The Five Month Mark At Kotaku AU

Illustration by Kotaku reader "Sughly". kramsdesign.com

I’d been meaning to do a Kirk Hamilton-type post about my first few months at Kotaku Australia but I never got around to it because I was overwhelmed by a case of “the lazy shits” (I think that is the scientific term for it, yes). Today I was going through the Kotaku CMS tagging stories, and seeing my older articles reminded me that I still hadn’t done some kind of a story round-up here on Zero Light Seeds. So here it is! Below are links to most of the big features I wrote during my first five months at Kotaku AU.

Gears Of War 3 Is A Crunchy Potato Chip

What Happened To Evony?

I Am A Body-Building. This Is ZiGGURAT

Knowing Your Rights In Game Development 

The Game That Saved Halfbrick 

Surprise Attack: When A THQ Marketing Director Goes Indie

Warco: The First-Person Shooter Where You Never Fire A Gun

Re-Classification Laid Bare: What R18+ Means For You 

The Brawsome Journey: The Indie Devs Writing Their Way to Success

The Fun And Games Of The FBI 

My 2011 In Games: Hyperdimension Neptunia And Repulsion

The Indie Handbook That Doesn’t Exist 

From Brisbane To Seattle: A Strange Loop Game 

Purple ‘N’ Pimpin — The Saints Are Back 

The Philosophical First-Person Puzzler: Antichamber 

The War Begins In The Other Ocean 

What Happens To Game Developers When A Studio Closes?

One Man’s Journey Through The Solar System

Resistance 3: The Complex Game That Keeps It Simple

Will Make Games For Food… Or Funding

Working at Kotaku sure has made me a lot more prolific than when I worked in print! Aside from writing daily news posts, I’ve also been given the freedom to pursue and write the stories linked above. I used to be so pleased with myself if I was able to write two large features a month for HYPER or PC PowerPlay. I guess I used to also be some lazy jerk of a university student!

It’s not just one joke, it’s all the jokes.

When this post appeared in the Kotaku AU re-feed today, I will admit that I allowed my mouse to hover over the “trash” button before I’d even read what it was about. Seeing the headline, I could already predict what the reader response would be, and as the only person on duty at the time, I did not want to  read every comment that would be posted beneath the article. I ended up publishing it, holding my breath as the comments rolled in. I already knew what kind of comments they would be. They’re always the same. You can take this Sexism Bingo Card into any comment thread about women/feminism/sexism/sexuality and it won’t take long before the room shouts bingo and everyone walks away with a tray of meat sweat.

I was not going to provide any substantial kind of comment on the post because I don’t feel comfortable putting myself out there, especially when it comes to a subject that generates so much anger and dismissiveness in the comments. I ended up commenting because a question was directed at me in a civilised manner and I thought it appropriate to respond. The question was:

I’m not justifying any sort of discrimination, but it seems impossible these days to make any sort of joke without offending people. Tracey, do you feel offended by this guys comments? Or do you find his joke funny?

Below is my response, which I have since extended for the purpose of this blog post (the original is still within the Kotaku comment thread (I’m going to get a bit more personal here because it is my own blog)):

Regarding this one comment in particular, I didn’t really find it funny, although I was annoyed that [Bissell] was perpetuating a stereotype. The thing I find frustrating when people say “it’s just a joke” or “you can’t make a joke without offending people” is this: people don’t just get offended for the fun of it. Generally speaking, women don’t enjoy getting angry about sexist comments. We don’t like writing angry blog posts, or calling people out for using gender-specific insults. We don’t get a kick out of this in any way at all. It’s really exhausting.

So WHY do we draw attention to it? Because sometimes it is genuinely hurtful. “It’s just a joke” doesn’t work when you’re constantly in a position of disadvantage. And the thing is it’s never just one joke in isolation. They stack up one after the other and they never go away. We hear it on Xbox Live, we read it in the comments, we see it in the games we play, we read it in the articles… when all these instances of sexism stack up, it’s not longer “just a joke”, it’s another hideous block of discrimination thrown on top of the mountain of blocks that we suffocate under.

A few years ago when I first started writing about games, I was able to easily shrug off sexist comments and “jokes”. I saw them as isolated incidents — moronic statements made by people who didn’t know any better — sexism wouldn’t play any defining role in my career as a journalist who writes about games. After that first sexist comment came another, and then another, and then another. It didn’t end. The first time someone makes a sexist comment and says it’s a joke, it is easy to believe. But when it happens again and again and again, it just doesn’t sit right. The more I was told that it was all just a joke, the more I felt that I couldn’t say anything when someone was completely out of line. I began to second-guess myself, I was worried that if I said anything I’d be dismissed for simply not “getting the joke”. A friend of mine gave me a simple analogy: “It’s like when you die in a videogame and your friend says ‘You just died’, and you’re like ‘I know’, and then ten minutes later they do it again. ‘Oh hey look, you died again.’ Such comments attack the psyche like the . . . slower, more ‘adult’ version of a child repeating every word you say immediately after you say it”.

Today on Kotaku we had one post about sexism and the comment thread was full of people ready to dismiss the concerns of women who felt that the way we as gamers talk about women is an important issue. A few weeks ago we had a post on a sexist advertisement run by a game retailer and again the readers came out of the woods to put down any person who expressed that they were offended by the ad. Weeks earlier, a post on female characters in videogames invoked a similar response where the writer was accused of over-reacting and making a mountain out of an ant hill. It goes much, much further back, and it’s not just on Kotaku — it’s everywhere, and it’s not okay.

What I have just identified is what upsets me the most. The day after a certain post regarding sexism went up on Kotaku, I went home feeling more defeated than I ever have during the time I’ve spent writing about videogames. I was disturbed, deeply saddened, and I found myself in tears, bawling harder than I have in years. What upset me was that all the jokes, all the dismissive comments, all the times I’d been told to toughen up and deal with it — all of that had snowballed to the point where a new “joke” would serve as a reminder for all the previous “jokes” told. It was a reminder that this isn’t a new and isolated incident where someone has made a silly remark about women; rather, this has happened before and people are clearly okay with it to allow it to keep happening. And it will happen again. These jokes are a reminder that if someone writes a post about sexism on Kotaku (or where ever) tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or five years from now, if I make a contribution I will still be dismissed, my opinion will still count for nothing, and I will still be accused of being anything other than a rational human being. The moment I contribute to the discussion, it won’t matter what my role is — I will just be another hysterical woman who is over-reacting.

I’ve been told that things will change in time, I just have to wait. Really? Really? Is waiting all it really takes? How exactly will things change if I just wait? And how long do I have to wait? What people seem to forget is that people who are discriminated against are feeling it right now. They live through it every day. It bothers me that we’re all being told to wait with no end in sight. It bothers me that waiting appears to be the solution. It bothers me that I feel like I need to tip-toe around a subject that concerns me, that as a woman I am somehow less qualified to talk about how issues affect me lest I be accused of being a “feminazi” who is pushing an agenda.

Understandably not all women feel this way. Some don’t believe there is a problem at all. But enough DO feel this way to speak up about it, and when they do we shouldn’t be dismissing them for being overly emotional or hysterical because if you were in their shoes you would understand why it bothers them so much. It bothers me. It bothers me so much I freeze up every time I see a headline in the Kotaku CMS about women, I wince before I look at the comments, and I’ll often sit there moderating them, feeling completely deflated, wondering why I bother writing about games when so many readers don’t even respect me as a human being. So, since you asked, that’s my answer. And the important thing to keep in mind with these things is that this may have been “one joke”, but how many “jokes” of this nature have women had to silently deal with, and how must it feel to be dismissed every time you try to stand up for yourself?

[Note: This post is written on my personal gaming blog and does not necessarily reflect the views of any of my employers. With that in mind, I have posted this here to get some thoughts off my chest, not to spark a debate or discussion. I've heard plenty of opposing views in various comment threads, I do not welcome them here.]

We Need To Talk.

A peculiar thing happened to me today while I was at E3, something that I was not expecting.

I had just done an interview with the developer of a war-themed game. The PR person from the game’s publisher spent the whole interview hovering over me and listening in on my questions and the developer’s answers, which is fairly normal in these situations. At the end of the interview, once the developer went off to be interviewed by other journalists, the PR person pulled me aside and said:

“I just wanted to make sure that you’re not writing a sensationalist story about this game – you asked a lot of questions about ethics and war and I just wanted to be sure that it won’t be for a story that sensationalises the violence in games because we’ve had a lot of negative attention from the media and…”

I assured this PR person (who is actually a really lovely person and does their job well) that I was not going to sensationalise anything and that the interview was in good hands. But what baffled me was that I had to do that at all.

First, I was a bit insulted that they thought I would sensationalise anything to begin with, as I am sure any journalist in my position would be. Second, I was annoyed that I was basically being told how/what to write. I hadn’t signed a contract of any kind; I was there purely to see the game and report on it if I wanted to, and if I was going to report on it the only person who I’d take instruction from would be my editor.

But what I found really baffling was they thought that talking about the issue of war and ethics in games somehow equated to attracting negative media attention. If anything, we should be talking about these issues more if we want to counter the negative image surrounding violent videogames. If you read sensationalist media reports, how many actually talk to the developers about how they chose to portray the violence and combat? How many talk to them about their ethical considerations, the experiences they tried to craft for players and the messages they tried to put out? These are the things we should be talking about. These are the questions we should be asking. Instead, whoever that is responsible for controlling the flow of information (I don’t want to lay blame on PR professionals because I’m aware they take their orders from higher up) encourages questions about how awesome the kills are, the range of weapons, how many dudebros you can smash in multiplayer and how powerful the next bazooka is… and that’s meant to somehow paint the industry in a better light?

I should point out that I don’t have an issue with those kinds of questions in general because I’m aware that many gamers do want to know about the weapons and sweet killz, but when that’s all we talk about and that’s the only kind of information we’re pushing out into the world, we’re really not doing the games many favours.

I don’t think every game needs to be talked about seriously, but some games do. I don’t think every article that comes out about a war game or a street crime game or a drug and sexual violence-themed game needs to Address The Big Issues, but the industry shouldn’t shy away from answering these questions, and they certainly shouldn’t worry that it will only result in their games being vilified by those who blame videogames for society’s social ills. If we discuss the issues openly and honestly and shed light on the development process, then I’m sure this will lead to people having a greater understanding of how and why controversial decisions were made, and that can only be a good thing, right?

WORK: HYPER – Hyperdimension Neptunia

This is what some might refer to as a "Bill Henson Model".

Review: Hyperdimension Neptunia
First published in issue 212 of HYPER magazine.

To laugh or to get angry; to let it pass as just following certain anime conventions or to be disgusted by the blatant sexism that sees well-endowed girls who look and sound 11 get exploited by the camera – I don’t know how I feel about Hyperdimension Neptunia.

Actually, that is a lie. I know exactly how I feel about the game. I feel disappointed. I feel uncomfortable, and most of all I’m annoyed that of all the Japanese games that could have been given an Australian release, it had to be this one.

The premise of the game shows so much promise: four goddesses, each the embodiment of a console (Wii, Xbox, PlayStation, Sega Neptune) are at war with each other over the land of Gameindustri. Much of the amusement and humour is drawn from references to the games industry as we know it, and while the game pokes fun at genre conventions and character representations (“Breasts are symbolic for both my maturity and fertility. The size of my bust equates to my aptitude as a goddess!” says the goddess Green Heart, while showing so much under-boob it’s a wonder they haven’t reached her knees), they are often done without purpose or reason. The game relies too heavily on the player’s existing knowledge of other games in order to entertain us, rather than an engaging story, clever use of dialogue and woven in gaming references, and gameplay dynamics that are actually worth playing.

With no worlds or towns to explore, you’re left to wander through uninteresting dungeon after uninteresting dungeon, each one boringly laid out with about as much to discover and get excited about as an airplane lunchbox. Running around awkwardly to a grating soundtrack, your exploration of the dungeon is frequently interrupted by random battles that quickly become repetitive and dull as you find yourself queuing up combos before hitting skip to avoid watching the same battle animations over and over and over again.

The characters are also needlessly irritating, with every female character sounding like a whiny, vacuous child with phenomenal levels of ditsy-ness (“Hello. I enjoy arts and crafts, and I’m good at math. I know I don’t look it, but it’s something I’m quite proud of,” says Compa, THE DITZ). The representation of females as stupid and shallow is offensive, and the level of fan service is discomforting. Case in point: almost every cut-scene involves an image still of a girl in a compromising position – the camera then slowly moves to and zooms in on the part of the screen that features the most crotch and holds it there. In an early scene, Neptune gets bandaged by Compa, but the bandages have only strategically covered parts of her breasts and crotch, exposing sufficient side-boob and EVERYTHING ELSE, all while we can hear the sound of her squeals. Every time Compa falls over, the camera also ensures we get to see what colour her knickers are (white).

Is this all a joke? If so, is it meant to be funny? Because rather than take a meta approach and be intelligently self-reflective and humourous, there appears to be a strong undertone of “Hurr…videogame references…durr…” and the kind of sexism that is simply too prevalent in a lot of Japanese anime. It’s gross. And while it could be funny, it’s just not. When all is combined, the interesting idea that showed so much promise falls flat on its white knicker-covered arse and stays there, waiting for the camera to zoom in.

1/10

Panic In London: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Game

This screenshot does not reflect my game. I am much worse at town planning than this. Also, pfft Aztecs.

I built a farm, and then another, and then another, watching my villager plough his tiny, pixilated patch of dirt until the food counter at the top of my screen started going up. Then I built houses and barracks, again right next to each other, causing my cavalry and army to spill onto my farms instead of…well, wherever I was meant to position my military for maximum defence. Strategy was never my strong point. But that didn’t matter, because I already knew how I was going to win.

As I was clicking and tapping away on a grubby keyboard and managing my troops in Age of Empires II at an internet café, London peak hour was in its full, chaotic glory just a few metres away behind the flimsy wall of the café. I sat in the dimly lit room just off Oxford Street, lined with grimy tables, chairs, and desktops, thankful that for the price of two pounds I could escape London for an hour or five.

It wasn’t that I was addicted to videogames. I didn’t enter the internet café because I needed to tie an Ethernet cable around my arm and shoot some Age of Empires right into my vein. I just needed some rest. I’d been backpacking for weeks through Eastern Europe where everything was so unfamiliar – the languages, the cultures, the laws, the transport systems – I was becoming increasingly worn out from adjusting from culture to culture, and mostly from worrying about getting lost, getting mugged, and figuring out how to not stand out like a sore thumb. I had thought that London would assuage all my concerns and I would simply be able to enjoy the easiness of an English-speaking city, but this quickly went out the door as I found myself constantly lost in the big city and more stressed than I’d been when I was in Budapest. Language familiarity, it seemed, was not the kind of familiarity I was after. The language of games, however, was.

I’d always played games just because I found the interaction with a virtual space engaging and the delivery of a good story rewarding. But for the first time, while sitting in this dingy internet café, exhausted and pining for home, playing Age of Empires II meant something different. I didn’t just see it as a game about building and conquering, but as a familiar place where I understood the rules, the language, the mechanics.

The ease with which I slipped into the game and just knew what to do was a stark contrast to how I’d been coping with London. I had mostly been feeling pathetic for getting lost on The Tube, panicking when I wasn’t sure what the sounds being echoed by various station speakers meant, and somehow managing to get lost even though I had a map. Coming from this environment, from this situation of feeling useless, brought my attention to how comfortable I was in the game and how well I knew it. I was familiar with all the maps and never worried or felt lost during my exploration for gold, stone, or berry bushes. Every time the game made a noise I knew what it meant – the horn meant I was being attacked, a “whoosh” meant a new villager had been created, and mumbling incantation meant my priest was converting the rival units to my side.

The feeling that I’d been here before, that I didn’t have to worry about feeling like I did in London, was so strong that the gaming session became something completely different to any gaming session I’d ever had with Age of Empires II. The combination of the situation I was in, the way I was feeling, and the timing of the game’s entrance into my trip abroad meant that I viewed the game as a comforting escape to a place that, despite containing warring civilisations and its own brand of chaos, was a place that I found peace.

At the time I was the furthest I’d ever been away from home. It was the longest I’d gone without seeing my friends and family. And as much as I loved being in Europe, hearing a familiar accent was nice. Seeing a familiar face was nicer. Being able to access a familiar world – a world that I’d always taken for granted – when I was in the most unfamiliar of places, however, was something that did more for me than I ever would have imagined.

As for how I ended up winning Age of Empires II? I switched all my diplomacy settings to “Friendly” and conquered everyone else. Tough in London, tough in videogames.

———————————————-

LONDON: The trip wasnt completely horrible. I actually enjoyed it a lot when I was there with my friend Alan, who is a fully bad gangsta from Laaahndaaaahn. Heres an example of fun times: when I was in Notting Hill I saw Brett Anderson and took a photo of him without him realising. Is that illegal in England? I dont know. What would they have done if it was illegal? Deport me? TOO LATE I AM IN AUSTRALIA NOW SO YALL CAN SUCK IT. Oh wait, Commonwealth. Their queen is our queen. :/

WORK: Atomic – Something About Blizzard

Ever since launching my online portfolio [www.traceylien.com], I’ve been unsure as to how much I should post there and how much I should post here, whether it would be okay to double up on articles, which articles are more “worthy” of being in the portfolio and which should still be shown but not in the portfolio. First World Problems, anyone?

Here’s an article that didn’t make the portfolio cut not because it’s rubbish (I like to think that my editors don’t have significantly impaired judgment) but because I already featured another article from the same issue of the magazine. I was approached by the editor of Atomic to conduct an interview with the CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, Michael Morhaime, and while I was initially apprehensive about whether or not I was qualified enough to do it (it’s part inferiority complex, part… no, wait, it’s all inferiority complex, but whatever), Michael was incredibly friendly and generous with his time and I didn’t feel as though I had “failed” at interviewing one of the biggest players in the games industry. HERE IS THE STORY:

Would You Put Gaming On Your Resumé

Oh hey, a thing! First story with my third producer at Good Game.

Good Game At Gamescom

Oh hey, so the ABC put up one of my Gamescom stories on YouTube. So many hours of filming, interviewing, and running around all condensed to 8:50mins. Enjoy! Or don’t. Mostly don’t.

WORK: Hyper – Epic Mickey Feature

First published in Hyper issue 207.

The year was 2005. Warren Spector, the man who headed the development of videogame classics Deus Ex, Thief, and System Shock, stood before a group of Disney executives pitching his ideas for a new game. Having spent the majority of his career working on M-Rated titles that were often dark and gritty, he was unsure whether he was in the right place pitching to the right people, but his agent had assured him that Disney were keeping an open mind, so he went on with his pitch. He enthusiastically explained his concept for a fantasy epic or, if that wasn’t what Disney was after, he had ideas for a science-fiction game set in the near future. The execs didn’t seem particularly interested. Spector was certain that the meeting had hit a low point when they all began texting on their Blackberries during his presentation.

GDC Europe & Gamescom 2010

Me interviewing Jason Vandenberghe while waiting for my producer to set up the camera to do a separate interview, also with Jason Vandenberghe.

Being based in France this year has meant that I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do things that I normally would not have had the chance to do if I was back in Sydney. I’ve been on numerous press trips to Paris, spoken with the likes of Jon Shafer and Dorian Newcomb during the European press tour of Civilization 5, and more recently I was lucky enough to join Warren Spector on a tour of Euro Disney during the press tour for Epic Mickey, as well as squeeze in some interview time with him and the lovely Paul Weaver. On this same press trip I met and befriended a Disney artist, who has since given me a drawing lesson and allowed me into his Paris studio for an interview. None of this could have possibly happened if I was in Sydney, because no one would have sent a young journalist overseas to cover so many cool things when there are more senior writers waiting in line. Well, actually, I do know of a few young writers who have been sent overseas to cover some fairly big events, but whatever. I’m a girl, so the opportunity was never going to be there. So yeah, coming to France = an excellent decision. Good one, Tracey.

The funny thing is that I came to France for the purpose of not working. When I hopped on that plane from Kingsford Smith airport, I’d decided that this would be my year to be a silly, drunk student and, for a while, I did embrace that. But now the smell of mint leaves and limes reminds me not so much of Vietnamese cuisine as much as it does of mojitos, and that weirds me out a bit (read: it makes me feel like a filthy drunk). So in August of this year I decided I needed more structured activities in my life (since full-time study just wasn’t cutting it, especially when by “full-time”, they really meant “Okay, welcome to France, you have four months of summer holidays and there will be constant university strikes during second semester!”), and work has always been my favourite structured activity, so I decided to do that! I racked up some commissions from Good Game, Games.On.Net, and Gamasutra, my producer back at the ABC helped me get a press pass for GDC Europe and Gamescom, and I hopped on a train to Köln, Germany. I think a return plane ticket from Sydney to Köln would have cost me one mirrion dorrars, but given that I was coming from Paris, it only set me back 200€.

I’d like to go into more depth about what it was like being at GDC Europe and Gamescom, but I’m not sure if anything I say would be particularly interesting or new. Both events were fascinating, and the former was also particularly inspiring. I ate a bockwurst from the cafeteria, and that was kind of disgusting. My dictaphone died in the middle of my interview with Ken Levine, and I did not know this until I left the 2K booth. Luckily I took some shorthand notes, but it was still fairly disheartening. My producer and I ran after Warren Spector’s PR lady, and after lots of nagging we managed to snag 10 minutes with him. I was given the ugliest Mortal Kombat t-shirt ever (or, more accurately, the ugliest t-shirt ever. Period.).  I met Brandon Sheffield in the talk on Limbo and he asked me for a lock of my hair to give to Tim Rogers. We’re now Facebook friends! All of us! Highlight of my fucking life, I says.

Anyway, rather than have me crap on about crap, here are photos from both events. If you have any questions about GDC Europe or Gamescom, feel free to ask in the comments! I will probably be of little help, but that’s not exactly news.

WORK: Games.On.Net – F.E.A.R – Keeping The Horror Close To Home

The haunting ghost of Alma and the demons she brings with her aren’t the scariest things you’ll find in F.3.A.R. Scratch the surface of this first-person horror shooter and you’ll find a much scarier story about a broken family, the relationship between two brothers and their mother, and a reason to care.

WORK: Games.On.Net – Spec Ops Walks The Line To Invoke A Soldier’s Experience

Weapon range, firing physics and military accuracy are a few things that the military shooter genre has down pat. For the team behind Spec Ops: The Line, the next step is to share the emotional experiences of the soldiers who fight the wars we play.

Time Traveller

So. Videogames, eh?

Review: MuseoGames – Exhibition At The Musée des Arts et Métiers

The old shaky hand, caused not by excessive consumption of energy drinks, but by my own inability to stand still.

I wasn’t meant to go to the Musée des Arts et Métiers tonight. I was meant to be drinking in Oberkampf or some other hipster Parisian district, bantering in French while sharing a duck joke that I’d painstakingly translated from English into French to try to impress people (it’s a really good joke). Whatever. It didn’t happen. Like birth with a normal spine or the development of big, pillow-like tits, it just didn’t happen for me. So I ended up on a train to the museum to catch MuseoGames instead.

The Rise And Fallout Of Red Ant

Story first published in issue #197 of Hyper magazine and re-published 17th March 2010 by GamesIndustry.biz.

THE RISE AND FALLOUT OF RED ANT

They were one of Australia’s largest independent videogame distributors until the Australian dollar crashed and brought them down with it. A year on from the collapse of Red Ant Enterprises, documents have emerged that raise serious questions about unexplained loans made by the company, as well as the movements of its director and his wife.