My 2016 in Gaming

Right, so I don't have the habit of being all that up-to-date on the most recent games, partially because I feel the "buy on release" attitude is somewhat responsible for the pre-order bonus madness that keeps getting further out of hand, but mostly because being like 2 years behind is simply more friendly on my wallet. Basically doing some "Best of 2016" is out of the question because I haven't played enough from 2016. Instead I'm just going over a couple (I intended 5 but I wanted both Tomb Raiders) of the more memorable stuff I played and actually bloody finished during this horrible, horrible year. In chronological order.

(Allowing myself to recycle some of my Tweets about these games from the previous year and expand on them. Win.)

My 2016 in Gaming
From someone perpetually years behind on pop culture.

1. Resident Evil Zero HD Remaster

Released: Jan 19, 2016
Played: Jan, 2016

Resident Evil Zero (2002) for the GameCube was actually the first Resident Evil game I ever played. As such I have some pretty fond memories of it but I never actually finished it. I decided to remedy that with the HD Remaster that was released early 2016. For a lot of longtime fans Zero was the point when the classic Resident Evil gameplay style was becoming old and tired, a problem I didn't really have since I barely played any of the others (I think I stopped halfway Jill's story in Resident Evil: Deadly Silence and the only other similar game I played was Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare). Most of my knowledge of Resident Evil's storyline actually comes from the Chronicles games on Wii and spending too much time on the Resident Evil wikia.

The new models are nice but they seem less expressive.

I'd say if you liked Resident Evil Zero (or want to play it at all), the HD Remaster is a good version of it. Plus it has quite a few more costumes (some unfortunately are locked behind DLC) that you can switch at any time, unlike the original where you first had to finish the game and could then only change them during the train segment. They even included an extra mode after the main game where you play the game as Albert Wesker and evil Rebecca Chambers.

Resident Evil Zero's premise always struck me as being just an inch away from being a romance/erotic novel set during the downfall of society. It's like "she's an inexperienced member of an elite police unit trapped in the zombie apocalypse with a dangerous criminal who also happens to be a total hunk". Unfortunately the interesting character dynamic of police member Rebecca Chambers and convicted murderer Billy Coen having to team up is undermined by the fact that after the first 15 minutes it becomes obvious Coen is a decent guy and shown to be innocent long before the game is even halfway done (hence, on top of the game now being 14 years old, I don't consider this much of a spoiler).

2. Final Fantasy X HD Remaster

Released: May 15, 2015
Played: April, 2016

Back in April I bought a PS4 (like a week before the new models would get announced, because of course) with the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster. I had already finished the story of FFX twice years ago on PS2, but this time I wanted to go in with the purpose of finally beating those Dark Aeons in the post-game that always gave me so much trouble.

Ultimately I ended up not just beating all the Dark Aeons, but also dodging the 200 lightning bolts required to complete Lulu's Celestial Weapon, completing the Chocobo race challenges, defeating all the post-game bosses, completing the sphere grid for every character and getting the platinum trophy. So that worked out better than I expected.

One thing I liked about Final Fantasy X where a lot of the other more recent Final Fantasies lost me is that Tidus is himself a stranger in the world of Spira. This allows the player to be eased into the world rather than us having to endure a massive plot dump like in XII or XIII.
However doing it like this also opened the story up to a situation where the entire party looks like massive dicks in how they treated Tidus when the big plot twist of Yuna's eventual fate is revealed. "We weren't keeping it a secret, it was just too hard to say"? You mean that at no point during your journey you could just take Tidus aside for a minute and explain to him what was going on? Instead you gave him massive amounts of guilt over what a jerk he unintentionally was. Nice.

I also realized how impossible it is to explain the story of Final Fantasy X to someone not familiar with the series. My best attempt boiled down to: "So this girl has to sacrifice herself to save the world from a huge monster who is the father of a guy who doesn't really exist. So a dude who is actually dead goes to a city that's not real to get the guy because his monster dad no longer wants to destroy stuff".
Alternatively: "A bunch of deities and resurrected dead guys think religion is stupid and poof a guy into existence to prove that point".

I also wrote this guide on how to fill up your Blitzball team with female members if you're into that: Vicsor's Opinion: Guide: Final Fantasy X - A Female Blitzball Team

3. Life Is Strange

Released: Jan 22, 2016
Played: April, 2016

Life Is Strange is a game I didn't expect like, but I bought it anyway because it was fairly cheap and I still wanted to support Dontnod Entertainment (I loved Remember Me despite its rough edges). Turns out I actually did end up liking it once I actually started playing. Unfortunately the final episode being largely cut-and-pasted from the earlier episodes and a limited payoff of all your choices made during the game hinder it somewhat, but it was still a powerful experience with a gameplay style that I hope modern adventure games take notice of (except more puzzles please).

Chloe Price, to whom the concept of self-preservation
is completely alien

Unlike a lot of fans I didn't feel that much of a connection with Chloe Price though. A lot of Chloe's problems just stem from very poor choices on her part. Most of the time the friendship between Max and Chloe seemed toxic at best, at times even abusive towards Max. A lot of choices involving Chloe usually boiled down to a choice between 'Do the right thing and piss off Chloe' or 'Do the wrong thing to appease Chloe'. Instead of this deep connection, it felt more like I was weighing the collective good against the anti-social whims of a troubled teenager who could fly into rage at the drop of a hat. I did feel a strong connection to Max herself though, who I really wanted to hug for going through this hell of a week. Yeah, if you know about the endings, you can guess which one I went with...

No amount of context can save this terrible, terrible line.

Some of the dialogue gets viciously mocked on social media, and true enough there's quite a bit of cringe-worthy slang in the way these people talk. Overall most of it isn't that bad in context though and the characters themselves mock each other for it enough that it becomes a bit of a running joke. Except Max commenting on plasma and the delicacy thereof, that line cannot possibly be salvaged. Second was dropping "I swear to dog" in dead serious conversation in episode 3. 

I also wrote something about Victoria Chase's character: Vicsor's Opinion: Life Is Strange - Victoria Chase

4-1. Tomb Raider 2013 - Definitive Edition

Released: Jan 31, 2014
Played: Aug, 2016

I always had mixed feelings about the most recent Tomb Raider reboot. On its own it was a pretty good game but it never clicked as being worthy of the title "Tomb Raider", which made it jarring for me because the game insisted on flashing a Tomb Raider logo on screen every 5 seconds. However because I had recently picked up archery as a hobby and Not!Lara's main weapon is a bow, I decided to give the game another chance with its Definitive version on PS4.

Turned out I was pleasantly surprised. The game itself was still the same of course, but an update to Not!Lara's character model at least meant she now resembled someone I could buy as being an inexperienced Lara Croft. That actually made a world of difference for me. Also to mitigate the visual effects the torture porn nature of the game has on Lara, I stuck her in the competitive archery suit for the duration of the game which meant all those horrible cuts and bruises she accumulates are gone.

So yes, my experience with the Tomb Raider reboot went from being annoyed with it a few years back to it being massively improved simply because the character model now actually made me believe I was playing as a version of Lara Croft.

4-2. Rise of the Tomb Raider

Released: Oct 11, 2016
Played: Nov, 2016

I liked Rise of the Tomb Raider from the start because, unlike its predecessor, it didn't feel as ashamed to be Tomb Raider and actually made an effort to reintroduce elements from the Tomb Raider lore. The previous game drastically altered Lara Croft's backstory by removing the plane crash in the Himalayas (which I feel would be like removing Bruce Wayne's parents getting shot in the alley from his backstory). In this game it turns out there was a plane crash in the Himalayas, it's just that Lara's mother was on it rather than she herself, which motivated Richard Croft's obsession with myths of eternal life, which in turn motivated Lara.
We learn this information in the reintroduction of Croft Manor, whereas the previous game didn't even want to acknowledge Lara's nobility. Croft Manor is also filled to the brim with references to the previous games, even implying Lara will at some point be searching for Tomb Raider II's Temple of Xian. Now if in the next game it turns out Jacqueline Natla is responsible for Trinity, that would be absolutely fantastic.

There were still quite a few things I didn't like that much though. The writing of the Tomb Raider reboots is kinda odd. Their stories aren't necessarily all that straightforward, but the plot twists they use are cliches themselves, meaning you can easily predict where the story is going whenever a new plot element is introduced.
Then there's the RPG-like upgrade system for both Lara's skillset and her weapons, which doesn't really seem to matter all that much since basic headshots are completely lethal from the beginning and helmets aren't that difficult to overcome anyway. Also I'm still missing some of the more advanced acrobatics that exited the series after Tomb Raider Underworld.
Still, I feel Rise of the Tomb Raider redeemed the reboot series. Especially since the 20th Anniversary Edition included a bunch of costumes from the Core Design games (oddly missing is Legend era Lara though).

I also had way too much fun shooting bottles out of the sky with the bow.

It's technically an achievement but you can easily do it with a shotgun. I just learned to do it with the bow because that way it actually felt like an achievement. That sure was an hour of my life well spent!

5. Year Walk

Released: March 6, 2014
Played: Dec, 2016

I actually played and finished Year Walk just a few days ago on Christmas eve after the family dinner and before going to bed, which seemed appropriate since Christmas was historically one of the times a year when year walking took place. I mainly just got it because I wanted to know what the deal was with the horse in a suit that was featured in the promotional screenshots. Turns out there was actually an interesting experience behind the weird horse.

Yes, this. What is up with this?

Year Walk is a pretty short game that can easily be finished in like a single evening (I'm at 3.6 hours for 100% completion). Now it's already a very atmospheric puzzle game by itself, but the ending and alternate reality game-like post game is what pushes it over the edge into being a memorable experience (since it's also a big deal, I won't spoil it here). Basically while you are playing the game itself, the story takes a backseat and is only given proper context in the secret ending. Just be sure to keep a notebook on hand because the puzzles actually require some thought and expect you to be paying attention.


Anyway, those are some of the more memorable games I actually finished during the last year. Now if you'd like to hear my opinions on games actually released in 2016 that weren't rereleases, I will see you again in about 2 to 5 years!

A Shift in Values

Lately I’ve been in a bit of a Dragon Ball mood, which is odd because I never particularly liked the franchise when I was younger. TV reruns always stopped after the Cell games though so curiosity about the rest of the series finally got the better of me. Quite possibly the Great Saiyaman stuff will now become my favorite part of the series, in no small part because of how awesome Videl turned out to be and how cute the relationship between her and Gohan develops. Once the tournament and Majin Buu stuff starts up the storyline sadly slows down to a crawl again where endless fights take over everything (Saiyaman episodes tend to be from day to day, but Goku’s one day back on Earth lasts between 50 to 60 episodes and his time even got reduced because of the Super Saiyan 3 transformation). Still, I liked it enough to make me want to try out Dragon Ball Xenoverse (2015), and so far it’s been awesome.

A Shift in Values
How Dragon Ball Xenoverse made me reflect on H.P. Lovecraft

It has a surprisingly deep character creator for a DBZ game.

Xenoverse provided me with an opportunity to add something I found sorely lacking in the series: female warriors. Oh sure, Videl is cool and Android 18 is super badass but in the grand scheme of things they are sideshows at best (although to be fair, unless you are a Saiyan, everyone becomes this eventually). What Xenoverse does is give you the ability to revisit important plot points and inject your warrior of choice into them, fighting side by side with the likes of Goku.

When I started out I was fairly certain what I wanted to play as: a female Saiyan who kinda resembles Videl without looking exactly the same (that would be kinda lame). That’s what I did and I’m having a great time. All in all it's a bit of a Mary Sue plot to suddenly have an original character be necessary to save the heroes but hey, you primarily play Dragon Ball Xenoverse to kick ass, not for the high art story.

I named her Amelia, but for reasons
of canon I refer to her as "Selerie".

Since the recent update for They Bleed Pixels (2012) hit, I’ve been playing a bit more of that too (the addition of a Novice Mode meant I could finally beat some of the harder levels). They Bleed Pixels is a 2D platforming game with a simple yet surprisingly deep combat system and features a young girl who finds a strange book that in her dreams transports her to eldritch locations and turns her into a clawed monster. The entire thing is explicitly Lovecraftian in nature, though not quite so pessimistic.

There isn’t really a lot of overlap there but Dragon Ball Xenoverse giving you the ability to inject female characters in an otherwise male dominated series did spark a realization: that’s exactly what the gaming culture itself has been doing with the works of H.P. Lovecraft with games like They Bleed Pixels.

H.P. Lovecraft as an author was brilliant and has had a massive influence on the horror genre (The Colour Out of Space is currently my favorite story). Neil Gaiman going as far as saying he built the stage on which modern horror is played on. However Lovecraft as a person was considered less than progressive even for his day back in the 1930’s.

Consciously or unconsciously, this means that his stories very rarely included female characters at all, let alone as protagonists (on top of the racism). Amusingly the video game world has shown a bit of a tendency to flip this on its head when adapting his work. Possibly the cinematic tendency to employ women as the final survivors (the final girl) of their respective movies has rubbed off a bit on gaming when it comes to horror.

Alone in the Dark (1992-2015)

It’s undeniable that Edward Carnby is the main protagonist of the Alone in the Dark series. However female alternatives do occasionally show up, starting with Emily Hartwood as the second playable protagonist in the first game. Occasionally the player controls Grace Saunders in Alone in the Dark 2, although Carnby is controlled the majority of the time. Grace does star in the short promotional game Jack In The Dark. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare/ Alone in the Dark 4 features Aline Cedrac as an option, who has an entirely different storyline from (though still connected with) Edward Carnby.

Although hardly Lovecraftian, with Resident Evil taking inspiration from Alone in the Dark I would wager Emily Hartwood also served as the inspiration for making Jill Valentine playable (and in turn Claire Redfield, Rebecca Chambers, Ada Wong, Sheva Alomar and all the others). 

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002)

Personally I have not yet played Eternal Darkness and the nature of its plot is such that I’d rather not research into it before having done so. However since it is a beloved cult classic I feel it would be a disservice not to mention it along with its main protagonist Alexandra Roivas. Now if only I had picked it up when I had the chance.

Eldritch (2013)

It’s a roguelike that looks like Minecraft, the enemies have a cutesy design and it somehow still manages to be absolutely terrifying. No wonder as this one has a story definitely set in the Cthulhu Mythos. Eldritch’s protagonist is customizable but is female as a standard, and is advertised as such. It's a pretty weird experience overall (again, it manages to be silly and terrifying at the same time), but one I highly recommend checking out.

Is it too late to move permanently to Draenor?

World of Warcraft (2004)

That’s a bit of an odd one, isn’t it? To a passing observer, Warcraft is set in a fairly standard fantasy setting (or mistaken for Call of Duty by completely clueless moral guardians) and you wouldn’t think it being much inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. Well that is until World of Warcraft where the standard evil fire army (from space!) attempting to destroy the planet has taken a bit of a backseat to the more mysterious Old Gods who have been influencing the history of Azeroth from the shadows for the worse.

While World of Warcraft has an artstyle far too cheerfully cartoony to provide a legitimately pessimistic setting, they are frighteningly effective at introducing cosmic horror elements into their lore. Traveling Northrend in pursuit of the Lich King is bad enough, but then you learn something far worse is locked up deep beneath the continent, and it is whispers are spreading madness throughout it. He’s also not the only one.

I don't raid so I have no screens of Old Golds.
Here's something living at the bottom of the ocean though.

Considering World of Warcraft’s character creator (and the equal opportunity nature of the lore in general) I would call this a pretty big triumph for cosmic horror. Sure, you aren’t fighting Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth personally (that would be a slap in the face of what the Cthulhu Mythos stands for anyway), but you are fighting as the most diverse cast of characters imaginable against their Warcraft counterparts C’Thun and Yogg-Saron.

It's not quite notable enough for a separate entry, but I should probably also mention that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) quest "A Shadow Over Hackdirt" is obviously based on Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Given Elder Scrolls' character creator, this puts it somewhat in line with World of Warcraft.

All in all, hurray for video games for updating Lovecraftian horror.

And I'm off to beat Cell.

Links & References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl

Images from
- Dragon Ball Xenoverse (2015)
- They Bleed Pixels (2012)
- Eldritch (2013)
- Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2002)
- World of Warcraft (2005)
- http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Yogg-Saron
- http://eternaldarkness.wikia.com/wiki/Alexandra_Roivas

Silent Protagonist - DreadOut

If you followed me on Twitter for the last week, you might have noticed I developed a slight obsession with the Indonesian indie horror game DreadOut (which I hear is a pretty big deal over there) and its main protagonist Linda Meilinda. I connected with Linda as a character early on because I entertained the thought of her being an actually mute protagonist rather than just a silent one and I found that interpretation charming. So if you'll allow me, I'll attempt to talk you through the thoughts I had related to those concepts.

Once You Open Your Mouth...

DreadOut and a Portrait of a Silent Protagonist

Linda as a Mute Protagonist

The idea behind having a silent protagonist is generally so that the player can project their own interpretation of what the character should be like on them as a form of identification, as if they were a blank piece of canvas that the player gets to fill in. It makes sense since, just like how in horror nothing is scarier than whatever your own mind concocts, so would you probably be more likely to identify as (or simply like) a character that you get to fill in the blanks for yourself. The character does have the ability to speak, we simply aren't shown their textbox or hear their dialog because those could break our idea of what the character is like.

"I mean, by having the voice actor speaking out the main character's opinions and messages, I'm afraid that they are going to narrow down the actual characteristics that people can imagine or apply to each character they are controlling, for example."

- Shigeru Miyamoto on Link (Legend of Zelda)

Alternatively there is the possibility that the silent protagonist is simply mute (which I suppose is in itself a way of filling in the blanks).  Personally I think this interpretation works nicely for Linda as a character, although I don’t think a really solid case could be made for either option short of a statement from the developer. However the primary tool and weapon of the game being a smartphone (technically an IrisPhone) and the irony of an apparently mute person wielding a phone of all things did make me wonder how such a character could be handled, which in turn made it an interesting thought experiment for me personally since I myself am trying to insert a mute character into a story.

I guess I won’t just be attempting to make the case for why Linda could work as a mute character, but also why her phone is such an invaluable object to her that she’ll rarely put it away (even before the ghosts show up). This with the intention of dissecting how these characters are developed right now and brainstorming a bit on how actual mute characters could be inserted in fiction in the future.

In DreadOut the IrisPhone functions as both a flashlight and as a method of fighting off ghosts because somehow they are shy about having their picture taken (perhaps Linda's innate psychic powers are simply channeled through taking pictures). In a haunted village at night that by itself would make it invaluable. However to a person incapable or unwilling of speech, text messaging would also be a great tool to help with communication. This isn't explicitly shown in the game since, again, most of this is just me filling in the blanks of a silent protagonist for a certain “what if” scenario.

Stupid doll ...

During a section in Act II where you get to communicate with a (somewhat playful) ghost through a possessed Ira, it appears as if Linda is asking questions and leading the conversation down certain paths. This plays out from a first person perspective so we don’t see (or hear) Linda talking but of course we automatically assume that she is. What if she was actually typing out messages on her phone for possessed Ira to see? If Linda relies on her phone as a primary method of communication it would explain her attachment to it beyond the phone culture we find ourselves in. She's simply naked without it. That's a rather cool idea for a silent character, isn't it?

I suppose a possible counterargument to Linda being mute is a brief scene during the reunion with Shelly where Linda makes an apparent attempt to respond vocally before being interrupted. Of course as this is the only scene in the game (that I caught, anyway) where Linda makes a seeming attempt to talk, this could simply be an example of "expressive silence" which I will briefly discuss next. The actual counterargument would probably be Shelly expecting a response though. If we assume she just fired of a barrage of questions due to panic over the situation and relief of seeing a friendly face however we can just as easily put this scene along with the others where none of the dialog implies that Linda somehow responded.

Expressive Silence

There's a certain paradox in having a (non-mute) silent protagonist in a third-person horror scenario, which requires the character having a visible reaction to their surroundings to be effective. It would be standard bravery in a regular third-person action game but for a horror game our own fear requires a certain vicarious connection to the protagonist and their fear. As such we can't just have Linda be completely emotionless while ghosts pop out with the intention to scare her. This means we still have a window into the character's personality, they just don't vocalize that personality. That makes it one aspect of the character we are supposed to identify with on which we can't project our own ideas.
Rather like how Link from The Legend of Zelda is supposed to be the player's link into the world of Hyrule, yet the designers opted for a cartoony style for Wind Waker so they could better show his reactions. There's nothing bad about doing things like that but it feels rather self-defeating and it naturally leads people to wonder if the character is supposed to be mute rather than be a reflection of themselves.

Linda does this too with big gestures whenever she interacts with her friends. She might not actually be speaking, but that doesn't mean she doesn't say anything. She makes hand gestures to mock Ira for speaking too much, she grabs her cheek after being slapped, she sulks when being teased, chokes Ira in jest and makes a pondering gesture when Ira starts reminiscing. That's her way of communicating with her friends without actually vocalizing. Humorously enough the one emotion she doesn't really show a lot of is fear, which I suppose adds to her backstory that she once threw a rock at a person disguised as a ghost while her friend was just scared. We can easily imagine what kind of a person she is even though she hasn't spoken a word.

Of course that still doesn't mean Linda was supposed to be a mute character, but perhaps developers themselves naturally attempt to compensate their protagonist's silence by proxy by exaggerating their characters' physical responses.

Also she's just really cute.

Coincidentally I read Deus Ex: Icarus Effect a couple of weeks ago featuring a character who has muteness as a character trait. Yelena Federova (spelled Fedorova in Human Revolution) is a Tyrant assassin who is implied to be able to speak, but simply hasn't in a very long time, probably due to trauma. The story is told from the perspectives of Anna Kelso (who is a target of the Tyrants) and Ben Saxon (who is a Tyrant). This means we get to see the Tyrants both as being scarily effective assassins operating in complete secrecy, and as the broken people they really are (exception being Jaron Namir, who has his stuff together so well that it offends Saxon he is allowed to have such a normal life).
So on one side we see Yelena as an assassin operating from the shadows (with cloaking technology, no less) with her muteness being just another factor that enhances how intimidating she appears to Kelso. She is being hunted by an assailant who is difficult to read and one who would be hard to reason with. On the other side the exact same character traits are simply evidence of a broken person whose muteness is the result of trauma and probably acts as a self-defense mechanism.

DreadOut Recommendation

I personally loved DreadOut and its protagonist Linda, however it is a pretty hard game to  simply recommend.

Negative
The difficulty of some of the puzzles is such that you occasionally have to remember environmental details (or take pictures and save them to your gallery) long before they become relevant, and thus likely having missed them. Other puzzles are simply so obscure it required me to consult a walkthrough quite often. These puzzles clearly make sense from the developer's point of view but a bit more playtester input could have been useful (or I'm just bad at these sorts of games). There's also still a fair share of bugs and translation errors that need to be fixed (and a character is named Doni in Act I and Donny in Act II). These things could be frustrating or throw you out of the experience so keep that in mind.

Positive
If the entire above article wasn't enough of an indication, I really love DreadOut's protagonist Linda Meilinda and despite them not being all that developed, I also came to care for her friends. The somewhat weaker gameplay is compensated by how well-crafted all the scenes, atmosphere and character models are (relative to the game's budget and status as an indie game, of course). The game's story is rather confusing but this being a horror game, that ultimately helped in keeping the game in my mind trying to figure it all out. Act II even gives you a bit of player choice regarding the outcome of the story.

All in all, I did love the game, but you should keep in mind that it's still a fairly unpolished indie title.

Playtime to completion: roughly 5 hours to complete Acts 0, 1 and 2. 
(I missed a bunch of collectibles and the village nighttime section on my first playthrough)

The Soundtrack & Manga DLC also includes several costumes to use in game, as well as the ability to switch costumes right away (otherwise requiring you to have finished the game already).

All of Linda's costumes (including DLC costumes)

Conclusion

As I made clear multiple times, I'm not so much attempting to show that Linda Meilinda is a mute rather than simply a silent protagonist, but I hope I've shown that she could have been very easily pushed in that direction had the developers decided to go that route. Perhaps for DreadOut it would have even made more sense to have her be an actual mute. Even if you dismiss this as mere pointless fan theorizing, at least I hoped I provided you with some insights.

Links & References

- DreadOut on Steam Store

- DreadOut Official Page

- TvTropes: Heroic Mime
- Zelda Dungeon: Miyamoto talks about the future of Zelda

Images from:

- DreadOut (2014)

Ghosts are stupid, throw rocks at them

A Diverse Cast of Characters

On Tumblr there's a couple of images going around showcasing video game mascots from the late 80's to now, and how apparently every single one of modern gaming mascots is a 20-35 year old white dude with short hair, a stubble and a scowl with the exception of Chell from Portal 6 years ago. So I'm going to take the time to do some ranting of my own.

A Diverse Cast of Characters
A Rant to an Invisible Fanbase

Okay, I don't disagree with diversification in gaming but the people arguing in favor of it really need to clean up their act. The "We Can Do Better Than This" on one of the images itself is fairly innocuous, but a couple of blogs spreading the images complain about there only being 1 female character and have the line "THIS IS NOT OKAY" underneath them. Yes, I want more diversity in video game protagonists too, but the apparent lack of diversity doesn't annoy me nearly as much as its opposition pretending we have to start from scratch in fixing it.

So ... presenting a list of 8 characters as representative of the last 10 years of video game "mascots". Right. Five of which I managed to avoid because they are from games I haven't even played.  

Okay, elephant in the room number one: none of these previous characters have gone away. Only Raziel is really starting to drop into obscurity. A lot of the others even had major releases in the last year. You can't really mourn women being archaeologists when you could last be one in March of this year. Or how about that Nintendo crossover fighter coming up that features literally half of the characters from before the early 2000's?

Cole MacGrath, Nathan Drake, Marcus Fenix and Chell could arguably be considered mascots, but I think for the BioShock franchise the Big Daddy has more of a right to call himself a mascot (but he's evidently too interesting for this list). I had to look up what the guy from The Last of Us' name is, I guess marketing has put too much emphasis on the female character Ellie. As for Soap MacTavish ... really? He might be the main protagonist of the 3 Modern Warfare games but while actually playing the first Modern Warfare (in which he's actually the main player protagonist), he might have as well been a bar of soap for how much I actually learned about him. I hardly call that mascot material.

Like I often said in previous posts, this is once again people giving free advertising to the things they don't like to see and pretending the good things don't exist, just so they can give more weight to their complaints. You can just as easily fill up those 8 slots with 8 athletes from the covers of sports games released this year alone and say it is not okay that all these jocks are filling up gaming protagonists. That's not even a stretch considering the average FIFA game sells at least thrice as many copies as The Last of Us did.


The Supposed Market

Mass Effect was indeed marketed with that particular representation of Commander Shepard, but the problem there is that we are talking about a game that allows for character customization. The female version of Commander Shepard turned out to be so popular that for Mass Effect 3, she was also put in the spotlight. So on one hand I'd grant Shepard mascot status, on the other I have reservations about calling a character a mascot if he doesn't necessarily appear in the game at all. Especially since this list seems to already mix up mascot with player protagonist.

Inclusion of Female Commander Shepard in Marketing

The effect female Shepard's popularity had in the attitude shift in marketing is also emblematic of what happens when enough people actually do speak up. I said it before and I'll continue to hammer it in. The people publishing these things want to make a profit above all else, they are perfectly willing to change their strategy if it means more money in the bank. You aren't going to change them by attempting to pull the ground beneath them. You have to highlight what you do like and ask for more of that.

We have a lot of people complaining about what they don't like, but these same people vanish in smoke when they actually get what they claim to want. Are you out there and do you actually want these things or are you just here to complain about sexism? The Internet exploded when it was revealed publishers didn't want to publish Remember Me because a female protagonist wouldn't sell (Link broken). Instead of all the blogs chewing these publishers up, a more convincing counterargument would be the game's massive success.

Except that's not exactly what happened.

Remember Me vs. Duke Nukem Forever

No, I don't consider it a fair comparison between Remember Me and Duke Nukem Forever. I just want to show Remember Me couldn't even scratch at the sales of a widely hated game. This is hardly a rare occurrence. Games with a female protagonist do very often sell worse than games with a male protagonist.

The Castlevania games on DS shows the same strange phenomenon quite clearly to a certain degree. These games are all similarly rated and fairly similar in gameplay style (so I won't entirely rule out gamer fatigue), nevertheless its sales numbers are strangely ordered by player character. Solo male protagonist at the top, both male and female protagonist in the middle with only a slight drop in sales, and a larger drop with a solo female protagonist. This is especially strange, when at the time of release, Order of Ecclesia was widely praised for breathing new life into the franchise. They even cross-promoted the game by having main character Shanoa as a roster fighter in the Wii game Castlevania Judgment.

Sure, every time you mention things like this it will be pointed out that the lack in sales have to do with a lack of marketing budget or the game being released at the wrong time. However it also showcases how this huge supposed untapped market really isn't there, or at least not visibly so. After all, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic didn't become a powerhouse of a franchise among adult males because Hasbro started marketing to them. They simply showed up when a few people discovered it was actually pretty good and its popularity spread through word of mouth.
One of the few times I can remember when this happened anywhere recently in the gaming community with a female protagonist is with Bayonetta, after it was sold at a reduced price and not profitable enough anymore to be picked up for a sequel until Nintendo decided to bite.

Yes, there is the occasional game that really manages to do decently out of the gate like Portal, Mirror's Edge (you know, that low-hanging fruit a certain colorful character keeps parading as the best games ever) and Tomb Raider, but exceptions aside the problem is not just a one-way street solely to blame on marketing or developers not trying. For there to be effective marketing, there needs to be a visible market.

And I again want to reiterate: I also want more variety in the mainstream gaming community. I also think the quality of white male characters has dropped to exceedingly bland. I love strange ideas for player characters. I love female player characters. I just tire of seeing lots of people complaining while I seem to be the only one walking to the store to actually pick up these games. It's the annoying cycle of people yelling at me because I'm supposedly on the wrong side of the fence while I'm actually investing my money on the things they claim to want while I'm the one watching it all fail. Boy, that was one hell of a sentence.

Ignoring the Indie Market

Unless there's something to chastise the indie scene for, it often goes largely unnoticed when it comes to positive examples. No, we'd rather directly force the big budget triple A developers on top to instantly drop everything they are doing and cater to our sensibilities. The problem with doing it like this is that we are tearing down existing infrastructures for what is essentially a gamble on their part. 

So with my suggestion above to highlight the things you like, how about you also help cultivate the little guy? After all, a triple A developer doesn't magically fall from the sky.

This ...

... also started out like this.

So instead of complaining that Nintendo isn't drastically altering its formula right away to accommodate a solo playable Princess Zelda, is it too much to ask to put some of that effort into showing some support for an existing game inspired by The Legend of Zelda that already has a female protagonist?

Ittle Dew (2013)

I mean, why are we approaching these issues as if we absolutely need to redistribute a very finite amount of resources? Is it honestly that impossible for several different groups and fanbases to coexist together that we must tear down what other people enjoy instead of building stuff of our own? Diversity isn't just a tool to bludgeon other people with. Diversity includes the norm and things you don't like.

Now in a few hours Contrast will be officially released. I got my pre-order waiting to unlock. So how about we stop complaining and finally put our money where our mouths are?

Contrast (2013)

While you're at it, go check out Blood of the Werewolf. It's not normal I can easily break into top 10 on leaderboards.