From Ian:
This post is part of the #25ReasonsToSpiritSiege series. Click that link for a summary!
So I got up on a soapbox in my last post, and for scheduling reasons I had to start this one right after it (and am posting it a day late), so since I had such a great time I decided to just stay on up there! Anyway, let’s get to it.
When confronted with the statistic that 48% of people who play video games are women, many people with an interest in maintaining the status quo (where by “the status quo” I mean: inadequate representations of women and minorities, marketing that targets white men to the exclusion of others, etc.) will debate it by claiming that women tend to play “casual” games whereas most people who play “hardcore” games are men; therefore, it makes sense for game companies to continue to pander to them.
But where is the line between “casual” and “hardcore?” Because these terms don’t have actual definitions*, defenders of the status quo can draw the line wherever they want so as to exclude as many people as possible who aren’t like them. Spirit Siege—as a game that’s “hardcore” in its stragetic depth and its suitability for cutthroat competition and obsessive optimization but with all the trappings of a “casual” game like cuteness, simplicity and brevity—helps reveal this dichotomy for the fabrication it is. You should support it to put another chink in the wall that that dichotomy puts between “us” and “them”, whichever side you think you might fall on.
In the next post I’ll probably get off the soapbox, at least for a little while. Meanwhile, here’s the Kickstarter link, as always.
* At best, there are heuristics which reveal the paucity of the conventional wisdom. GamaSutra also attempted a rigorous, quantifiable measure of “gamer dedication,” but I don’t believe there have been any studies to find whether that measure varies significantly along gender lines, and I don’t think such a sophisticated measure is what people have in mind when they use “casual” as a slur.
