I considered staying silent on this since many other bloggers have done an admirable job highlighting this already (and as usual i’m late to the party but dressed fantastically!), however part of this blog is intended to be about games after all, so here we go.
Last week I got a copy of Official Playstation Magazine UK – one I normally avoid in favour of the (usually) more balanced ramblings in Edge but I was after the free Kratos sackboy for LittleBigPlanet. Having not touched OPMUK for years, my misgivings weren’t exactly laid to rest by the tagline on the back of the magazine: “Fat Princess: It’s the super-cute PSN game that outraged feminist blogs. And inevitably, we love it.” A statement like that says a lot about the magazine – it’s put me off reading the rest of it anyway – and pissed off my usually mild-mannered self. Not least because you just don’t start a sentence with “And” – idiots!
So, the post proper (and if you haven’t guessed at the reason i’m concerned, you REALLY need to read on!). Fat Princess by Darkstar Industries (now Titan Studios), and published by Sony, takes the traditional gameplay mode ‘capture the flag’ (where two opposing teams attempt to steal the other’s flag back to their own base – ah the fun we had in UT) and remix it with a big twist.
They decided to present the game in a lush cartoonish graphical style (nice), with different player classes like archer, warrior, builder, mage (introducing an element of strategy), and with really bloody battles (i’m not averse to that, heh). Oh but wait, some teenage industry temp making the coffee has the fantastic idea: “Hey let’s make the flags into princesses and, as if that wasn’t offensive enough, let’s have the players force her full of cake to make her really fat so that the other team has a hard time carrying her. It’ll be hilarious!”
Oh yes, did you see my mouth twitching – no? But it’s hilarious! Um, in a word – no. Firstly, the whole ‘saving princesses’ idea has become such a cliche in every entertainment form, it would be comforting to think that we’re trying to move our stories beyond that, however it seems, in games at least, not everyone is. Note that it is not always a ‘princess’ but the same idea can be seen in many stories: some 2-dimensional romantic reward awaiting the buff hero at the end of the tale. In any case it presents woman as an object to be acquired and reinforces the stereotype that women need ‘saving.’
Secondly, while I think the game ‘mechanic’ of introducing obstacles to prevent players stealing your flag, although not original, is a good gameplay device, surely it doesn’t take too many brain cells to realise that the whole ‘feed up a princess’ concept is sexist, not to mention the idea of ‘force feeding’ has dark connotations.
It’s a shame because the gameplay itself sounds like fun (excluding the princess part) and with a little thought, the princess element could easily be replaced with something else. Mighty Ponytail suggests “Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry.” A pretty good idea really, seeing as you could also attribute points to the amount of gold you bring back, introducing a toss up between going for the easily carried low-value chest or the extremely heavy more-rewarding chest (Capitalists everywhere are licking their lips..) I’m not too sure about the suggestion of using animals, but another approach could be to embellish the builder class of the game, allowing them to build all manner of traps and contraptions to slow down the opposing team.
In his article, Nick McCavitt ends with the ubiquitous phrase “it’s just a game”, however I think we have to be very careful using excuses like that. It may be a game, however, it’s influence reaches further than we might expect. Like all media, it sends subliminal messages that we are not always aware of, with the added element of interactivity to reinforce those messages. Fat Princess is obviously a very blatant example, but it could just as easily be a wolf in another sheep’s clothing. It is only in recent months that I myself have started to examine how much the media I consume is imperceptibly shaping my beliefs/thoughts.
In that respect some may call me a hypocrite since some of my favourite media reinforces these stereotypes I am talking about. In any case it may not be possible (or ultimately helpful) to apply blanket standards equally to all media, but I think it is important for each of us to decide how far is too far. Similarly, with regard to the intermittent ‘violence in videogames’ debate: I think that most videogames are inherently violent, or at least inherently competitive, and, while the amount of violence in a game is obviously important with regards to the age of the gamer, I think what deserves more consideration is the reason for the violence – remember the furore that surrounded Manhunt with it’s ‘snuff film’ getup? – but this deserves a much larger post than I can give it at the moment.
It’s interesting to observe the reaction to games like Fat Princess, not least because they themselves reveal the prejudices still hiding in the woodwork. I very much doubt that the game itself was intentionally created as a satire of the problems in our society, more likely it’s a simple marketing ploy that no doubt, when all is said and done, will see the game rocket through the rankings. But if just one gamer stops to think about the messages behind the media we are consuming, questions like those raised by bloggers (more eloquent than I) will have at least been worthwhile.
A few articles:
Mighty Ponytail
Nick McCavitt
Danielle Riendeau
Leigh Alexander
