My son is an addict.
No, it’s not crack, he’s only seven years old. Instead he’s addicted to Skylanders, a product conceived by veteran game developers Toys for Bob and published by Activision.
I’m not ashamed that my son is playing video games. We love games at our house. But it’s tough to be “game positive” when of all the ones my son could have chosen to fixate on he’s gone and picked a game that expresses all the gender problems of the games industry.
It’s not that the game is casually sexist: it’s just stupid. Plain dumb. It is lacking in plot, emotional depth and originality. Its depiction of gender, for example, is right out of the 8-bit era, and while the game has many other faults (such as compelling parents to buy overpriced plastic figurines), this fault is particularly conspicuous.
I live in a house full of games. It is a Lady Geek household after all. My son does not have to beg for the latest titles – they miraculously turn up. With the explosion in female gaming meaning women now almost equal men in terms of gaming numbers (women now account for 46 per cent of recent game purchasers), smart developers have been formulating products that appeal equally to men and women.
Last year’s reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise brought its young protagonist back to the small screen. The big-boobed, hot-panted heroine of the Nineties has been replaced with an altogether more realistic heroine.
The game’s principal writer, Rihanna Pratchett, created a credible female character who suffers and grows as she overcomes the challenges of the game. She’s not a drop-in replacement for a generic male action-hero.
The Skylanders series by comparison is an example of how to get it wrong.
The sky-lands are a man’s world, and this is a game in which a mostly male cast of fantasy heroes have to smash and bash their way through a mostly male cast of fantasy baddies. There’s almost no problem that cannot be overcome by slashing or shooting.
There are characters who are explicitly female such as Ningini. You can tell they are female because they are narrower-waisted with disproportionately large breasts and they grunt in a slightly higher-pitched tone than their male counterparts. These physical characteristics aside, they are functionally identical to the male characters – that is to say they obliterate and plunder in a broadly similar way.
For reasons of cost or lack of imagination – the female characters are merely alternative “models” – animated graphics that are loaded each time the player selects another character. The end result is a sort of PC pretence that gender differences don’t exist, since in this game everybody does exactly the same job in exactly the same way.
This is probably why Activision describe their characters as “genderless” although their marketing material would lead one to think otherwise. One thing the game is entirely lacking in, however, is the sort of self-parodying “get to the choppa” irony that might have injected it with a much-needed layer of humour. Sadly, though, this is a game whose interactive components feature almost no dialogue.
We should subject all video-games to an adapted version of the Bechdel test that applies to film and asks: do any two female characters speak about anything other than men? This game, with its voiceless, characterless cast list of “fe-male” identikits, doesn’t score highly.
My criticism of the game is not rooted in some kind of feminist crusade. Games-makers are not constrained by a moral imperative to deliver positive gender messages. But they should feel impelled to raise themselves above mediocrity. Whatever your criticisms of Grand Theft Auto, and the list is extensive, the satirical delight it takes in depicting the very worst of humanity sets it both apart from and above Skylanders.
Most of all, though, Skylanders fails for me because it’s so banal, unexceptional and uninspired. This is a game that costs so much and yet says so little, and one whose technology and fantasy setting stand in contrast to its mundane ambitions.
Women buy games, and they buy them in their masses, but I can’t see many buying into this one. Games developers need to provide its female protagonists with a voice and a personality. Because at 46 per cent of the market, personality pays.
Belinda Parmar is the founder of Little Miss Geek and the CEO of Lady Geek. She tweets @belindaparmar. Her book “The Empathy Revolution” will be published on 26 May
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