Game is perceived to be sexist due to the fact that male protagonist must rescue female from the forces of bad. In an attempt to nullify the perceived sexism, the game is re-created (plagiarized) with the male and female roles reversed.
…and this is considered NOT sexist how?
Murdering a murderer for committing murder doesn’t solve anything. In the end, you still have someone who committed murder that is still alive and standing in the end, and is technically probably wanted by the authorities. It’s a little extreme of an analogy but I think it’s valid; people who hack video games they think are sexist, and make a game where females rescue males aren’t solving anything either; in the end, they’ve produced a sexist game themselves.
Over the last few weeks, there’s been some buzz on the interwebs about sexism in video games, and two particular instances where people have hacked some classic Nintendo games in an attempt to fight an imaginary fight against sexism in video games. One guy hacked Donkey Kong, and reversed the roles of Mario and Pauline, so that the player plays as Pauline who has to jump barrels, hammer living fireballs, and climb ladders to rescue Mario, who has been kidnapped by Donkey Kong. A week later, someone hacked The Legend of Zelda, so that you play through the entire game as Princess Zelda, in the quest to gather the pieces of the Triforce and defeat Ganon and rescue Link.
What we have here are people attempting to fight against perceived misogyny by employing misandry.
Pauline rescuing Mario and Zelda rescuing Link are now sexist towards men. People seem to be conveniently ignoring this trope while they’re championing these plagiarists for hacking classic video games “for educational purposes.”
They may think that they’re fighting the good fight and that they’re doing great deeds of reversing the roles, but they’re really not accomplishing anything but being sexist in their own right. Sure, they might open some eyes that video games, much like the history of well, the world, has always been a little male dominated, but in doing so, they’re kind of being sexist in their own ways, too. That doesn’t necessarily make it right.
I know I come off as pretty chauvinistic in my writing when I want to be, but when it really comes down to it, I’ve got no problem with strong women. Strong women are awesome, and it’s appealing to see when women are capable of displaying their strengths; without the chip on their shoulder that it’s because they’re a woman that they’re succeeding.
This whole criticism of the video game industry as being misogynic is kind of stupid, in my opinion. Sure, the video game industry is kind of a boy’s club, but what still isn’t in today’s society? Look at politicians, which are still vastly male-dominated. Look at the recent religious events, where the entire Catholic Church has a conclave full of priests and cardinals and wannabe popes that are all male. The work and contributions that female politicians and nuns do are no less important than that of what the males do, but the rationale to why the males are the ones in power is simply, to say the least, historic.
Hacking existing video games and reversing the sexism accomplishes nothing. If these people really want to make an impact in the video game industry, they need to create their own games. And if they’re smart, they create games that aren’t necessarily overly misandric or philogynistic, but more conveying of equality and balance between the sexes.
However, it’s not like games like that don’t already exist; take the original Resident Evil for example. You have the choice to play as either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. Picking one results in the other being the captive in need of rescue, and throughout each character’s playthrough, they have someone of the opposite sex to assist them; Jill gets the subservient Barry Burton, while Chris gets the subservient Rebecca Chambers to assist them.
But let’s forget good examples like this in pursuit of an agenda.
Personally, I think far too much time is being expended in pointing out how some people think the video game industry is misogynistic, and not enough time is going into actually doing something about it. I think if more progressive games were created with more equality and less perceived sexism about them, and actually manage to get some degree of saturation in the market, then things might take care of themselves. After all, lots of video games are still all about telling stories, and by getting more men and women to work together in writing stories and characters, would there be any chance for less perceived sexism in the end products.
