Play on, playette

Everything is going to be OK is an interactive art piece by Nathalie Lawhead.  These are my thoughts on it.  Read more under the cut, but be warned that the topics get pretty heavy.

The problem is still rooted in the community and how it views women. Don’t announce your gender with a feminine name or avatar or your own voice on a mic. Don’t make money off of streaming with a facecam. Don’t talk about how girls are treated differently. The anger tends to be directed at the girls/women even though they’re the ones being yelled at for really, truly absurd shit that hurts no one. We get mad because they give us a “bad name” instead of getting mad at the people who chose to both judge a stranger for her harmless behavior, and then generalize all of us because of that shitty judgment.

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There is an amazing video game being developed by Sketchy Panda Games called Aberford that desperately needs your support on Kickstarter to come to fruition!

Picture it: The 1950s.

In the small, picturesque town of Aberford, Ohio, a zombie apocalypse begins. At first glance, it’s a pretty overdone plot for a game. There is a twist, however.

This game is about 1950s housewives who fight the zombies (previously their friends, husbands, and neighbors) and seek the cause of the outbreak that has decimated only Aberford’s male population.

This is NOT a standard shoot ‘em up/brawler zombie game. The creators have crafted fantastic and realistic backstories and motivations for the main characters, and over the course of the game, themes like sexism and racism will be explored.

The creators of the game are also striving to make the game as diverse as possible, within the realms of historical plausibility. With that said, these are the four main characters, playable in the main campaign:

Peggy Whitman, a former baseball player and now dissatisfied wife of the town police sergeant. She hates cooking.

Betty Smith, an ideal 1950s housewife and nurse (former Army nurse) at the local hospital. While she and her husband Phillip are economically middle class, as well as perfect friends and neighbors, they still experience the subtle and often overt discrimination common against black individuals in the pre-civil rights era.

Doris Baker, a first-rate riveter during the war, is now a hard-working waitress at a local diner. She is of Lebanese descent, but passes for white.

Sylvia Hornberger, previously a biochemical scientist alongside her husband,  had to give up her job after the war ended. She’s now a stay at home mother who is bored out of her mind.

There will be diverse side characters with minor roles in the main story, who will be playable in the “Challenge” campaign:

Norma, a transgender woman (!) who has transitioned to the extent possible in the 1950s. She was a GI during the war, and now runs a no-nonsense boarding house in town. She takes black-market experimental anti-androgen which protects her from the outbreak’s effects. Learn more about Norma here on Sketchy Panda’s Tumblr.

Patricia is Peggy’s teenage daughter.

Mary is a third generation Asian American woman who works in the town’s industrial laboratory as a researcher. She struggles with acceptance.

Alejandra is a Latina woman who finds herself in Aberford right as the outbreak starts. She speaks little to no English and is new to the US.

Gameplay will focus on strategy, as you’re playing as a woman with no combat training, with only realistic weapons at your disposal (cast-iron skillets, rolling pins, baseball bats, etc). There will be no flaming chainsaws, nor will there be piles of ammo scattered all over town for firearms. Zombies will be the dangerous, fast-moving “infected” type that can kill you quickly if you don’t fight effectively.

Please note that the main trailer for the game on the Kickstarter page was made a while ago, and has pretty clunky graphics (very stiff and uncanny valley-looking character models, and slow rather than fast zombies. The color scheme is spot on for the 1950s, though). This more recent video, however, shows much improved graphics and motion (keep in mind it’s still pre-Alpha placeholder art).

This post is getting rather long, so please refer to sketchypandagames and their Kickstarter page for additional information about the game, how to pledge and what you’ll get in return, why they’re making this game, and why their funding goal seems so high.

Even if you can’t afford to pledge, PLEASE hit the reblog button if you want to see a video game with strong female leads and a diverse cast become a reality. The Kickstarter closes on October 19, 2015, at 1:59 AM EDT.

Gone Home, Depression Quest, and more recently Sunset. These are three indie games which were praised by sites with an SJW bias, but largely panned by gamers because none of them had appealing or even interesting gameplay. In the case of Gone Home, common complaints were that the gameplay was so minimal that it might as well have been a movie (and that the plot was nothing to write home about). Similarly, Depression Quest didn’t offer much but clicking different buttons in menus, and Sunset was seen as focusing more on its ‘message’ than its gameplay (which, by all accounts, was clunky and frustrating to interact with).

So this is why people accuse SJWs of ruining games: because SJWs have been making and promoting games which neglect what actually makes games unique as an art form - the gameplay. It would be like making and shilling for movies that are simply spoken word over a black screen - that’s not a movie, it’s an audiobook.

Has always existed, and in fact constituted the first ever computer games.

Has always been steadily popular, and increased in frequency no more than any other format.

Hasn’t replaced or displaced the frequency of other game categories.

Is especially popular in the form of dating sims and especially porn games, which come out by the THOUSANDS every single year,  but apparently those don’t count and there’s only a problem when non-porn ones come out and happen to be too liberal, or something.

No part of your argument exhibits any conceivable way in which progressive attitudes damage the quality of games.

Literally all you did here was complain that you’re not a fan of one particular, harmless gaming style, demonstrating newcomer ignorance to real gaming history.

Right now I’m playing clive barker’s undying, animal crossing hhd, and metal gear online

Fair enough. No one does anything without an agenda. I’ve always tried to be a little too honest on this blog, so here’s our agenda with Aberford:

1. Show that well-written female characters and a female-driven story can make an exciting, compelling, commercially viable video game. We like playing as different, unusual, unexpected characters because it makes games more fun and interesting. We want to prove that gamers are willing (and eager) to embrace diverse characters and stories when those characters and stories are well-crafted and rewarding. And maybe we want to make gamers a little more critical of when stories and characters are clearly being phoned in.

2. Push the limits of crowdfunding to see if a big idea can go from pre-alpha (proof-of-concept) to a releasable beta, so that developers can tackle more ambitious projects. We think there’s a huge opportunity for indie devs in the evolving gaming market, and crowdfunding can help devs create their visions by getting buy-in up front from fans and gamers, not banks and investors who don’t actually play games.

3. Emphasize player-focused design in video games, where we keep players focused on having fun and avoid the parts of the game that are boring or pointless. There’s lots of people arguing about video games, and we want to push the discussion back towards “Does this make the game experience better?”

4. Become successful here so we can continue making great video games for years to come. And maybe help other like-minded devs get to where they can do the same.

5. Make people think critically about their assumptions and biases, but that’s hardly revolutionary. Most good games make you think. The best games leave your brain in knots for days and generate pages of forums threads while people try to analyse what happened and why. Again, our focus is on making the game experience better.

6. Bash some frickin’ zombies in the face while wearing a fancy ‘50s dress because it’s going to be awesome.