Opinionation: Should Games Make Us Do Gender?
Last week there was a tiny, unassuming reveal of part of Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal for Xbox 360 that has me worried for the gender-neutrality of our innocent gaming hobby. Namely, that Natal's software will require it to be able to distinguish whether the person it's looking at is a man or a woman.
For most people, this is fairly innocuous feature. From a developer's standpoint, it might even be a crucial step in the API - if you're working on a quiz game and one user passes to another, you'll want to announcer to be able to say "Player 1 gave her turn to Player 2" with some accuracy. As with all good intentions, though, once we start down a road of them, it starts to smell an awful lot like brimstone.
In this case, hell is other people's sexism and heterosexism. At the risk of preaching to the choir, there isn't much worse in the world than being told your orientation, or your gender, is unacceptable. For the vast majority of the people who step in front of Natal's sex-divination-lens, hearing you're XX when you're really XY might be a compliment or a slight, but it will almost certainly be a source of derisive laughter from that part of the audience which is stuck on a binary gender system. By itself, this inevitability is bad enough - I've almost rolled my eyes out of my head just reading some of the comments on this particular story, most of which begin with "LOL" and end with a nonspecific complaint or threat against anyone gender-transgressive. Entire debates were fired up as to what this all-seeing-eye would say about Lady GaGa, or David Bowie, or anyone else who has committed the sin of crossing the public consciousness in an androgynous way.
But the part of Natal's gender-sensing that actually raises the hackles of this genderqueer gamer isn't the rigid ideas of the crowds in comments sections, but the continuing trend of Microsoft's initiatives to keep gender fluidity out of the hands of the those looking to use the Xbox as escapism. With that, I'm referring also to the avatars that joined the New Xbox Experience back in 2008. As it turns out, the initial choice of your avatar's gender does affect what they're allowed to wear, though there's no warning of this in the menus or shops. Which isn't to say that I want my digital self to rock a Sweet Transvestite look all the time (... only the weekends, naturally), but the dismay and--let's face it--betrayal I felt when I found out that there are rainbow gloves on my harddrive which I wasn't allowed to put on my cute lil avatar guy, was frankly crushing.
Okay, so, maybe not crushing, but certainly annoying. Why does the virtual-self division of Microsoft see fit to arbitrarily decide what is acceptable clothing for boy-avatars or girl-avatars? It could be the same, patronizing regard that made it TOS-illegal to actually mention your sexuality in your Xbox Live profile for so long - it's a matter of limiting our expression to protect us from those nasty homophobes out there. I can't help noticing that there's no physically-gay-bash option in the Dashboard, though, so we can probably weigh the risks ourselves, if that's quite alright.
I realize that the number of trans & genderqueer gamers who might be affected by things like these gender-sensing AIs and clothing limitations is rather fewer than the rest of us who just want to get our game on in a space that's not DADT. Even so - hard-coding things like gender boundaries in games that have no pressing need for them won't serve enough benefit for the average player to warrant alienating those who would rather stay somewhere in the middle.
Or maybe I've just been spoiled by Fable II's fashion. What are your thoughts, gentle reader?
faePuck
Posted to Miscellany on 19 April 2010
· Comments (13)
Other stuff like this: avatar apparel, avatars, gender identity, genderqueer, nxe, project natal
I don't even think it is something confined to the trans and genderqueer gamer slice of the chart. I think this is something that affects everyone. There are plenty of heterosexual men and women that prefer having opposite-sex player characters and avatars wherever possible. I know many of these types of people, too.
Plus, with certain current fashion trends and subculture groups, being androgynous or guessable is the way of the norm. Where wearing mesh and eyeliner and even eyeshadow on guys isn't a matter of sexuality but a form of expression, for example.
So, in my mind, it really is something that has a broader and more far-reaching inclusion than 'just the small subset' of trans and genderqueer individuals. I know that, for myself, I'd want to be able to have an avatar/character that I want, make them how I want them, and have the game/system recognize what I say it should recognize. That's what makes being a gamer fun -- all the choices and forms of expression.
I'm not even necessarily genderqueer but I really hate when things are forced into binary terms of gender, and I totally agree with your complaint about XBL avatars. It's like if Second Life had gender restrictions on its clothing. That would kill a lot of sales and just puts people down because of their desires for no real reason. Heck I use a female shape as a male in SL because the male shape is so hideous (HUGE shoulder blades jutting out that ruin all sorts of clothing). There's been murmurs about letting scripts "detect" your gender by the shape you use, and that would just be a disaster socially.
Then there's MMOs that force you to play whatever gender you originally registered yourself as. That's garbage. Virtual worlds are for exploring, not replicating the real world with all the restrictions we're trying to get away from.
What I don't get is why do we want a buggy camera determining gender? Is it really that onerous to let the user input their gender manually? This is just a case of technology doing something we never asked it to.
Burr: Ragnarok Online is one of those games. I was so put off by that game. That why I always register as what I want the avatar to be.
I always tend to play the guy avatar even though I might want to pick the female one on occasion, JUST to get the clothes. The female clothes are ALWAYS gender stereotyped and objectifying. So, I really have no choice but to play as a guy if I want to or not if I want the Uber leet spiked metal armor of death to infinity.
I guess that's why I like my Miis, they all tend to look alike.
I've been thinking about this exact issure for a while. Why do everyone have to place gender on a binary? It's so frustrating.
I was watching a segment on the news about the DADT repeal and one of the commentaters had the gall to say "Gay and straight soldiers sleeping together would be no different that mixed gender barracks." I about fell out of chair. Orientation is not gender and anyone who doesn't understand that should not be talking about the issue.
Now back on topic: I'd rather not have a person, let alone a camera, tell me what gender I am, thanks!
sigh.. New technology should give gamers more choices, not take choices away.
The only reason I can think of for "needing" to factually know a player's gender is if the typical physical/proportion differences between male and female make a difference in how a device needs to process motion control. And if that were the case, surely explaining that to the consumer and trusting them to be able to determine their own gender should be enough.
I remain irritated that transgendered people get lumped in constantly with gay people when most of them identify as heterosexual. Their issues are, by and large, not my issues.
That said, this Natal "feature" just sounds dumb and if it survives beta testing, I'll be surprised.
@raindog: Hate to burst your bubble, but yes, the root causes of many trans issues are the exact same as those pertaining to "your" issues.
@ raindog:
It's called the LGBT community.. Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender. it's an inclusive term, so please get over yourself.
This might sound savage, and this comment is certainly not meant to fire up any hurts, but aside from whippin out your breasts or excessive facial hair, I cant see Natal being very accurate as a whole on gender. I think people from all colours of the rainbow will be affected here, and if I were to gander a guess at precognition, Natal would almost be fored to accept user chosen gender attitudes. Yes your avatar is stuck with boy clothes and girls clothes, but you can still choose the gender (at least, one little saving grace). Natal will probably ask the same.
Again though, a guess.
Only members of the selected gender and looking for your selected gender will be returned in a search. Boy'S Clothing Wholesale
I agree with this article, the camera can go screw itself and I can see it hurting the feelings a few people, trans or not.
Regarding xbox avatars, I didn't really think too much about it before but you're right how all the clothes should be wearable by all avatars. The thing that gets me is how there are items that are unisex, and there are quite a few outfits for girls that are actually guy clothing (female avatars are able to buy and wear Sam Fisher's outfit from Splinter Cell, for example). There are no game heroine outfits that guys can wear though (although almost all video game main characters are male).
The Avatar marketplace is where you buy clothing for your avatar from popular styles and video games, each series have gender-specific clothing and in order to see them and wear them you have to change your avatar to a certain gender. It seems to me like a big no brainer to just make all items unisex, it would increase sales a noticable amount, don't you think?
@FFS: You may be part of the "LGBT" community, or perhaps the "LGBTQQA" community. When I came out, which was actually 25 years ago today, it was simply called the "gay community", and I remain a part of that acronym-free group of men.
Even this site's slogan used to be just "For boys who like boys who like joysticks" until the political-correctness police showed up, and it still says nothing about trans people.
I don't necessarily agree with everything raindog said or the tone he used, but I do find it irritating that LGBTQ continually tries to worm in every conceivable notion of gender into the available options. It's asking for very specific exceptions to the "norm" for very minority groups of people. There are exceptions to everything in the world, and not all of them can/need to be made to suit everyone's wants and/or needs.
If want my gender to be "purple", I think there should be an option for that too. And then I want my gender to be "banana" on Thursdays, because as Burr said, we should be able to explore and not conform to our previous choices because it isn't real life, which is what we're all trying to escape apparently.
I feel like, so what. It's just a camera application that tries to determine your gender based on facial/body characteristics. People don't get upset when smile detection on your camera leaves them out, or when webcam effects can't detect the layout of your face to add a beard or wig. I answered all those questions truthfully on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and I really didn't feel like being a Treecko but I took what the programmers thought was right. If Natal pegs me as a female, then I'll say shame on Natal and accept it if it can't be changed. I won't make a fuss that it didn't identify me as a transsexual or a banana.
It has nothing to do with Microsoft being gender-biased. By all means, be the person that writes the coding to allow identification of additional genders based on physical characteristics. But until you step up, using the male-female dichotomy is a feasible, and imho, acceptable way to go about implementing the technology. Hooray for being innovative. There's room for improvement, but I won't discredit their attempt.