My Merch Chick
The global economy’s in a tailspin, the Wall Street suicides have started, and with the newspaper business already way down the john, it’s likely days before I lose my job and wind up in an East Village bread line. So because I’m a practical and fiscally responsible girl, I took the last three twenties in my pocket and dropped them on a copy of Rock Band 2. If I’m going to be unemployed, I might as well have a goal - breaking the top 100 on the guitar leaderboard.
After playing ’til my wrists were on fire, I made it to San Francisco and earned myself a “merch girl.” And here I found a weird slip in the content. I’m a girl, and in Rock Band 2 I play as a girl. But after winning my merch girl, I was told that she’s like “an unofficial band den mother…a den mother who is always trying to make out with you. ” Woah, down, merch girl! I just need you here to push the 7″’s. And gah, I don’t mean it that way!
At first I thought this was a script error. When you play a girl in a game, you often find little slips of gender-specific language - NPCs referring to you as “he,” references to parts of your body that they should know you do not have. I’m not sensitive about it. There’s no use flying into a feminist rage just because they skimped on QA.
But then it occurred to me: maybe this was no accident. [UPDATE: It wasn't! See comments below.] After all, my merch girl looks like a swarthy little art school chick, a little bit punk, a little bit goth. She’s probably taking time off this semester, and decided to hook up with a band, curl up at the back of some sweaty tour bus, and wait for someone to pet her. Boys? Girls? She’s after the fame, not the gender. And for a straight chick, I am hot. Especially when I strap on a Gibson.
Most games that have time for romance take care to define their character’s sexuality. Men like women, women like men, and only once in a while does anyone break the heteronormative mold. But once in a while, you find a bi-character. In Fable, your male hero could pull most of the women, and some of the men. But why did they settle for “some”? Or take Liara in Mass Effect. She has the same behavior, the same animations, and almost the same lines, whether you’re hitting on her as a man or a woman. However you choose to role-play with her, she’ll respond. Wouldn’t it make sense if every character behaved that way?
This isn’t political, so much as practical. It’s your game - it’s your experience. And any game that gives you free-reign to shoot and kill, should give you just as much freedom to love. I’m not arguing that a gay script be written for every character. The glamorous Croatian spy doesn’t need to tell you her eight-hour coming out story, and the bouncer at the all-night hobo fight club doesn’t need an excuse for leaving his wife for another man. They just need to say one thing: “Yes.”
30/09/2008 at 8:42 am Permalink
Hey there! This is Helen, I was the writer on RB2. Just wanted to say that it was not a slip — I play in an all-female band myself and have learned that sexual identity is not really a factor when it comes to the merch person/super fan achetype - that character is just purely obsessed with the band. We happened to make the merch person character a female (could’ve just as easily been a dude), and I had no qualms about the fact that if the player and/or character is female, the merch girl would be constantly trying to hump her. We were very diligent in making sure to never assume the player’s gender or sexuality in RB2, but yes, the merch girl likes you whether you’re male or female. I’m hyper aware of issues like this, so I’m glad you’re on top of it!
Thanks,
H
30/09/2008 at 9:16 am Permalink
Interesting thought…I suppose the game is trying to keep the player character sexually ambiguous to not inhibit a player based on gender preference. I like your point that the game should still provide an outlet for that kind of expression whether it be male or female. Not every NPC has to be bi, there just needs to be an outlet for people interested in that course of options.
I’m trying to think of games that involved gay characters…there was a JRPG where one of the characters was gay, Enchanted Arms I think. The character was a wizard(?) and regularly hit on the lead hero. In Bully you’re capable of experimenting with boys but ultimately the plot forces you into dating one of the female characters. The flashgame Storyteller lets you change the plot until the male leads fall in love with each other…but that’s about it. I suppose it’ll be a while before videogames have their equivalent of ‘Philadelphia’ to open people to new options.
30/09/2008 at 10:09 am Permalink
Helen - My God you’re fast as lightning … thank you so much for swinging by and explaining that. I thought it was planned. Earlier this year I posted a review of Rock Band and praised it for how deliberately it mixed up the genders of the NPCs and encouraged thirteen-year-old rockers to play along with the girls. I love you all for not making this a boy’s toy.
My post is updated. And BTW -Vagiant rocks.
L.B. - Role-playing games seem to take the lead on this. KOTOR and Jade Empire had gay flirtations. I’ve never played Storyteller, but I’ll have to check that out. When you mention Philadelphia, do you mean we’ll wait a while for a game where the storyline explicitly casts you as an openly gay character? I can’t see this industry taking that chance for years, maybe decades. But I could be forgetting some groundbreaking title that slipped it by me when I wasn’t looking.
Excuse me now, I have to check the bus and make sure our t-shirts are, um, folded correctly.
30/09/2008 at 3:15 pm Permalink
Hell yeah! I’m fast when I actually know the answer to something. You also rock! We must meet up sometime and see whose imaginary merch girl is more devoted. Mine, for example, bakes me fresh croissants every morning.
-H
03/10/2008 at 5:20 pm Permalink
That’s really cool. I’m incredibly glad that the designers at Harmonix are aware of these issues. All too often I’ve seen developers say completely dismissive stuff that totally ignores existing and potential markets, just because the assumption is that women don’t play games, when in fact 94% of teenage girls in the US do play videogames. I’m all for games being more inclusive of all types of gamers — women, queers, people of colour, and any other gamer that belongs to a traditionally marginalised group.