Do you remember a time when it was just the non gaming public that got itself whipped up into a whirlwind of outrage every time a new game came out? When a hack newspaper called Grand Theft Auto a ‘columbine murder simulator’ or whatever phrase was being bandied around at the time it was easy to ignore them because they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about right? That’s still the case. We can laugh at crazy right wing bloggers claiming Mass Effect is some kind of alien butt rape adventure because, hey, if fark has taught us anything (aside from the fact that putting your name on everything is incredibly irritating. Something graffiti taught us long ago) it’s that the hysterical mass media is here for our own personal enjoyment. But now it seems the garden variety gamer, once happy with simply a new Mario game every few years and enough cheetos and mountain dew to keep him/her alive has now decided that ‘they ain’t gonna stand for it anymore’, ‘it’ in this case being any and every issue they can get their grubby little minds round.
All of a sudden Resident Evil 5 is racist because it’s set in Africa, Ubisoft is the new face of misogyny for marketing games about babies and horses to little girls (common mistake, little girls hate babies and horses), and, of course, Fat Princess has portly feminists up in arms because it has the gall to feature a character that is both a girl, and fat. The humanity.
Now don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of things wrong the gaming industry today, especially on the gender front(literally ‘front’) . I mean at the current rate soul Calibur’s Ivy won’t actually be wearing any clothes by the 5th game and sure, just about every game marketed towards girls happens to be complete crap but I can’t help think that perhaps we’re… you know… taking this all a bit too seriously.

So before we all march down the avenue of no return and end up with T shirts that say shit like “The princess owns this castle Sister!” or we all join the goombah suffrage movement let me give you a few examples of issues that weren’t accompanied by an explosion of internet rage.

1:So you want to talk about unrealistic body types…

Ok. So porn gives young men a very distorted version of an ideal woman about as far from an actual woman as it’s possible to get without the use of electrodes and rubber skin. I agree. I watch a whole shitload of porn but I think I I understand that perhaps what I’m seeing isn’t exactly ‘reality’ per se (although I challenge you to find anything more horribly ‘real’ than 2 girls 1 cup) but plenty of guys seem to think it is and honestly expect the hot chick they met at the office dance to be perfectly happy about being anally ravaged by four guys then thrown out of a moving bus. I also agree that the images in pop magazines give young girls very bad examples to follow.
But it works both ways.
Unfortunately we club swinging males either don’t care or we’re too stupid to notice.
Now I’ll be honest, I’m closer to this than I am to the ruggedly handsome stars of my favourite action games but I’m god damn lightyears away from the guys in the ever popular Gears of War

Even if I was a perfectly healthy, slim young man rather than a gelatinous swamp creature there’s still no chance in hell of me looking even remotely like a character from Gears of War. Yeah, teenage girls going for waist measurements that sound more like wrist measurements is terrible but Jesus, Marcus Fenix’s forearms are thicker than his god damn head. Hell even if I loaded myself up on the juice WWF style and lifted a couple of Volkswagens a day I’d be nowhere close. I could have testicles the size of ball bearings and acne so bad It looked like I had the black death and I’d still look like Christian Bale in the Machinist standing next to one of these guys.
Unrealistic body shape? They don’t even have shapes. They’re just quivering masses of muscle. Living billboards for steroid abuse that whisper sweet nothings into young men’s ears in the universal language of testosterone. We can’t even to begin to imagine the effect this has on a developing teen’s mind because we’re too lazy to do any tests because we’re too busy chainsawing equally muscled monsters in half. Damn.

2: Feminists do the smart thing and ignore japan.

If you just happen to believe in gender equality then congratulations Luke, you’ve just found your Deathstar. It’s a small island in the pacific, home to about 127,433,494 people, at least half of which is gainfully employed making games about Octopi (not to be confused with the wild Doctorpus PHD) having forceful sex with pre pubescent girls. And often pooping on them.

Japan has reached that perfect critical mass of horrifying weirdness where they’re so bizzare people aren’t actually surprised by this stuff any more. So when we’re confronted with a game that offers us two options, RAPE/DO NOT RAPE (jokes on you though, if you select DO NOT RAPE you get a short cutscene and are brought back to the same menu) we just kind of shrug and think “Those crazy Japanese people. What will they think of next?” World domination probably.
Now I could go on about the adventure game market forever, because there’s just a billion and one little horrors in this particular toybox. From games that are all about peeing on people to games where you get turned into a girl by a random chemical spill in your highschool lab and subsequently end up raped horribly by like a hundred guys on a bus. But in the end what’s the point? This is a purely Japanese thing right?

Wrong. Plenty of companies are hard at work translating and exporting fine titles like this to the west where they’re finding larger and larger audiences (not to mention the already large audience that already download the games illegally and use fan made translations) and judging by the west’s newly found obsession with all things Japanese it won’t be long before young Jimmy down the street trades in his copy of GTA 4, in which you can beat a prostitute to death in order to get your money back, for Lovely selection 3, where you have to rape a girl until she submits to your will and convinces herself that she loves you.

Great…

3: Heterosexuals and old dudes not offended by JRPG stereotyping

Go play a couple of JRPGs. See you in a few months.

…
…

…

Ok you’re back. Now you might have noticed a few details about all the protagonists and antagonists in the games you’ve just played. Long wispy hair, slim borderline anorexic physiques, feminine features, a lack of body or facial hair and a snazzy brightly colored wardrobe that matches anything you’ve seen on Queer eye for the Straight guy. Yes sir. They’re all metrosexuals. Not a plaid shirt or a hairy back in sight. In the land of JRPGS the classic heterosexual hero has gone extinct.

Seriously. In a JRPG this guy would be so badass he'd be able to cut the moon in hallf.

Seriously, do a quick check here. Do you have a six o’clock shadow? Short hair? Deep Voice? If so run like a mother fucker because you’re probably about to get killed by the bishonen villian so he can show the protagonist how powerful he is. If you happen to be on the other side, chances are the hero will turn up and murder you as you’re busy raping/pillaging/whatever it is us straight people are supposed to do in these games.
Oh and god fucking help you if you happen to be over 20, you’re just as screwed as the straight guys are. The only chance you have of living longer than 20 seconds past your introduction is if you happen to be both old and incredibly hairy. Old guy with beard is proven to have a much longer life than generic masculine henchman. Chances are you could live all of oh.. 20 or 30 minutes until the villian kills you to set the plot moving again.
I don’t know who these JRPGs are aimed at. The smalll homosexual gaming community maybe? Or just girls? Because they sure as shit aren’t aimed at me. (The harry footed Neanderthal demographic that makes up most of the world’s gamer population) I mean am I actually supposed to identify with Tidus from Final Fantasy 10? I identify more with the square brick from tetris than I do with Tidus. Now I know how women feel when they play tomb raider. Or black people when they watch horror movies.

Disclaimer: This article is meant to be taken with a pinch of salt. Just because these issues may seem ridiculous doesn’t mean others in gaming aren’t. Oh and before you start sending me links detailing a 300 page debate about Male stereotypes in games on a political website of your choice remember, these are just issues that I think don’t have much of a hubub about them. Still I’d be glad to see any links where these issues are discussed in a civil manner. Peace.

Extra special Bonus! Rorschach dating sim by Atlus!