Review: "'Batman: Arkham Knight' May Be Game Of The Year -- But There's One Big Problem" by Damon Beres, Huffington Post

Original article found here.

I have no problem with the Huffington Post. Politically, I like a lot of their content, but this review highlights a serious problem in video game reviews: modern prudishness. This is by far one of the worst articles I've read online. It's supposed to be a game review but amounts to an undergraduate gender studies pop culture critique.

Let's begin with the first line of the piece, which is by far the most pandering, click-baity attempts to drive traffic I've ever seen:

Months after GamerGate first set video game culture ablaze with unbelievable resistance to the idea of feminist perspectives in the gaming industry, we have a new title that features some of the most compelling female characters in pop culture.

Yes, he mentions GamerGate. In a review of Arkham Knight. Why is this relevant? It has nothing to do with the rest of the article, and he links it by hand-waving and saying "feminist perspectives", which is not even something opponents of GamerGate attribute it as being about, and obviously supporters of GamerGate don't see themselves as being about any of that.

But I digress. The real issue here is the next section and then his complete breakdown in the middle of an article:

"Batman: Arkham Knight," which came out Tuesday, spotlights Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Oracle and Harley Quinn in major roles. But while these women are often represented as strong, independent and able in other media, their featured roles here often tell a different story: They are damsels in distress.

Right, because damsels in distress always kick the bad guys' faces in. No, I'm sorry. This is misrepresenting what the characters are about. Oh, but it gets worse. He adds this tid-bit below a picture of Poison Ivy:

Poison Ivy appears in "Arkham Knight" with a barely-there shirt and a mossy crotch.

What!? Are you trying to lecture everyone on sexuality in games? There's nothing wrong with a seductive character like Ivy being comfortable with her sexuality! It's madness to think that you'd actually complain about this.

It's really no big secret that gaming and tech are male-dominated industries, even if consumers are split basically down the middle in terms of gender. 

No, no, no. You're clearly misrepresenting everything in any of those statistics. The over all consumers are split between male and female, which includes the mobile gaming and casual markets. Arkham Knight is not a game designed for the mobile market or casual gamers, where overwhelmingly women are represented in those numbers.

Plenty of people will play "Arkham Knight" and probably ignore its oftentimes troubling presentation of women -- perhaps that's simply because the game is exciting, and as soon as you settle into a moment, something explodes and you're off to something else.

What is he talking about? You can't just say something is "troubling" without explaining why! What's wrong with the presentation of women? Because so far he's simply complained about the strong female characters being "damsels in distress" (which isn't true) and Poison Ivy's skirt being too short.

But others will play the game and feel offended. Or disgusted. Or threatened. Or simply unwelcome. Even if those people were outnumbered 100 to 1 in a population of 5 million customers, it would be worthwhile to examine why and do better next time. Because here's the trouble with "Arkham Knight": It is a great game tarnished by its dreadful depictions of certain characters and situations.

Once again: saying something does not make it true. He needs to provide evidence, and he still haven't done that. He hasn't linked to people being offended or offered evidence of "dreadful depictions of certain characters or situations" in Arkham Knight. Neither of those things are proven in the article itself.

The most he does is show a picture of one time in the game where Poison Ivy is held hostage. Because that makes her a damsel in distress now. Forget that Robin is constantly captured and held hostage, he's a man so it doesn't matter. Forget that many storyline show Batman as being held hostage, and someone else having to help him. Forget that the game literally has Batman's colleagues supporting him because he can't do it all alone.

Catwoman, often portrayed as Batman's equal, fares no better. Like Ivy, her storyline begins in custody. Her outfit is unzipped enough to show a massive slice of cleavage. Why? Because Catwoman is "sexy" and it's apparently hard to portray sexiness without showing boob?

There's nothing here! He is literally spouting puritanical nonsense about breasts being bad and "sexy" being troubling. Is he going to put a ruler up to Supergirl's skirt from the TV show to determine if it's appropriate or not?

The gameplay sometimes has Batman and Catwoman working together -- you can switch between them at points -- but the pattern almost invariably requires Batman to complete some feat of cunning, force and reflexes while Catwoman bums around in a locked chamber. Her liberation is essentially a prize for you, the player.

You seriously can't win with this guy. If Batman was the only playable character, he'd complain about sexism and a lack of a female protagonist. Give him a female protagonist and he's complaining about how Batman is the star of the Batman game.

Things are absolutely worst for Oracle, a hero in a wheelchair who assists Batman remotely. To detail her storyline would reveal much about the largest plot points in "Arkham Knight," but things do not go well for her. An incredibly problematic storyline from the comic books is retread in vivid detail: She is abducted and maimed and exists almost entirely in this context to stir angst in the featured male characters.

Are you kidding me!? Is this guy for real!? I can't... I can't even begin to dismantle how bad this is. How convoluted and backwards this reasoning is. This person has no idea what he's talking about. In the story from the comics, Barbara Gordon is paralyzed as a result of The Joker. But she is able to overcome it and still use her mind for good even if she can't fight crime the same as before. The fact that the author's focusing so much on gender is telling. The characters like the Oracle, whose gender is not as important as her drive and intelligence, is a great character who in his mind is marginalized into a male-focused event of emotional impact. This is a huge misunderstanding of the character, and I think it was intentional.

This game does not exist in a vacuum. It arrives at a moment when women are still being shut out of the gaming and tech industries to the point where many are even looking for work elsewhere. It is bizarre that "Arkham Knight" both includes many women and diminishes them so plainly.

Oh dear God. Explain it one more time: what does this have to do with a game review? This is incredible. It's obvious that the point of this review wasn't the game itself, but making a political statement. Which is not how a game review should be. I say this as someone who has reviewed games in the past. If you want to talk about your politics, do it in the latter part of the review, don't put it all throughout, and ignore the game itself in favor of the political message you want to teach.

All of that said, there are some important caveats. First: Harley Quinn -- Joker's deranged on-again, off-again girlfriend -- is actually kind of cool this time around. Her character design in "Arkham City" (NSFW) was incredibly sexualized and seemingly intended purely for the male gaze.

I knew it. I knew he would use "male gaze" at least once. Look, I've read through feminist perspectives on movies and film, and I get the idea of male gaze. I understand it. It used to be more relevant in times when men made all the decisions, but that's not the case anymore.

But he still hasn't proven that it is geared towards the male gaze anyways. He only showed some sexy women and said "ew, men like this." There was no connection made to Rocksteady's intentions or goals at all.

This is ridiculous from any perspective, because on the other side of this, nothing about it fitting the male gaze makes it wrong. Is it because it excludes women? Friend, that's marketing. Women don't generally play the Arkham series, so Rocksteady is targeting the demographic who does: men. And they're fully within their rights to do so.

Oh, also I want to point out that he puts a NSFW warning on that link, but it's just Harley wearing tight clothing. It's not NSFW at all. He's just putting that because he doesn't like it for some misguided reason.

Here, Harley Quinn's decked out in a pretty serious tutu and barks orders at a bunch of armed dudes. She's more covered than not. The whole thing struck me as fairly whimsical and a step in the right direction, even if it's not a perfect representation.

No, she's as covered up as Catwoman is, maybe even less. This is cherry-picking at its finest. Because he likes what Harley does as a character, he overlooks her outfit, which is almost exactly as tight and cleavage revealing as Catwoman's. But because Catwoman need Batman's help at times, her outfit is "problematic".

And here's the last bit:

But there's a major difference between this comic and something like "Arkham Knight" -- something that maybe isn't so obvious. This Poison Ivy could be appealing to men and women alike. The entire miniseries is devoted to Harley and Ivy wreaking havoc on their own terms -- it's "sexy" more than "sexist." They actively and successfully strike back against the forces that oppress them. They aren't seeking the approval of men, and they certainly don't need a player to rescue them.

I'm sure if Rocksteady had made the game all about Poison Ivy and Harley wreaking havoc he wouldn't possibly complain about the male gaze sexualizing perceived lesbian interactions between the two.

I'm kidding. Of course he would.

To summarize this article:

The author's measurement system for Catwoman and Poison Ivy.

Review: "Deus Ex dev doesn't take kindly to criticism of 'Mechanical Apartheid' marketing term" by Andrew Eisen, Gamepolitics.com

Original article found here.

This may be the worst article on the entire "apartheid" idiocy I've seen so far. Read my previous analysis of the articles, if you want, it's not required reading to understand this post.

Let's begin with the opening statements:

"Apartheid," like "holocaust," is a noun with a specific meaning.  It is also, like "holocaust," very heavily tied to a specific part of our world's history.  Holocaust may mean "loss of life through fire" but when we hear the word we can't help but think of the millions of Jews exterminated by Nazis during World War II.  Likewise, "apartheid" directs our brains to the legally enforced political and economic inequality non-whites suffered in South Africa from the late 40s to early 90s.

People use both terms all the time when referring to things other than the historical holocaust and South African apartheid. I don't see where you're coming from. You haven't made an argument against the usage of the term "mechanical apartheid" to describe the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. In fact, you've only said that a general "we" and "our brains" thinks of bad things when those bad words are used. So obviously we shouldn't ever use those words to refer to bad things?

So let's look at the next section:

Both events those words inevitably make us think of are some of the most horrible parts of our recent history so perhaps it's not too surprising that a few would find "Mechanical Apartheid," the marketing term Square Enix is using for its upcoming game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, to be eyebrow raising enough to tweet about the appropriateness of its use.

Okay. I see what you're doing. By saying it's a "marketing term" you're conflating the ideas of profit or business with the use of mature terms to explain mature themes. Because it's a "marketing term" it's not okay to use. However, that's not all this is. This is the theme of the game. The game is about this subject of mechanical apartheid, in which the augmented humans are treated as second-class citizens and herded into ghettos. It's a horrible situation, and Deus Ex is exploring it. Aren't you always complaining that games aren't being taken seriously? Here's a serious issue for games to tackle, and you're complaining about it.

A couple days ago, Gilles Matouba, who identifies himself as the former game director of Mankind Divided at Eidos Montreal, took to the Kotaku in Action subreddit to explain the genesis and intent behind the term which he (a black and French man) and Deus Ex brand director Andre Vu (an Asian and French man) created a few years ago and Square Enix subsequently trademarked.  It's an interesting read but that's not the part that seems to have captured most's attention.

So the game developer comes forward and explains that he's not a white guy like people on Twitter were saying and complaining about, but apparently it's not okay. Do you still think he shouldn't have used the term "apartheid"?

And that's not even the problem here. The problem is that the author then goes through and paints it as if the developer was being petty in responding to those complaints. See for yourself:

I honestly couldn't figure out who these "bloggers and tweeters" were.  My Google fu came up with no articles opining on the appropriateness of the "Mechanical Apartheid" marketing term and my search of Matouba, Edios and Square Enix's Twitter mentions came up with nothing that struck me as meriting such an indignant response.

This is insanity. He then posts a long list of tweets that the developer could have been replying to. Going through and saying you can't figure out who he's replying to, then posting a bunch of tweets that could be what he was replying to is self-contradictory. But worse, as I mentioned above, it paints the developer as being petty for replying to these complaints. And then after all the examples the author lays out, he makes himself seem petty by complaining about

And that's it.  So far as I've been able to determine, these are the messages that Matouba felt were "beyond mere insults" that "degraded" and "erased" his "identity as a black developer."

I feel it's worth noting that none of the above tweets copied Matouba, Eidos or Square Enix (although one tweet did use a #SquareEnix hashtag) and so far as I've seen, no one has felt strongly enough about "Mechanical Apartheid" as a marketing term to do anything more than tweet about it.

I'm sure these tweets aren't the sum total of everything said criticizing the term but I don't think it's unfair to assume that these are the most inflammatory examples.

And there you have it. Because the author couldn't find any bloggers who said anything, clearly the developer was wrong to reply to the tweeters and mention bloggers. Forget the argument he made, forget that he's black, there's no bloggers so he's wrong.

I just... I can't believe this. Sure, the term "apartheid" has some baggage with it, but to argue a point like this one is complete madness. I like Gamepolitics.com, and I expect better from them.