Are you Creating or Digesting?

How feminism helped me perceive my creative emaciation.

This text is intended to creators of anything. To perceive and identify traces of shit, real shit, on their works. And try to work more deeply in connection with your creations.


March 2014 was when I released my first commercial game: North Wind: Trill of Consciousness

But it was in the end of 2012 that I finally sit down to develop something.
I did what anyone would do first: flirt with some plot. As I didn’t know how to draw anything digitally, I did some layout resembling Thomas Was Alone design. But I make it smoking. A black rectangle smoking.

At the time, I was fascinated by CAVE games, and wanted to create a manic shooter jammed with some Evangelion scheme. It turns out a regular Sci-Fi about spaceships with a weird Bionic Commando “wife arm” twist. ¬¬


THE PROBLEM

I gonna explain detailed the plot but... I am very, very ashamed of it. But shame is good. Shame is the perception of something that was going to the wrong way.

The plot: A Scientist that uses Woman DNA for creating organically spaceships. The reason to use woman DNA was about the better reaction to the feelings. - Yup - In the end the whereabouts of the real woman were missing. 

So … agh. His wife was a pink rectangle. She was missing. And the guy was on a quest to destroy the evil corporation. I was using female element to make a dude looks awesome and have something to do.

Boo me.
Seriously.

After I tried to draw the first spaceship, I got a bat. And the game was looking like a horizontal stick platformer. With bats. I gave up on plots to focus on the development of a unique gameplay that would make sense for an iPad Quest.

The “Role Playing Puzzle” gameplay idea was so good that I glimpsed an opportunity to create something mine that really matters. So I rescued a series of stories I’ve been writing since 1998 and made a spin off for this project. Still poisoned with tropes, I set a Warrior and a Damsel with a vampire, sure, kidnapping the damsel. And, obviously, the warrior goes for the rescue.

The twist: the Warrior transforms into a werewolf near vampires. In the final boss, the warrior as a unconscious beast and not recognizing his Damsel would kill her. Bringing a sad finale to story.
...
Yes. I was using female as a disposable element to construct my male character emotions.

Boo me. Again.

I was ok with that at first. The development was marching ok. The game was almost in the end...
until I reach:

THE PERCEPTION

Then I meet Anita Sarkeesian. Not in person. But in videos. I watch it all. All tropes.



Some details I would disagree with her. Because some games you have to go until the end to make some statements. But man, you can't ignore the load of cliché that is all over the place.
All same shit over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Anita K.O. me. My game that I treated with so much care was just one more in the middle.
I was wounded. I got on my bike to take some air and when I realize:

I'm not creating.
I am digesting. 

I’m digesting all of those games I’ve being consuming these years.
I am not developing MY product I am digesting my cultural food.

This is shit. A product of digestion is shit.

Anita bring the discussion to the game scene. She poked us in the eye. It turns up to a point where all things can get really confusing. There is some good opinions out there, but also, for some, a game with male protagonist is like automatic bullshit. Some could go even further, were games created by a man = meh!

These days I read a twit of Lisa Hignett (@LisaHignett):

"I care about both genders making games by their own merit!".

Merit - a good word to use when creating your characters also.
Do they matter for themselves, first?
Am I using my female characters respecting their existence in the context, or just building up the “awesomeness” of my male character?

For these questions I highly recommend you to watch all Tropes vs. Women videos.



I keep it written down on my pocket notepad all the described tropes.
To keep in mind these six clichés.

1- The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
2- Women in Refrigerator
3- The Smurfette Principle
4- The Evil Demon Seductress
5- The Mystical Pregnancy
6- The Straw Feminist

Run away from it somehow. Scream!

After that you can start "dating" with you characters. Know they better. To realize if you are creating or  justing 'pooping' female characters, there is The Bechdel Test. Quoting the Feminist Frequency site:

The Bechdel Test or the Mo Movie Measure is a type of litmus test to assess the presence of women in movies.  It originated from Allison Bechdel’s comic “Dykes to Watch Out For” in 1985.  Here’s how it works, a movie just has to pass these three simple questions: the first, are there two or more women in it who have names, the second, do they talk to each other, and the third, do they talk to each other about something other then a man.

For games I think that the questions could be:

1-Are there two or more women in it who have names?
2-Do they need assistance of a male?
3-Do they are over sexualized because 'why not'*?
*this last one is not agains't hyper sexualized woman. Since everyone is free to do whatever with their lives, the issue is the context, the character individual personality plot and not just to "build audience"

With all these tools I could make a good plot now? Can't I? Well...

MORE PROBLEM AFTER PERCEPTION

Title of a Polygon article:

Ubisoft abandoned women assassins in co-op because of the additional work.

Additional work.

I was already almost a year doing the game. Alone. With no money. Coding. Composing music. Evolving my characters from black rectangles to a sprite frame. The sprite frame to a Texture Atlas. With memory leaking everywhere. It was nuts. And I realized my plot was shit.

All the suffering, all the sweat… My new unique gameplay on the line. Man, my plot couldn’t be the weak link here.
I do embrace the additional work — happy.

I couldn’t remake the core elements of the game. But I could give it a little deeper background. Drop some meaning on some places. Seasoning the elements. Avoiding or toying with the tropes. Please note that I am not a feminist genius, and the end result is far from being considerate The Modern Plot of the Year.

But I think I manage to fix some punctual problems, and let the plot background expand far more better than before.

Another problem I faced was: brief texts. The game is iPad only, and as a tablet player, long texts RPGs are very tiresome for me. iPad is heavy, I want to go to action fast. So to present the plot I develop a limited chat space. And some plot details stayed out - it is normal tho. A lot of games explain themselves on guides or let things open for people make theories by themselves.

THE FIX

First fix: my main character was not a Warrior anymore. It is just a boy.
Second fix: The damsel is the warrior now. An Amazon warrior. With a name: Makayla.

In the game, Dir does not want to rescue or save Makayla. He wants to impress her. He admires and is thanked to all her patience being his tutor. He is an accidental fool, creating a bravery that he does not have, going on an adventure with some unknown partner just to make her proud of him.

At some moments Makayla would camouflages in the roles of some tropes.
Like after get attacked by an Incubus: Women in refrigerator
Disappear with the castle: Damsel in Distress
Reborn as a vampire: The Evil Demon Seductress
But she never play the roles of it per se. During the game Makayla is passing by her own quest. A quest of confidence and freedom that she desires since the beginning — for her and also for Dir. The consequences of the adventure for each one is different, tho.

“Jauss takes over the notion of horizon which he names “horizon of expectation” and means by it the sum total of reactions, prejudgments, verbal and other behavior that greet a work upon its appearance. A work may fulfill such a horizon by confirming the expectations vested in it or it may disappoint the expectations by creating a distance between itself and them.”
— Jauss, Hans Robert: Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics

CONCLUSION

So yeah. I said I was no feminist content genius. The main protagonist still a male fellow. Not the best of fixes but as the base of my game was already set, toying around with the flaws, seasoning some elements, made the story resolve themselves.

I’m sure in the future I can do a better job. And this text is just to show that even aware we tend to march to some cliché situations. The actual culture affects our creational process without we don’t even noticing it. We must be aware every time and try our best to untie this trope knots proposing a fair entertainment for everybody.

I‘m glad that I could perceive and fix it. Thanks Anita and everyone who is out there waving the flag — and taking some bullets. From a random damsel to a solid warrior that conducted the entire game concept. I hope Makayla could be impressed. x)

I have some female friends that aren't much favorable of man talking about feminism. I kinda understand that. But after watch "A Trip to a Grocery Store", maybe I can do better then just listen to it.


I think that if society is giving me any privilege because I am male, I want to use this to show how ‘privilege’ can make me a moron.