable before spending money on any new games.

“Boys Will Be Boys” In Final Fantasy XV?

Since its release on November 29th 2016, Final Fantasy XV has been widely regarded as a highly popular game, with upwards of 5 million copies having been sold since the release date(Barder, 2016). However, just because a game is popular does not mean that it doesn’t have its issues; while the game certainly presents very well, some of its underlying themes imply a rather toxic attitude towards the presence of women in a man’s life.

The director of the game, Hajime Tabata, sat down with the gaming website GameSpot in 2015 for an interview about the then-developing Final Fantasy XV, where he was asked about the lack of any playable female characters in the game. In response to this question, Tabata had stated:

“Speaking honestly, an all-male party feels almost more approachable for players. Even the presence of one female in the group will change their behaviour, so that they’ll act differently. So to give the most natural feeling, to make them feel sincere and honest, having them all the same gender made sense in that way.” (Te, 2015)

Essentially, one of the bigger priorities during development of the game seemed to have been preserving the “authenticity” of the interactions between the male characters, restricting the playable cast to only male characters.

While designing the game this way allowed for it to display a certain level of male intimacy that isn’t typically portrayed in modern media, the statement by Tabata still manages to express a horrifically sexist idea: that for men to truly be able to “be themselves”, they have to be completely removed from the female population.

Final Fantasy has never exactly been a series meant to be seen as realistic, as the series’ name suggests. Set in a universe where heroes have cast magic spells, time has been repeatedly stopped or quickened or slowed, and even women have fought alongside men, for some reason developers and directors managed to come under the impression that the idea that men can spend time around women without their personalities somehow becoming suppressed.

 

 

Works Cited

Rhetoric of Writing

In the past few weeks, we have spent class discussing and learning about various rhetorical strategies, such as using ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. To promote the topic of misogyny and feminism in gaming, it’s important to keep the rhetorical strategies used in mind.

Video games are a relatively new form of media, only about 20 years older than social media sites like Facebook, and so younger generations are more inclined to be interested in video games and more likely to grow up while around video games. And so, it’s important to keep kairos in mind while promoting my topic; am I writing about games and themes that people will be familiar with? Will my audience be interested in reading what I have to say? Are my posts relevant to the topic I’m supposed to write about? These are all things to keep in mind while writing.

The topic of my blog revolves around the unfair representation of women in video games, and so a good strategy to promote my topic would be to use pathos to elicit emotion from the audience. My blog is based on the very real notion that women are represented unfairly in most modern video games, and so I want my audience to sympathize with that and want to improve the situation by drawing more public attention to video games that show women as figures who are just as powerful and just as useful as their male counterparts, as opposed to simply being sexual objects or damsels in need of rescuing.

These two rhetorical strategies are what I hope to use the most in my writing in order to promote my topic.

 

Sexism In Video Games and the Gaming Industry

https://prezi.com/fkii2jnwv8wk/sexism-in-video-games-and-the-gaming-industry/

The presentation that I chose is, predictably, about the rampant sexism present in both video games and the gaming industry as a whole. The presentation features an introductory slide at the beginning to alert the viewer of what topics the presentation will focus on, and the titles of each slide are clearly distinguishable from the actual content. The information on each slide is concise yet informative, with images included to emphasize or show an example of sexism in the gaming industry, such as the image of Princess Peach on a slide discussing the damsel-in-distress archetype. The presentation uses simple transitions to move from slide to slide and the material on each slide is able to be connected to the material on each previous slide. The color scheme of the presentation is simple, but works well and the font color contrasts well with the background to be easily readable. There is a wrap-up slide at the end of the presentation that summarizes the information gone over throughout the presentation. All in all, this is a well-made presentation.

A “Glowing” Example of a Female-Positive Game

For decades, Japan has excelled in creating games known as “srpgs” in the gaming community, or “strategy role playing games”, almost entirely pioneering the genre. Strategy RPGs require the player to learn and use battle mechanics in an often turn-based format, with other mechanics such as magic spells and class sets varying from game to game. And so, it’s so surprise that one of the better SRPGs of the modern generation, known as Stella Glow, manages to turn the SRPG genre on its head by drawing together aspects of several types of games; while the game uses a typical fantasy-world setting with magic and swordplay to tell a story about a boy with a destiny to save the world, the game also manages to fit in a fun, light-hearted dating mechanic in a way that positively influences the female characters, especially.

The plot of the game follows a boy named Alto with amnesia, who stumbles apon the knowledge that he’s a legendary person known as a “Conductor” when the village and family that adopted him are utterly destroyed by a magic woman named Hilda. Alto’s power as the Conductor gives him the ability to open the hearts of four girls known as Witches; however, these Witches are not your typical cackling, conniving villain types. The Witches in the game are girls who were chosen by enchanted crystals called Qualias, and once chosen by the Qualia of any element, that girl is turned into a Witch who is able to perform magic by singing.

Alto awakens the full potential of these girls by “tuning” them; when Alto tunes a Witch, he both physically and spiritually enters a world meant to represent the girl’s heart, and defeats whatever insecurities or demons may be plaguing her. For example, when Alto meets the Fire Witch, Sakuya, she is introduced as a mild-mannered, serene priestess who is worshipped by the people of a volcano-fearing nation as the one person whose magic can keep the volcano from erupting. However, Sakuya’s outer personality is revealed to be a complete facade when Alto accidentally spies on her, and he discovers that Sakuya is actually a brash, loud-mouthed, rude woman who only pretends to be kind to appease the people who worship her. The cognitive dissonance Sakuya experiences from hiding who she truly is from the public causes so much mental strain that she finds herself unable to sing and cast her magic to calm the volcano’s yearly rage, and so Alto offers to tune her in order to clear her mind and her heart. Once inside Sakuya’s heart, Alto finds himself and his comrades fighting shadowed clones of Sakuya’s multiple personalities, until all that is left is the Sakuya at her very core: a scared, sharp-tongued woman afraid of being thrown away for the crime of being herself. (Stella Glow, 2015)

While the game is mainly focused on Alto’s adventures tuning the Witches so that they can properly sing and perform, the game does not portray the relationship between Alto and the four Witches as him being their white knight or their savior. Instead, Alto merely supports them as they all work together: the first Witch in the game, the Water Witch Lisette, is Alto’s childhood friend whom he always tries to help build confidence in herself; the second Witch, the Wind Witch Popo, is a hard-working girl whom Alto watches out for to keep others from taking advantage of her kindness; the third Witch, the Fire Witch Sakuya, is a brash girl whom Alto openly admires for her tendency not to minch words or spare feelings; and the fourth Witch, the Earth Witch Mordimort, is a traumatized girl who watched her family be killed, that Alto encourages to recover at her own pace and does not try to rush her just to accomplish his own goals.

They way that the player goes about deepening Alto’s relationship with these women is similar to how he bonds with his other allies like a crafty merchant or a brawny knight: the player seeks out to have Alto converse with them during pre-designated free times, and the more conversations Alto has, the deeper their bond grows and the stronger his allies become. However, the Witches add another step to the formula: when their insecurities and human weaknesses are brought up in these conversations, their hearts become locked all over again, and the player is required to have Alto undergo solo missions to tune the Witches again and reassure them that they are not alone in their struggles.

Instead of writing a narrative about a boy who is able to use his powers in order to accomplish his goals, Alto is a hero who takes a gentler, more roundabout approach; Alto uses his ability to Tune the Witches in order to help them work out their insecurities and their worst fears, and in tune, they lend him their time and their abilities in order to help him stop the end of the world. Stella Glow is a game that manages to dish out a game of the SRPG genre with a fairly generic cookie-cutter male protagonist, that still manages to provide a generally colorful female cast that remain useful allies throughout the game.

Works Cited

  • Imageepooch. Stella Glow. Atlus, 2015. Nintendo 3DS.

“Buttgate”: Where Was the Controversy?

Throughout the years, the video gaming community has been rife with controversy, just like any other community; video games have been accused of encouraging violence in children, of leading people to lead exponentially less social lives, even considered by some to be the “downfall of society”. However, at times, the community itself can be the most toxic thing about video games.

During early-to-mid 2016, the company Blizzard’s now-popular online shooter game Overwatch underwent a period of beta testing while it was still new, and had forums open for players to share feedback. One such user, with the username “Fipps”, took to the forums, and complained about one particular aspect of the game: one of the unlockable victory poses for one of the main characters, Tracer.

tracer controversy

Tracer is a spunky, cheerful girl who’s shown in many of the trailers for the game, often with the phrase “Cheers, love, the cavalry’s here!”, and many consider her to be the “face” or the mascot of the game. And so, when an undeniably sexualized pose of Tracer was found to be unlockable with the game, several fans took issue with it; Overwatch is known to include many characters with various body sizes and even species, both sexualized and not, and so to see this out of character pose of Tracer glancing over the shoulder with her butt very prominent in her skin-tight suit seemed very confusing and jarring to the fans.

Beta tester Fipps brought this up in the forums, and Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan promptly responded confirming that the pose would be removed and replaced, as well as apologizing and promising the Overwatch team would do better. It was a simple solution to what seemed like a simple problem, with little need for further fuss.

Right?

No, not right.

After Kaplan’s official statement and apology, Overwatch fans exploded with both outrage and gratitude. For some users, on Reddit and on the official Overwatch forums, the issue became one of creative freedom: why should Blizzard have to bend the knee to submit to the will of a handful of offended players? Why should the company have to pander to one crowd just to put up an air of equality and inclusiveness? This “issue” became known in some online groups as “buttgate”, to carry off of other controversies such as football’s deflategate, and even the infamous Watergate.

While censorship can certainly be a touchy subject in any media, including video games, this time, censorship didn’t seem to be the issue at all. A player posted to the beta forum to complain about an issue that they thought to be important(the image of the most iconic character of the game), and the game’s director replied saying that the issue was going to be handled. There was no controversy; the issue was handled exactly as it should have been, and yet users continued to complain about the perceived “censorship”.

The uproar about Overwatch’s “censorship” reached such a head online that Kaplan was later forced to return to the online thread, to assert that he had had not merely “given in” to the demands of a single fan:

“While I stand by my previous comment, I realize I should have been more clear. As the game director, I have final creative say over what does or does not go into the game. With this particular decision, it was an easy one to make—€”not just for me, but for the art team as well. We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer. We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor. We made the decision to go with a different pose in part because we shared some of the same concerns, but also because we wanted to create something better.” (Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch)

The “controversy” itself never actually happened, in other words; it was the online Overwatch community’s reaction to an out-of-character sexualized victory pose that created a controversy. The game may be called “Overwatch“, but sometimes people really seem to have a knack for overreacting.

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Works Cited

Mia Fey, Ace Attorney: The Woman Before the Man

Nintendo is a company that’s built its foundation, for the most part, on games based on fantasy: plumbers fighting gorillas, warriors and wizards fighting both natural beasts and corporate beasts, and multiple different versions of the same story of a young hero saving his damsel-in-distress.

The “hero saves his damsel-in-distress” archetype in particular has always been a popular one, since some of Nintendo’s earliest titles; in Super Mario Bros, the now-famous Italian plumber Mario and his plucky younger brother Luigi adventure through the Mushroom Kingdom to save Mario’s love, Princess Peach, from the clutches of the evil monster Bowser, while in the Legend of Zelda series, the young warrior Link has to seek out and defeat the evil Ganondorf(or Ganon, as he’s called in some games) in order to rescue the princess of Hyrule, Zelda. Both of the series are famous for their countless titles on Nintendo systems such as the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES), the Super NES, the Nintendo Gamecube, all the way up to the current New 3DS and Nintendo Switch. The sort of fantasy environments that the games provide give a fun, fresh place to explore while still offering likable characters and gameplay.

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