Naughty Dog and Gender Diversity

I've discussed this subject before, more or less, can't remember if it was in both blog and vlog form or just a vlog. Regardless, the subject I intend to talk about is gender diversity in games and how it can be handled better by even those who see themselves as shining beacons of hope for those wanting to see more lead women, as an example. 

A recent video interview where Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog interviewed Hermen Hulst of Guerrilla Games is what sparked this topic. They were discussing female protagonists in a segment of the interview where Druckmann took a jab at people unable to relate to a female protagonist but can relate to murderers. Now there's a lot to discuss in this so lets get started.

First off, I wanted to address the fact that anyone who thinks you can't relate to a character simply because of different gender or race is ignorant. Not completely wrong but still ignorant if that's a deal breaker for them. A character is made up of many different things, among those things is gender and race, those being different than your own can set up a barrier for sure but it's something you quickly get over once you give them a chance. It's just how we're wired in the end, we get along better and quicker with others like us while getting along with different people takes more of an effort. That said, as a straight man I get how it can be weird to play as a woman and in the game have male characters hit on you, the player.

Aloy, relatable despite being a woman.

Moving on, I wanted to touch upon the subject of relating to a murderer. I want to touch more upon that another time but I did wanna point out that it's not really a thing that games do these days. Most often the enemy is a purely evil entity, either zombies, aliens or mercenaries with one goal and that goal is to be as evil as possible. They're faceless, and they go out of their way to show that whatever emotions they have it's about how they enjoy torturing puppies. Putting those kinds of enemies in your path, most often putting you in the seat that you have no choice but to kill them in self defense, isn't putting the player in the boots of a murderer. As an example, Aloy from Horizon is a killer, but no murderer. She doesn't kill innocent people and the enemies are overly barbaric with no redeemable qualities. You're not going to feel bad about killing monsters in self defense, but you might feel uncomfortable when every single character in the game seem to have the hots for you. Understandably so.

I'll have to get around to the murder-mindset and games later on as it's an interesting topic to me, but alas it's time to get to my main point. The reason I put Naughty Dog in the title. As a disclaimer, I have no problems with female protagonists, in fact they often turn out really badass because devs seem to make more of an effort when writing them and badass women are great. For that matter I'm not going to sit here and say we need less women in games, no I'm here to say, we need more.

What I mean with that.. Let me ask you a question, how many badass females can you remember from recent games? Really give it some thought, I can remember Ellie, Tess and Marlene (TLoU), Elena, Chloe and Nadine (Uncharted), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), Aloy (Horizon) just to name a few. Now try and mention any female villains. Can you mention three without looking anything up, even one? Better yet, how many games have women among the cannon fodder that the player slaughters en masse?

That's the real point, games today seem to have a real hard time painting women as villains, especially as low level grunts. I think this is a very important part of equality, not to hold women to some ideal standard where they're always the good guys but show that they can be just as bad as men. Now I've mentioned Nadine here, she counts, right? Well first off, she was a Mary Sue, she wasn't that interesting and both times you fought her you didn't stand a chance against this terminator. She's also one only villain that hasn't died in Uncharted, even villains who ended up redeeming themselves in the past died as they did. Nadine just buggers off to return as a protagonist in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Not to mention she's the only female mercenary in all of the Uncharted games. How odd.

The Last of Us is another example of a game which Naughty Dog, gaming media and Druckmann himself uses to show off how badass women can be. It's true that Ellie and Tess are both really badass and good characters but where are the female villains? Even Marlene who, not to spoil anything important, stands in your way at one point isn't portrayed as a bad character. Also where are all the female Fireflies and survivors? Is Naughty Dog telling me that only men are strong enough to do all the savage things you need to do to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? Or have what it takes to be a mercenary in the Uncharted franchise?

Now, I do of course understand why this is a thing. It is of course because we're still uneasy about harming women. We've played games and seen movies where men have been slaughtered without discretion for decades, centuries, maybe more? It's funny how everyone calls for more women in gaming but as soon as they can be harmed all hell breaks loose. I think the first time I noticed female cannon fodder was in MGS4 were Kojima had made the FROG unit to kinda experiment and see if gamers would be more hesitant to kill female enemies.

FROG:s, all female special forces.

What I ask is simple, add female baddies among the waves of enemies you throw against me in games. I didn't think about it until I played more games with female protagonists, how my character was the only female combatant in sight. Why is it okay to slaughter my own gender exclusively while we hesitate to even add female enemies that end up dying before the end of the game? As a man, I'm fine with female protagonists, but I'd like my own gender to not be the only one portrayed as evil as well. As long as this is a thing we won't have gender equality.

I'd also like to mention the recent Star Wars: Battlefront 2 announcement. Apparently we're going to play as a female protagonist in it. Fine, I say, but a female Imperial soldier? Where has all the female storm troopers been before, I ask? Is it maybe that we don't mind the idea of millions of male baddies being killed throughout the Star Wars franchise so we don't really see female baddies until it's time to play the "bad side"? Seems awfully fishy to me, don't get me wrong Star Wars is full of badass women but I've never heard of women among the Imperial Grunts before Phasma in Star Wars Episode 7 who wasn't even a grunt but a fancy commander. Doesn't seem consistent, and consistency is vital for making a believable and immersive world.

Ellie, doesn't hit women because they're too fragile. 

Naturally I do wanna give a shout-out to developers who do support real gender equality in games like Bethesda and Ubisoft who have both badass female protagonists and female antagonists and cannon fodder. Bethesda in particular has been doing it for a long time, first time I saw female raiders in Fallout 3 (which as my first Bethesda game) was quite refreshing to me. They also do it without proclaiming how progressive they are at every step, really I'd say Bethesda is currently a shining beacon of how it's done as far as identity politics is concerned. I really hope Naughty Dog takes note and adds a few female enemies in their next game. Female protagonists is good and I enjoy playing them but it makes it all the more weird when all enemies are exclusively male.

Introduce some real diversity and equality, please.

Oh and here's the interview that caused this topic to begin with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzomI_VXFLs

Good Girl (Short Story)

[First short story I've ever written, at least that I've felt like sharing. I wanna write more and get better, I understand I'm not going to be some master writer from the get-go but hopefully I get an ounce of feedback and learn to improve. Anyway, it's not a happy story so be warned about that.]

In a small hospital, a man wakes up with an aching head. Slowly he opens his eyes and observes the room, it was bright and he didn't quite see. Suddenly he sees movement, someone in white saw him looking and moving around in his bed and ran off. Likely a nurse he thought. Then he noticed he was cuffed to the bed, someone didn't want him to go anywhere but he didn't really remember why that would be. His vision returned as he now saw the figure in white return, this time she was clearly a nurse, she brought with her a police officer, a doctor and a man in a suit. Hopefully they would have answers would help the man understand what he was doing there in the first place.

The man in the suit approached the man, and sat down on a chair next to the bed.
"Good morning, my name is Hill, detective Hill. How are you feeling?"
"I'm... I'm feeling a bit dizzy, confused.."
"Sir, can you tell me your name? Just for the record."
"Sure, my name is Robert Moore, what is this about?"
The detective looked at the man, then at the doctor, then down on his notes.
"Thomas Moore, is it? Alright, do you have any idea about why you're here?"
The man was a bit confused, but things started coming back to him.
"Uhm, yeah, I was in a struggle... At a house, my neighbor."
"I see, you're.. So you're the neighbor, Mr. Moore, we're not fully aware of the situation, mind filling us in? From the start if you don't mind."
Thomas Moore, as he had identified himself as, started thinking back to how it all had started. The story started coming to him as his mind cleared up.
"Of course, let me think, I've been their neighbor... Oh For a long time, as long as I can remember in fact."
"What was the name of your neighbor, can you account for the family members I mean?"
"Sure, let me think, it was the Payne family, the mother Anne, father Edgar and daughter Sophie."
"Okay, right, continue with the story."
"So I always knew there was something bad going on there, like it was one of those things you just know, the dad was a drinker, the daughter played alone in the backyard all the time. The mother often wore sunglasses and long sleeved clothing to hide bruises but you could always tell when the man, Edgar, had been rough with his family. Horrible man."
"Why didn't you intervene then, if it was so obvious why not call the police?"
"I... I don't know, I didn't feel it was my business, besides, the cops had been there and done nothing. That's just how these things go."
"Right, so you did nothing."
"I know, I'm ashamed, but what could I do? Well, at least that's what I asked myself every day until..."
Moore paused, thinking...
"...Until? Mr. Moore, are you alright to talk right now? We could come back later when you feel better?"
"No that's alright, I can talk right now. What pushed me to action was an encounter I had with the daughter a few days before the... Incident."
"Really now? So what happened?"
"Well, I was walking home, minding my own business, I'm kind of a loner that way..."
"The story, Mr. Moore.."
"..So I was walking and the daughter, Sophie, was playing in the front yard. Hadn't really seen her much as she was hidden away most of the time."
"So it was really that unusual for her to be around, close to other people than her family I mean?"
"Oh yes, they never brought her along when going out, she was often left alone in the house when Edgar and Anne went out for whatever reason."
"I see, so how was the encounter?"
"Well a ball came rolling out in my path and she came running close behind it. She grabbed it and stood in front of me, just looking at me. I got down on my knees and asked how she was doing, if her parents was around. She was quiet for awhile before saying that her mother wasn't around and that her dad was acting strange. Her face was emotionless, it broke my heart. Then I looked at the house and I saw the curtain move, the dad had woken up I figured. Not sure if he was still drunk I just told her to be safe when playing by the street. Then I went home and..."
"..Sorry to interrupt you, I have to go over a few notes with the doctor and such, I'll be right back."

Detective Hill got up and went over to the doctor and the officer, they talked among each other with muffled voices. There was even a bit of head scratching involved. After the doctor had talked exclusively for awhile the detective shrugged his shoulders and walked back over to the bed and sat down on his chair and sighed.
"Mr. Moore, we want the full picture of this... Situation, so please continue your story. What happened next?"
"Well, as I was saying, I went home and thought little of it. Still, it was in the back of my head as I went on. Every day from that on Sophie was playing in the front of the house, it was also eerily quiet compared to earlier. I started noticing that the mother wasn't around anymore."
"Did you suspect that foul play was the reason for her absence at this time?"
"Not really, I mean it was a broken home so it wasn't unusual for her to run off from time to time. The girl playing in the front by the street was overall the weirdest thing about it."
"Right, go on, Mr. Moore."
"It was not until... I'm sorry the exact day escapes me, I'm still a bit out of it, but it was late. I was going for a walk, I hadn't been to work that day so I wanted to do something besides just sitting around the house all day. Then as I got out I noticed something by the Payne household, a freshly dug hole in the backyard, I got chills down my spine thinking that Edgar had at some point killed his wife during a drunken stupor and now was burying  her in the backyard. It made sense to me, that's why the daughter was playing in the front to he would be able to bury Anne without disturbance."
"With this realization, what did you do?"
"Well I felt I had to go over to investigate of course, I ran over to the house and started knocking on the door to confront Edgar."
"And was Mr. Payne and the daughter Sophie both home at this time?"
"Yes, in fact as Anne wasn't around Edgar was taking out his drunken rage on the girl. I felt mad with rage myself, witnessing this monster attacking a small child."
"Sounds horrible, so how did you respond to this?"
"I broke down the door, of course, I had to stop it."
"How did that go? I need exact details of what happened next."
"I'll describe it as accurately as I can.. I rushed in after I had forced the door open and attacked Edgar. During the struggle I pushed away Sophie and telling her to run and that she did. I kept fighting with Edgar, he was strong and had fought a lot during his life so he was tough to keep up with. Even when drunk."
"Right, go on Mr. Moore."
"Well, after a long struggle, I managed to knock him down. I stood over him, catching my breath. My heart was racing, I had just fought this man, I didn't know what to do now. Then I heard a voice behind me, 'Stop!', it said. It was little Sophie, she was holding a gun, barely, it was so heavy for her. I was shocked and lowered my posture and started to talk her down, I told her it wasn't a toy and that she might hurt someone. Didn't even notice how Edgar had risen up behind me and hit me in the head with a hard object, a bottle perhaps, and I went down. Before I passed out completely I heard a gunshot and saw him go down as well, shot in the head. Good girl, I thought, before losing my consciousness."
The detective sat and thought about Moore's story for awhile. Then leaned in.
"So this is your story, Mr. Moore? You, a lone neighbor, noticed the wrongs in a broken household and rose to the occasion, became a hero and defended the little girl from the monster?"
"Not quite how I'd put it, but my story is true."
"Alright, I'll be right back, do give it some more thought."

Hill got up and left the room with the others. Thomas Moore couldn't do anything but sit there, thinking over the events, why was the detective so snarky about his description of the events? Did he miss something? Was he a suspect? Moore wanted answers, and right now he still had more questions than before. Perhaps he'd find out more now, as the detective returned with a briefcase and sat back down beside him. He opened the briefcase and took a few folders in his lap.
"So, Mr. Moore, are you sticking to the story?"
"Yes, I am. Why do you ask?"
"Well, the doctors assure me that you might be telling a story you really think is correct. So now I have a few questions to clear things up. Describe Mr. Edgar Payne to me, would you, Mr. Thomas Moore?"
"Uhm, sure, he's a tall man, strong, somewhat round around his guy, beard and messy hair most of the time. Unkempt I guess you could describe him."
"You are correct, here's a family photo, in fits with that description."
Detective Hill handed Moore the photo to observe.
"What is this about, Detective?"
"Describe your own appearance."
"Clean cut hair, quite light brown, average height, quite lean, I don't know, why are you asking this?"
"Mr. Moore, take a look at this mirror."
Hill handed Moore a mirror and he couldn't believe what he was looking at, that was the face of Edgar Payne, a shaggy looking man with a rough face.
"I... I don't understand, is this some sort of trick?"
"Mr. Moore, I assure you that the man you see in that mirror is yourself, you are Edgar Payne, there never was a 'Thomas Moore' to begin with. At least not in your neighborhood. We found your wife dead in your backyard, Sophie, your daughter, won't talk but we found a bottle that appears to be the weapon that bashed her head in. What exactly happened that night isn't exactly clear but what we do know is that you were intoxicated and that Sophie had shot you in the head. It was not fatal but your mind appear heavily scrambled, she was bruised so we figured it was self defense. Your story does make some sense but this 'Moore' persona you made up to make yourself feel better is a lie."
"What are you telling me? Of course I'm Thomas Moore, I've... I've been their neighbor for as long as I can remember, I told you...! I TOLD YOU THE STORY! I DIDN'T KILL MY WIFE YOU SON OF A...!!"
"It might be hard for you to accept, but you need to let this persona go, you made him up, Mr. Payne. The doctors will look at you and determine exactly just how damaged you are. See if that head of yours is truly that broken or if this is just an act."
"AN ACT!? This whole thing was just an act! That photo is manipulated, you're just looking for someone to send in jail! EDGAR PAYNE IS DEAD!"
"We can only hope he is, but unfortunately that's for the doctors to decide.. Goodbye, Mr. Payne."

Detective Hill got up as he walked out of the room, leaving Thomas Moore, or more accurately, Edgar Payne, to shout and cry out in pain and confusion. Apparently, truth doesn't always set you free.

Death Stranding, Silent Hills? Theory!

I just saw the second trailer for Kojima's next game, "Death Stranding", that featured among others Mads Mikkelsen with a confirmed part and Guillermo del Toro. You can see the trailer here;

Now watching the trailer lead to a theory, that being that the game takes place in purgatory. The last trailer gave few clues about the game but this one had much more going on. It took place in a battlefield with del Toro running around with a small box, later revealed to contain a baby. I figure that the baby is symbolic, maybe for rebirth or something? Innocence perhaps, my religious knowledge isn't really that great but isn't the point of purgatory to cleanse the spirit?

Regardless, the other imagery in the trailer lead me to the purgatory thing, undead looking soldiers with that tank thingy that all look very WW2, then Mads' character shows up looking much more modern with goggles of sorts. Leads me to believe that people from different era's is trapped in this world. Now to refer to the first trailer with Norman Reedus, in it we see him crying with a dead baby, maybe it's all related to why he ended up in purgatory? He lost his innocence or more bluntly caused the death of a child? Makes sense to me.

Moving on, if we assume this is all more or less accurate, maybe Kojima is making his Silent Hills game with a different coat of paint. Considering both Reedus and del Toro are now associated with the project and the fact that Silent Hill share similarities with purgatory it makes some sense. I can imagine that Kojima doesn't let go of an idea that easily, so if he did have grand ideas for Silent Hills maybe he now wanna use them, a second chance kind of thing.

Even if he's not rebooting his Silent Hills idea I still figure that the game taking place in purgatory is a solid theory. I mean it fits with the name, Death Stranding, stranded in death between heaven and hell, no?

Essential NPC's Rant (Fo4)

Talking about the immortal NPC's that Bethesda insists on filling their worlds with. I get that NPC's in such a huge and dynamic world are forever in danger and that it would suck for them to die randomly but there's better solutions than making them 100% unkillable.

Can Online be Fun Without XP? [VLOG]

A vlog about how the Uncharted 4 multiplayer lacks a traditional leveling system and if it will be addictive enough to keep a living multiplayer community in the long run;