The Life and Times of a Video Game Design Student

I have been reluctant to address the Jade Raymond incident here not because I don’t think it’s relevant to the topic of this blog (it is) and not because others have said it better than I (though they have), but because it hits close to home. Too close, really.

But before I go into that, let me link some of the other voices that have risen to comment about the incident.

On what happened to Ms. Raymond

I’m not going to give a run-down because, in the event that you don’t know, just clicking on any one of the links below will provide you with a synopsis of the incident. The following, however, is a collection of commentary from various bloggers — both avid gamers and industry professionals — on various aspects of what happened.

Krishnan Rajagopal at the ANGRY pixel in the post We ♥ Jade Raymond! expresses confusion over the vitriol lobbed at Jade for daring to represent a game that she produced:

I don’t understand this rampant craziness at all! Doesn’t the producer / lead developer usually talk about the game at every event? Jade is doing for Assassin’s Creed what Gabe did for Half-Life 2, or Cevat for Crysis or Frank O’Connor for Halo 3. It’s not like UbiSoft fell in love with her face and boobs and ass and said, “Ooh, she looks fine! Let’s put her in charge of the game!” Jade’s got a degree in computer science and has programmed games for Sony and produced more games for EA before moving to UbiSoft and Assassin’s Creed.

Luke, at the Official Shrub.com Blog, presents some insight on that very question, in his post, For male gamers and readers, something embarrassing, which debunks the common tactics used to defend the comic [emphasis mine]:

I can’t begin to imagine how something like this has to make a person feel after all the hard work they’ve put into something like this. After all the crap that she’s probably already gotten on the daily as a woman in the video game industry, to have this incredible achievement in her career marked by a select few idiots who decided to try and reduce her to a sex-object. Let’s make no mistake here, the men who do this are uncomfortable at the idea of women in power and women being in spaces where they see it being male-dominated. The men who do shit like this draw comics of women professionals performing oral sex on their “male fanbase” because it’s their literal attempt at inverting the actual reality: a woman producer is at the helm of an innovative game that is getting a lot of buzz and people are buying up in hordes. I don’t think these men can accept the fact that Jade is a success, I really don’t. I don’t think they can accept the fact that she did this without posing in Playboy or pandering to their ideas of what those Game Expos say women should look like and do to sell a product: wear practically nothing, smile, pose for pictures and just look pretty.

Over at Feministe, Holly echoes this sentiment in her post, The Trouble with Jade:

It’s that last one that really gets to the heart of the matter: in some people’s minds, Jade Raymond is getting her comeuppance for daring to be a prominent woman in game development. For being in a leadership role. For being the public face of her game. For wearing cute shirts. And for being good-looking. They don’t believe that she could actually have the chops to play a creative role in a huge, mainstream game like Assassin’s Creed; if she’s in the spotlight, it’s either because she’s hogging credit or using her looks or both. That’s a double standard you’ll never, ever hear applied to male video game producers or designers who give interviews about their games. Of course, bloggers and journalists don’t bother to attach beauty shots of male developers either.

In a similar vein, Jane of Game Girl Advance talks about the double-edged sword of being an attractive female in the industry: Jade Raymond is for Real.

Roy, of No Cookies for Me, points out the role that gaming journalists played in this fiasco in his post Character Assassin’s Creed… More Misogyny in Gaming:

The interest in Raymond came from sites like Kotaku and from game forums and blogs and the rumor mill. It came from people completely unassociated with Ubisoft who were more interested, or at least as interested, in talking about Raymond’s body than in talking about Assassin’s Creed. The blame for Raymond being the focus of some sites coverage of AC doesn’t lie with her or with Ubisoft, but with the sites themselves. Ubisoft can’t force Kotaku to publish intelligent articles. That’s up to the writers there.

At Broken Toys Scott Jennings’s post, Clearly, We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People, backs up Roy’s commentary with visuals regarding what various news sites have said about Jade. Elaine of Confutatis also addresses the media’s role in this fiasco in her post, My misogyny has nothing to do with me; it’s your fault I’m showing it!.

Over at Feminist Gamers Mighty Ponygirl posted, , in which she ties the treatment of Jade to the treatment of women in video games:

It takes an even more interesting dimension specifically when it involves misogyny, because this is absolutely the gaming industry reaping what it sows. So even though Ubisoft’s offered up girl gamer softcore in the form of the Frag Dolls, it finds itself in a rather difficult position of explaining to the hordes that Jade does not belong to them, which is a concept so foreign to these folk it might as well have been delivered by a talking platypus with an alien slimecreature playing the flugelhorn upon its back.

Gamers have been provided a perfect buffet of women served up for their consumption. They can enjoy furrie catgirls, doe-eyed schoolgirls, saucy adventuresses, quasi-doms who can play hard-to-get until the sun dims, helpful nurses — you get the idea. What they rarely get is a woman who is an autonomous, thinking being not there for the challenge of conquering or for pure beat-off value. And when those characters do show up, they are duly dressed-down in the dark crevices of DeviantArt. So when gamers are presented with a woman in the context of a videogame, it’s quite natural for them to see her as something to be consumed.

And, finally, in his post “Jade Smells Pretty At London Games Fest” at Shameless Wesley points out what pretty much every woman who has tangled with gamer culture knows in a personal and immediate way:

The worst thing about this whole Jade Raymond business is that anyone who knows anything about gamers knew she would be the target of sexual innuendos and harsh commentary about her gamer cred, because this sort of thing happens all the time. Anyone who’s ever read a message board or listened to the voice chat on an online game has seen and heard more than their fair share of stupid and offensive remarks. What I haven’t yet been able to figure out is why some gamers are so puerile and hateful, and what needs to change so that I no longer have to worry about hearing people call each other fags or telling the German players to “speak American or get out” every time I play Team Fortress 2.

On why this is personal

Why is this personal? Simply put: this could be me in ten years.

You see, while I’m not getting into game design for the glory, I do intend to be good at what I do. My ultimate goal is to run a successful company of my own, probably designing and hosting MMOs. If I want to get my goals to come to fruition, that means that somewhere along the line I’m probably going to get hit by the public spotlight.

The truth is, in a very small way I already have gone through the same bullshit that Ms. Raymond is going through. Though my main blog gets only about 400 hits per day, I have already had hate mail go to the house my domain is registered at. I have had people speculate on my fuckability and I have been called every derogatory name that there is for a woman to be called.

I have even tangled with Destructoid, when I was labeled as one of the thing’s that’s “wrong with female gamers”, and Kotaku: once when they announced the Iris Gaming Network as if it were a child site of Guilded Lilly’s blog (the “rabidly misogynistic” line is still ascribed to us, rather than her, by the way), and once when they announced Cerise and their commenters started debating about whether or not they would fuck the cover model — my friend who had graciously allowed me to photograph her for our inaugural issue — provided there was a bag over her head.

All that when, in terms of my relationship with the industry, I’m just getting started. The Jade Raymond incident is like Kathy Sierra all over again. On the wake of that incident, I wrote a post entitled Harassment, silencing, and gaming communities, which talked about the ways that women were discouraged from participating in male-oriented communities such as gaming. Less than a year later, nothing has changed and this time the woman in question is one of our own: a gaming industry professional.

So, yeah, on one hand I’m glad that I’m entering my chosen profession with eyes open and no illusions about being the exception to the rule, or misconceptions like that if I play at being “one of the guys” I’ll be exempt from this treatment. I’m glad that I have tools, such as feminism, to help me deal with — and perhaps even change — the hostile climate. I’m glad that I have communities, such as Iris’ forums, where I can get support and remember why, and for whom, I am doing this.

But, where Luke said, “I can’t begin to imagine how something like this has to make a person feel after all the hard work they’ve put into something like this,” I say: I know. I know what it is to have something one has put one’s heart and soul into shat on simply because one is a woman. I know because it has happened to me. And there is no tool in the world capable of erasing the pain that I have felt and that I will feel the next time it happens to me.

And that, my dear readers, is the true meaning of “game designing while female”. Were that it was not so, but until gamers as a community and as an industry do their part to change things it will be only a matter of time before the next incident.