This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics ranging from what pro wrestling games miss about their subject matter to a portrait of Pac-Man champion and documentary subject Billy Mitchell.
Too Hard to Animate
(Content Warning: the articles in this section discuss topics including mental illness, homophobia and suicide.)
At Link Saves Zelda, Kelly Flatley expresses disappointment with recent developer comments on the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider, which has seemingly shied away from depicting its protagonist's PTSD:
My point here is that this development team had the groundwork laid out for them from a previous game, a comic series and a novel to make Lara Croft a character that brings to light the fact that we can suffer from these disorders yet still come out on top, still be powerful, humanistic characters with depth and agency. [...] Ignoring that Lara Croft suffers from such a condition in Rise of the Tomb Raider is something that I think is only being done due to a reluctance to tackle such a delicate issue.
Switching gears to representations of sexuality, the recent revelation that the latest installment of the Fire Emblem roleplaying games includes what has been called magical gay conversion therapy has inspired heated discussion. And while there are some debates about the accuracy of the translations being referenced, what is more at issue here is how members of the press have talked about the game and its alleged context as a Japanese cultural product. From games scholar Todd Harper:
So we should back off from aggressive critique of something, because [it's from] Japan? No. If they're gonna sell this in the US, it's an issue, and frankly discussing it now, while the game is still being localized for its 2016 release, is the time to bring it up. Localization is the time when this stuff could change for US audiences, when Nintendo could be truly global in scope and recognize that the morality of their audiences abroad might not be the same, and might require a different approach. I say this because if the situation were reversed, there'd be every expectation that a US content creator would change their content for the global market. Why is Japan immune somehow?
It should be noted (as Harper does elsewhere in his piece) that US exported games do indeed often tailor their content for international audiences, so what is being proposed here is in no way unreasonable -- at least, no more unreasonable than the localization hoops countless games go through already.
Meanwhile, developer Damion Schubert responds to the assertion that criticizing this aspect of the game boils down to imposing a Western set of values:
The problem isn't that this feature mirrors Western Conversion Therapy. It's that Western Conversion Therapy has shown us how wretched and abusive the idea [is] that gay is something that is broken, and needs to be fixed. This is a dangerous idea that feeds directly into the epidemic of suicide that plagues LGBT youth. [...] [I]t behooves game developers who actually claim to give a shit about the issue to be much more careful about the stories they tell.
Keeping the lens on Nintendo, in the latest issue of Memory Insufficient Ness Io Kain highlights how seemingly innocuous reinforcement of gendered norms in Nintendo games like Animal Crossing: New Leaf can actually replicate the day-to-day microaggressions Kain experiences:
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