Blog 3: Mario, come save me! Oh, and by the way, I baked you a cake!

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Mario first graced the video game industry over 30 years ago and has since appeared in numerous reincarnations, many of which rest of the premise of Mario saving Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.  Princess Peach represents a common “damsel in distress” trope in video games and perpetuates the societal idea that women are helpless and need men to fulfill their lives. Since Mario and Peach first debuted, Peach has evolved to participate in some activities such as being a playable character in Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Party, and others.  However, in Nintendo’s most recent Mario game, Super Mario Run, Peach is subjected to the old position of helpless distress and even adds at the beginning that she will “bake a cake” for Mario if he comes save her.

Why is it that even in the 21stcentury, when gender equality, gender rights, and female empowerment are topics widely discussed, Nintendo still paints women in a powerless role?

Journalists and scholars debate over whether or not Super Mario Runis sexist or not. New York Times writer, Chris Suellentrop criticized the game for not only falling in the same gender patterns as before, but also exacerbating them by making Peach a playable character by unlocking her through a series of difficult tasks and in-app purchases. Suellentrop argues that this makes women seem like “prizes.”  On the other hand, Forbes writer Erik Kain, pushes back on Chris’s comments and believes unlocking Peach as a character is not objectifying women but simply a reward for playing the game.  Ina Fried of Recode also notes that while Mario may be dated with its references to the damsel in distress, it is this nostalgia that brings players back to new Mario games and Nintendo is neither perpetuating gender stereotypes nor subverting them.

In my opinion, Super Mario Run is at its core, a sexist storyline. Perhaps if Nintendo is ever willing to take the risk to create a game that completely goes against the “nostalgic” sexist Mario storyline, then people will begin to take note of the impact that video games can have on societal interactions.

Chris Suellentrop: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/opinion/super-mario-runs-not-so-super-gender-politics.html

Erik Kain: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/12/31/no-super-mario-run-isnt-a-sexist-retrograde-mobile-game/#663817907e10

Ina Fried: https://www.recode.net/2016/12/16/13984628/super-mario-run-gender-stereotypes

Source: Blog 3: Mario, come save me! Oh, and by the way, I baked you a cake!

Cognitive Development in Real Time Strategy Games

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Total War Warhammer 2 features turn based actions on a world scale but real time strategy based combat, this prevents it from being defined as a true real time strategy game but it this aspect features heavily in my experience. This Keeping track of several things at once is not an unusual feat for the average gamer, tracking ammunition, health, progress, timers, and mini-maps are all standard additions to what is happening on screen. Total War Warhammer 2 and other games with real time strategy properties take this multi-tasking to another level according to Glass, Maddox and Love in their paper,”Real-Time Strategy Game Training: Emergence of a Cognitive Flexibility Trait” (Glass  et. all 1). While true real time strategy games like Starcraft or perhaps more appropriately, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 3 that include economy as part of the real time processing were likely the focus of the study, Total War Warhammer 2 likely has similar effects, even if mitigated. The importance of the real time strategy game aspect is that instead of keeping an eye on several things at once the player is required to rapidly switch and almost simultaneously process the progress of several scenarios playing out at the same time. In Total War Warhammer 2 during a battle this may play out by applying buffs and debuffs that are time sensitive to certain areas, gauging the process of an infantry brawl, and moving calvary or other fast movers into a more advantageous position, while making sure that your ranged units have not got line of sight issues or been engaged by melee units. While playing multiplayer matches in Total War Warhammer 2 it is not uncommon to play somebody that mismanages their units and leaves one aspect of their army forgotten and ultimately useless, as a response players will often limit the amount of things that require micromanaging and focus on quality over quantity. Ultimately this kind of gaming challenges the players cognitive skills, and improves them through exposure and use.

 

Work Cited

Glass, Brian D., et al. “Real-Time Strategy Game Training: Emergence of a Cognitive Flexibility Trait.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 1 Aug. 2013, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070350.

 link to article

Source: Cognitive Development in Real Time Strategy Games

The Last of Them

Ethan Steinbacher

In the article Get Real: Narrative and Gameplay in The Last of Us, author Scott Hughes makes an analysis of the impact of gameplay mechanics in narrative driven games using The Last of Us as a case study. Hughes acknowledges the success and critical acclaim of the game stating that it is in many respects an entertaining game with many great features (Hughes 150). He claims that the immersion of the game is broken in two distinct ways. The first being that clunky gameplay systems such as an unrealistic inventory system and having superhuman abilities detract from the immersion to the point of ruining the story (Hughes 151). While I disagree with Hughes on this point, my disagreementlargely stems from a difference of opinion on what is worth nitpicking in games. The main point I wanted to address would be in his discussion of the players vulnerability in comparison between narrative points/cutscenes and gameplay. Hughes argues that throughout the game Ellie is portrayed in narrative scenes as a young girl in need of constant protection from the dangers of the post apocalyptic world. Meanwhile during gameplay she is for the most part able to hold her own without the constant protection of the player (Hughes 153). He states that this confliction undercuts the dangerous feeling of the world and breaks the immersion for the player. I would argue against this and that throughout the narrative of the game there are several scenes where Ellie seems experienced beyond her years. Whenever Joel is either incapacitated or weakened in some way and Ellie always steps up to defend him. I feel that moments of vulnerability described by Hughes are actually more of a contrast to Ellie’s character instead of defining them. These moments serve to foster a bond between Joel and Ellie instead of demonstrating the differences in their ability. With that in mind it makes sense that the developers had intentions beyond convenience for the player when they made Ellie something other than a helpless escort mission. The goal of the developers was to provide a companion that, while needing help from the player, was not a mindless drone incapable of either defending herself or making simple logical decisions. I felt that by making Ellie more capable in the actual gameplay of the game, they lended even more agency to a character that was already established as a useful protagonist in the narrative.

Gazzard, Alison. “Unlocking the Gameworld: The Rewards of Space and Time in Videogames.” Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Research, vol. 11, no. 1, Feb. 2011.

http://compaso.eu/wpd/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Compaso2015-61-Hughes.pdf

Source: The Last of Them

Racism in Clash of Clans

Matt Reinikka

Clash of Clans is a game available on the App Store for any person over the age of nine. Embedded in Clash of Clans’ gameplay is racist undertones—a claim that may raise some eyebrows, considering Clash of Clans markets to nine year-olds as its youngest intended audience. Nonetheless, hidden in Clash of Clan’s gameplay are dominant cultural messages about race.

Anna Everett and S. Craig Watkins discuss race portrayal in video games in their article The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games. Everett and Watkins introduce the concept of “racialized pedagogical zones,” which has to do with game creators drawing heavily upon racist mainstream perceptions and intensifying them to create problematic, racist embedded messages within the gameplay (142).

This is immediately apparent in Clash of Clans, which, on the surface, appears to be a harmless casual game. In Everett and Watkins’ article, they reference a study by the Children Now organization which found that in the top-selling console and computer games, “black and Latino characters were often restricted to athletic, violent, and victim roles, or rendered entirely invisible” (143).

The vast majority of characters in Clash of Clans, as shown in the two screenshots below, are either white humans or mystical animals, such as dragons or golems. However, there is one black character: the Hog Rider. The Hog Rider is unlocked when the Dark Barracks are upgraded to level two, and it is a black man with a mohawk that rides on top of a hog with a large hammer in hand. The Hog Rider attacks any enemy defenses first, moving quickly and dealing out damage at a high rate.

The above two screenshots are of the character list. Notice the magical characters, like dragons and golems, side by side with white characters with only one black character represented in the Hog Rider (the character on the right side of the images that costs 45 dark elixir to train).

This construction of the Hog Rider as a black man perfectly fits the stereotype that Everett and Watkins warn of. The Hog Rider is athletic, as he must be strong to destroy enemy defenses quickly. Additionally, he is violent, as he first goes for enemy defenses in a reckless manner. This depiction of the Hog Rider reinforces dominant cultural stereotypes of black men as violent and athletic.

Furthermore, the game reinforces the notion that Everett and Watkins put forth, that “hegemonic whiteness is positioned as the taken for granted racial norm in game-world environments” (145). The game introduces “heroes” as you progress further; the Barbarian King is unlocked at Town Hall level seven, and the Archer Queen is unlocked at level nine.

The above two images are screenshots of the “Heroes”: the Barbarian King, and the Archer Queen.

These characters are deemed essential in the game, as they do not cost money to train like normal troops, and can take high damage from enemy defenses while simultaneously dealing out high amounts of damage. These characters can be considered the best in the game, and are unsurprisingly white. By representing these two characters as white, Supercell, Clash of Clan’s developer, reinforces the stereotype of “white heroism” in society. As Everett and Watkins specified, “whiteness” is accepted as the norm in video games, and Supercell only furthers this notion with their skin color decision of the heroes.

 

Works Cited

Anna Everett and S. Craig Watkins, “The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games” from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (2007), pp. 141–164.



 

Source: Racism in Clash of Clans – Interactive Digital Narratives

The Climb Never Stops (Overwatch Log #2)

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As mentioned in the previous log, Overwatch lacks a structured narrative. Despite its extensive mise-en-scene, there’s no story mode, no plot to speak of, not even a definitive companion chronology. However, there is one element of the game which provides a certain narrative interactivity: Competitive Mode.

Competitive Mode places players in matches with others around their skill level. Each season, one plays ten placement matches and receives a skill rating based on their performance in them. Based on their skill rating, they’re placed in one of eight possible tiers.

Again, there’s no structured plot here. But there is a sort of implied narrative in the design of Competitive Mode. Higher numbers denote higher skill, and as the skill tier increases the icon representing it becomes more intricate and brightly colored. These small details turn the skill ranking players receive into a sort of implicit value judgment. The better you are at Overwatch, the more prestige you have. Of course, this is only logical for the Competitive Mode in a team and objective based game, but it’s still an element of narrative that seems carefully constructed.

Another interesting aspect of Competitive Mode is the sort of metagaming that goes along with it. Overwatch allows people on a team of six to select one hero from a range of over two dozen options, each with different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. This means that at any given time a team must have six different characters in play. While the development team behind the game has continually tried to balance the heroes so that a player can choose any of the options and have an equal chance at victory, they haven’t really succeeded.

This leaderboard shows the top 500 players in my region and their most played heroes. Although there is a decent amount of variation, the most common characters for these players only represent 14 out of a possible 26. Because it is impossible to make a game perfectly balanced, certain heroes will always be better equipped to win than others. The current hierarchy of the characters is called the meta, and knowing it allows players to choose the best options to win.

Of course, the meta isn’t a part of Overwatch‘s programming. When one works with the meta, one moves on Galloway’s categorizations from diegetic operator action to non-diegetic operator action. They are no longer working within the mechanics of the game, but are still striving to win it by using outside methods.

Source: The Climb Never Stops (Overwatch Log #2)

Minecraft or Mods?

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Minecraft is about 10 years old now, but it has stayed a popular game partly because of the number of mods it has and how easily it is to share worlds. Minecraft was already a game that gave infinite possibilities to build and be creative, but through mods, there are even more possibilities. Minecraft makes it very easy to change the graphics, sounds, and the players skins. The default skin is Steve who is a basic guy, but there are thousands of downloadable skins that the player can choose to make themselves. The default graphics and sounds are also pretty basic, but there are mods that make the graphics hyper-realistic and make the game more immersive. On the other hand there are also graphics mods that make the game cartoony or medieval. The vast number of mods available makes it easy for each player to customize their own game however they please.

Minecraft ModAn example of a graphics mod that is hyper-realistic.

There are also mods that go beyond changing the graphics and change the mechanics of the game. Since the Minecraft world is so open, there is also a wide variety in the types of mods there are. However, almost all mods add new items to the game that change how the game can be played. I played a version that added jetpacks and other cool technological inventions into the game. Minecraft is a good example of how mods have benefited the game because they add more variety and creativity to a game and creates a positive, supportive community around the game.

Finally, Minecraft makes it easy to share worlds with other people. This allows people to make mini games in a Minecraft world or to share a realistic build of a real-life place. The Xbox version of Minecraft comes with a prebuilt world that is full of cool builds, such as pirate ships, and is fun to explore. Back when The Hunger Games was popular there was a version of the hunger games built into a Minecraft world. People have also created story modes in their worlds which gives Minecraft more of a narrative and makes the game more directed than before. Minecraft starts out as a very basic world, but the developers allowed the community to modify the game which resulted in a variety of game types and is a good example of how mods improve a game.

Source: Minecraft or Mods?

No Stop, No Problem

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Most people don’t think about the menu of a game adding to the overall experience and creating a connection between the player and the game. Typically, the menu prevents us from becoming immersed in the game and separates its users from the game world and the real world. It is a nondiegetic operative frame that most games have, but few pay much attention to it. However, this is not the case with Warframe.

First let me start by explaining how Warframe “works”. Warframe is a game in which you go on missions and depending on the mission you choose to go on, determines if you go with other online players or alone. Now, depending on the type of mission you choose to go on, the menu changes. For example, when you play with other online players, the world is still happening and moving on its own, like all MMORPG games. And on the contrary, when you play a solo mission, the menu pauses the game and prevents the game world from moving. Although it is unique how these two menus correlate and go hand in hand, Warframe has yet another “menu” and separates it from other games.

When you finish a mission, or are choosing a mission to go on, you are sent to your ship. In this ship you can change weapons, do practice fighting, change appearance, and obviously choose a mission to go on. I considered this in between scene to be a menu as well for it has all the functions of a menu, but also it is interactive. You must move around the ship to locate these different places to perform the operations I listed above. This interactive menu helps keep the user immersed in the game, all the while still acting as a menu. Even though it has the characteristics and preforms the same purpose of a menu, doesn’t feel quite like a menu. This menu manages to keep the attention of those playing, and very creatively closes the bounds between operator and machine. For this reasoning, Warframe has one of the most creative menu’s that blurs the distinction between the game’s menu, and its play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O0pwn9XlxQ

Work Cited:

Nooney, Laine. Debugging Game History, A critical Lexicon. MIT Press: 2016.Print.

Source: No Stop, No Problem

GTA V: Do with it what you will

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In this second play through, I focused on how immersive GTA is to help break down just what makes this game so appealing to people of so many ages. The three narratives the game designers created are extremely deep and allow the player to feel emotionally connected to the character(s). One unique aspect of GTA V is the game designers made it extremely easy to mod, allowing players to add hundreds of different objects, abilities, etc. in order to keep gameplay fresh. I was able to add my own mods to the game, making my character invincible and able to call a helicopter at a moment’s notice. Doing this made the game way more interesting, allowing a non-experienced player, like myself, to explore even more of GTA’s space. In my opinion, these mods are as important to the game as the initial game itself, especially because of their ability to extend the game’s life for experienced players.

An image from the game highlighting its controversial portrayal of stereotypes

The many critics of GTA V point to the game’s emphasis of violence, sexual depiction of women, and obvious racial prejudices as reasons it should not be played. After going through the second round of playing, it is easy to understand the detractors; however, I think the reason GTA V is so popular and important culturally is the fact that it highlights everything that is wrong in today’s world. Possibly the most unusual part of a video game this violent is what happens when the player chooses to do nothing. The mise-en-scene goes from one reminiscent of an action-packed thriller to one depicting the average hustle and bustle of a major city. I believe the game designers were attempting to make a point: The crime, racism, and sexism that is so often portrayed in the media, is completely avoidable. Just as it is in GTA V’s digitally remade environment, wrongdoing is always a choice.

Source: GTA V: Do with it what you will

What’s Your Body Count?

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In Destroy All Humans!, the primary objective is to take over Earth through means of deception, tactics, and more noticeably, sheer will. Laine Nooney describes menus as being drastically different than menus we get when we are about to order our food at a restaurant. “Rarely do we discuss simply ‘choosing’ from game menus. Rather, we ‘navigate’ them, like captains gliding across digital surfaces.” When I first played Destroy All Humans! as a kid, I was unaware of what was going on during the cutscenes. Had I known then, I would have been able to turn the subtitles on. Menus today typically allow the player to restore, quit, or customize the controller or audio settings, among other configurations. In Destroy All Humans! however, the menu was not as sophisticated as they are today.

Players have the option of either killing as many humans as they want or completing the objective to advance within the game. Destroy All Humans! keeps stats of almost literally every aspect of what you have accomplished or have not accomplished within the game if you go to the menu. So for me, I personally felt that the game menu allows you to define and customize the experience of the game by revealing what your tendencies actions you undertook while you progressed. You define what you want to get out of the game itself, especially if you like the simulation that it provides if a hostile alien were to land on earth.

As you can see in the pictures above, as you progress through the game itself, it keeps track of how many humans and soldiers you have anal probed, disintegrated as well as destruction of cars, tanks, and buildings. It’s a pretty neat feature that complements the narrative of the game and makes me wonder what the total body count is going to be by the time you reach the end of the game. The menu in Destroy All Humans! incorporates both attributes of digital play as well as participating in the activity of digital play.

In the pictures above, you can see an example of how the menu can be considered as participating in the activity of digital play. The on-screen activity of presenting the player with options to select different discourses of action, seems to emphasize the connection between player and machine. The human agency to choose between what the mayor in the pictures above wanted to say to his constituents was a good choice in utilizing the aspects of choice and menu within the gameplay itself. You could either anger the townsfolk and lie to them causing an uproar. Or you could tell them what they wanted to hear like real life politicians. The similarity between what the options were and what American politicians say in real life was not lost on me. Because in all honesty, what politicians actually tell the truth?

While the varying menus in Destroy All Humans! complement the gameplay itself, I believe there was one aspect of the game that prevented the game from reaching its full immersive potential. That feature was the auto-save screen. For the PS2, the memory card had to be plugged into the console itself before you could even save. The auto-save function today occurs in the background without notifying the player and taking them out of the game-world for a few seconds. In Destroy All Humans!, the auto-save feature was triggered anytime you died, completed a side-mission, or completed the objective. This constant interruption between the gameplay and need to seamlessly combine the auto-save function and narrative of the game was jarring. I feel it emphasizes how important it is to design a video game that doesn’t prevent the player from being totally immersed in the game itself.

 

Works Cited

Laine Nooney, “Menu” from Debugging Game History (2016), pp. 305-312

Samuel Tobin, “Save” from Debugging Game History (2016), pp. 385-391



Source: What’s Your Body Count?

Storytelling in Journey

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Having played through Journey now, the experience was wonderful.  Rarely has a game been so compelling, and with so little dialogue to build its narrative.  One of the ways that Journey does this so well is through the use of dynamic lighting and music to influence your mood as you progress through the different stages of the game.  When you start off, the land is bright, enjoying the pleasantly filtered (afternoon?) sunshine as you experience the game’s world for the first time.  Later, as you explore the ancient ruins before you, the lighting changes to a beautiful sunset-like shade of gold and orange, lulling you and creating a sense of peace as you descend into the ruins.  Deep inside the ruins, you find that the world is not as peaceful as it appears at the surface, with giant machines that seek to eliminate all of the scarf you’ve been working so hard to collect up to this point.  The music takes a dramatic shift, and the atmosphere becomes much darker with eerie green and blue accents instead of the comforting gold and orange of the previous stage.  These shifts occur to inform the player that there is danger, something that these changes seem to subconsciously alert us to.  This method of moving forward a narrative creates an experience that feels less forced, although the game is still “on rails” in many ways.

One of the other aspects of the game that helps develop a sense of context are the murals hidden throughout the game.  Upon arriving at a blank wall with a few gravestones framing it, you can activate your chime and trigger a reveal of a mural on the wall, which details some aspect of the story hidden behind the world of Journey.  Without these murals in the game, I don’t think I could have begun to understand the series of events leading up to the present state of the world.  What ThatGameCompany did with Journey is a masterpiece.  They hid the story just within reach, but asked the player to decide whether they wanted to know more or not.  This allows the player even more agency, and helps develop a sense of immersion with the world should they choose to seek out all of the murals and hidden items throughout the game.

 

Source: Storytelling in Journey