Review: "Never Alone and the Need for American Indian Narratives in Games" by Daniel Starkey, Polygon

Original article here.

This is a particularly difficult article for me, since I'm Alaskan Native. As the author says, it's often up to Natives to prove they are what they claim to be, but suffice it to say I get money from my regional corporation. So, there, I guess that works?

Here's the thing: I get the point of this article. I really do. When I saw Never Alone I sort of felt obligated to buy it as a form of showing support to my heritage or something.

Well, on to the article. After his introduction, which I didn't really see much issue with, he says this:

And that brings us, somewhat laboriously, to Never Alone. I reviewed the game for Eurogamer last year, awarding it a 10/10. This was before that publication dropped scores altogether. At the time, my choice was somewhat controversial. I caught flak on Twitter and other social networks; people thought that it wasn't fair for me to praise a game that had some admitted technical issues so highly.

Okay. If the game has highly publicized flaws and issues with the game, why in God's name would you award it a 10/10? You have a responsibility when reviewing to let your readers/audience know the quality of the game, and clearly this game is good, great even, but hardly perfect. So, let's see how he defends this.

But that choice came from my experiences as someone that constantly struggles to balance the traditional and the new. I've always loved technology and the distractions that they provide. One of my Elders, before she passed away, often chastised me for texting when I should "be still," for spending too much time on the internet, and not enough time "walking the land."

He didn't defend it at all, instead tossing out a Red Herring in the form of his Elder passing away. Why did he award a perfect score to a flawed game? He tries to explain after a long and heart-felt story about his experiences with an elder who passed away.

While I was writing my Never Alone review, I was struggling with my own past. I was grappling with my own loss, and desperately searching for some way forward, some kind of peace that I could hold onto and walk with. Balancing that fatalism, against the optimism that a game like Never Alone demands from its audience, took time for me to internalize and understand.

But still, no explanation. He had issues and it resonated with him, I suppose, but that doesn't excuse giving a very flawed title a perfect score.

I had the opportunity to speak with a few of the folks on the team for a bit in person a couple months ago. They said they were grateful for my review. Not for the high score I gave their game, but for the way in which my words touched and inspired the team. Knowing that they could have such a strong impact on someone else's life gave them their own hope to keep making these sorts of games.

Then give it an 8 or 9 out of 10, but include those wonderful praises. Giving it a high score is worse than buying it out of "obligation" like I felt I had to. I'm not informing my readers that the game is perfect, because it isn't. Instead I'm just playing it on my own and supporting the developers in that way. I get that you want people to play it. That's fine, I do as well. But don't pretend like it doesn't have flaws.

What I took from Never Alone is my own experience. It meant more to me than just about any game I've ever played. Nothing had ever spoken to me like that, or tapped the struggles of modern Native life.

Yeah, I get that. It meant a lot to you to see something similar to your culture expressed on screen. Only it's closer to my culture, but even then not exactly. I can feel an obligation to play it because they're fellow Alaskan Natives, but the Inupiat differ from my own Athabaskan roots. I can feel a connection to them and an obligation to play and purchase their game, but the culture is their own and I'm just an observer. I can share it and share in it, but it doesn't have the same meaning to me as it does them. To them, it's a very personal thing, but to me I can only tell that it's personal.

He speaks to a developer named Renee Nejo about the game, and it's very interesting. If you don't know much about native history, I would check it out. But then he says this:

Never Alone was never intended to be purely an act of preservation, but to give hope to a people in the face of centuries of oppression and colonialism.

Okay. You lost me. Is it stupid that Russians can pass off the land that doesn't belong to them to the United States, who it also doesn't belong to? Sure. But why would you mention colonialism and oppression? Is it to bolster an otherwise meaningless article that had given me no reason to read it until that line? Tommy Wiseau gives readers/audiences more reason to care. Tossing in a reminder to the white readers that they should care because we've had crappy stuff happen to our ancestors does nothing to help your article.

For the most part, the conversation about Never Alone has been dominated by non-Natives that have misinterpreted the game as a sort of digital museum piece, instead of what it is — a clarion call for Natives to stand up and be proud of who they are.

No, that's one interpretation, which is just as valid as mine that it was an attempt to share a culture with people who know nothing about it.

(Oh and to the non-native moron in the comments complaining about the term "Indians"... just stop. It makes you look ignorant. Most natives who count as "American Indians" don't mind the term.)

Is Never Alone a good game? If you don't mind slow pacing and a somewhat empty environment. But this isn't my review of the game, this is my review of the article. All in all, Starkey doesn't do a bad job at Polygon, but he never fully explains the reason for the perfect score. It seems like he gave Never Alone a 10/10 because he's a native and it's a native game. If that's the case it's an injustice to Eurogamer's readership. But, I suspect it was more innocent than that. I suspect he gave it a perfect score because he genuinely liked the game, and if that's the case it should be fine.

I may have been a bit hard on him. I think it's because his article touched a nerve with me, and it's that my kin hardly ever get recognized outside of Alaska (where many a redneck treats natives like crap). The culture is unique and something so interesting. Maybe I just get jealous that so many other Americans seem to love Japanese culture and foods, but pays no attention to the natives in their own land? I'm not sure.

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.

The Problem with the Metroid Prime: Federation Force Petition

A petition on Change.Org is nearing towards 20,000 signatures, as of this writing.

I don't normally review petitions, instead sticking to the premise of this blog (game journalism), but in this case I'll make an exception. This story is going around and the news sources are painting games as entitled, whiney children petulantly seeking their own self-worth. I think that's not fair. So, let's look at this petition in detail, and see what the problem is:

Metroid Prime: Federation Force was announced at the Nintendo digital event on June 16, 2015. For almost a decade, long time Nintendo fans have been waiting for a true Metroid game. Metroid is one of Nintendo's most beloved and respected franchises spanning almost 30 years of legacy. The foundations of isolation, atmosphere and exploration in unknown planets are what made Metroid great. With the release of the Wii U and its greater technological capabilities thousands of fans were expecting a new and improved Metroid game. 

So the opening paragraph sets up what the author's argument is, in two parts: (1) Metroid has historically been dark, a game of isolation (except maybe Hunters?), and (2) players were expecting a new actual Metroid game. Fair enough, let's go on.

What we got however is a disgrace of a game with the name "Metroid" slapped on the title. It has no elements at all of what Metroid is about and its a disrespectful manner to old and new fans of the series of showing them that the Metroid franchise is not dead afterall. This is not the Metroid we asked Nintendo to make.

And here's the realization of the two arguments in the first section. This new game is not about isolation, because it's a multiplayer game. It's not dark, it's colorful. It's hardly got any elements of what makes a Metroid game a Metroid game.

Or does it? The argument fails to address that the controls and the look of the game match closely with the Metroid Prime series. While it is a multiplayer game, it still has the look of the series, and while not matching with the Metroid series as a whole, it is in the same universe as that series.

I think Nintendo is able to do this well, and the game is probably going to be fun (not so sure about Blast Ball, but whatever).

We should let Nintendo know what we really think of the game and make them actually LISTEN to their fans for once. Help us stop this atrocity of a game from bearing the beloved Metroid franchise name and make Nintendo halt production on it.

I was on board with you for most of this petition. I think this isn't the Metroid game fans of the series wanted, and it's a universe multiplayer game fans didn't want to be involved in. So who was this game made for? Obviously, it's a gap-filler. What I mean is it's like Link's Crossbow Training, where it's in the universe (kind of) but not really a game in the series. It fills a gap because Nintendo isn't currently developing a title in that series, so they just use the assets they have to make something fun and cheap.

The problem I have with this petition was that is asks Nintendo to "halt production on it". No, this isn't fair. I may dislike the game and think it's a crappy replacement for a good game, but I'm not going to ask Nintendo to halt production of it. I'll just vote with my wallet like a normal gamer.

Just Nintendo gamers hanging out in a creepy white room.

Do I think the petition's creator and signers are entitled? Absolutely not. They're justifiably angry at Nintendo for seemingly cutting corners. I don't see a problem with that anger other than their demanding Nintendo halt production on something they've already showed off at E3.

So, these are my problems with the petition. I'm not sure it really addresses what the game is, and why Nintendo's making it. I would hope the petition creator would remove the language demanding Nintendo halt production of a game that's already mostly complete. It just seems petty.

Review: "Pickaninnies and Pixels: On Race, Racism, and Cuphead at E3" by Samantha Blackmon, Not Your Mama's Gamer

Original article can be found here.

I debated reviewing this article, but it was so outlandish and nonsensical I couldn't pass it up. If you saw anything about E3, you know about Cuphead, a game made by Studio MDHR in the style of the old 30's style cartoons. The art style is the real selling point, with many older people mentioning that they often longed to have a video game that actually resembled a cartoon.

 Well, it wasn't long before someone was offended by the game, for some reason. To be fair most of this article is the author's own reactions to the game's trailer, which is perfectly fine. The problem is a lack of explanation about certain things.

So let's look into it: Blackmon opens her article:

One of the things that did get a lot of positive attention was the indie game Cuphead from Studio MDHR. MDHR describes Cuphead as a run and gun game in the style of 1930s cartoons, with handpainted backgrounds and original jazz scores. That all sounds awesome until you consider the nature of many of the (highly politicized) cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s.

She's not wrong about the old cartoons. They really do have a racist and politically charged history. But what does that have to do with Cuphead? I mean... Cuphead only looks like those cartoons as an art-style choice. It hardly means it's anything like those cartoons in terms of insensitive content. But let's look further.

seeing the trailer for the game this week elicited a visceral reaction in me. It made me feel physically ill. I got queasy and my head swam a bit.

What? What does this have to do with the game, again? This sounds like a "you" problem.

I kept waiting for the next boss to be a thick-lipped, black-faced, spittle-dripping caricature of an African American man (probably holding aloft a terrified, screaming, blonde, Caucasian woman just to show what a threat he actually was).

Once again, the author's own racial fantasies are not indicative of the game itself. Just because a person uses an art style that as popular in the 30's when people were more racially insensitive and flat-out racists, doesn't mean that the art style is somehow tainted by it. It's up to the author to prove that it's tainted, but instead she tells her own issues with it without explaining what any of it has to do with the game.

This seems to line up well with all of the temptations that Cuphead and Mugman find themselves faced with gambling, speakeasies, liquor, and sirens, all things reminiscent of African American culture and the Harlem Renaissance.

Just because gambling, liquor, and sirens all happened in Harlem doesn't mean a thing; those elements in the game were common in the United States as a whole during that time period. Pretending this is somehow racially insensitive is dishonest at best, malicious at worst. Let's mop this up with the last part:

My life, my experiences, and the body that I live in makes Cuphead and its artistic style problematic to me because of all that it has come to mean in the last 85 years or so and that’s something that I just can’t let go of. Does this mean that anything that is problematic should never be used in games or other entertainment media? We’ve heard that question in other contexts before. Should rape ever be used as a plot device? Abuse of any kind? And the answer remains the same. If it is done well and with proper attention being paid to the narrative. And Cuphead just isn’t the place for it in my mind. The game threatens to draw upon racist caricatures to inform the narrative and give players a series of racism infused bosses and obstructions to justice to properly hate. Perpetuating the stereotype and, in some cases, feeding the racism that is foundational to the art style itself. As for me, I’m going to skip Cuphead (as innovative as everyone claims) because it just hits too damned close to home.

And there you have it. Ultimately she's saying she thinks Cuphead is bad because that art style reminds her of racist cartoons from the 30's. That's fine. I'm not going to knock her for writing her reaction to a game's trailer, but what I am going to knock is her insinuation that the creators are using a racism that is, as she said, "foundational to the art style itself". Nowhere in her article does she explain this, nowhere does she specify how the art style is inherently racist, instead opting for personal tales of her horror at the trailer itself.

A personal account of her beliefs about an art style are fine, but to decry a game for that art style, you need to give a reason for the problems you suggest about the game. Basic questions like, "why is the art style racist?" or "why are you equating a cartoon art style with rape?"

First Post

Welcome to Game Journalism Review! This is a blog where I, Frank Gamer, can review articles and reviews of games and keep the game journalists honest.

I hope you'll join me on this mission!