What Does it Mean For Video Games To Grow Up?

To those who have read my post on the escapist aspect of video games, I feel that I have not been specific enough in addressing a crucial gaming-related issue I have presented in that post. I raise the issue again here with these questions: what does it mean for video games to 'grow up?' Should 'growing up' entail upping the ante in violence, blood, gore, cursing, and sex? Does it require an exponentially increased number of cinematic cutscenes and quick-time events (QTEs) as well as greatly extended the length to a point that interactivity on part of the player is limited to a few button presses? Is it merely a justification for spending millions upon billions of dollars on making the game world and its inhabitants appear and feel as realistic as possible, as if realism is the one and only art style? The short answer to the last three counts would have to be no. Although there is no simple answer the original question, my own answer would be to have developers and producers of video games to do three things: to have more mature forms of storytelling, to discard all of the outdated storytelling tropes that offend and alienate people of different genders, races, religions, ethnics, and sexual orientation; and to hire new programmers, designers, artists, from these aforementioned demographics that would open new avenues of game development including design and storytelling. In order to understand how this relates to video games growing up, I will be summarizing the overall narratives of two video games, each from different generations in terms of content that justifies the M-rating and the sort of maturity that lies beneath the digital surface: Duke Nukem 3D and Bioshock Infinite.

Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter created by 3D Realm Studios for the PC in 1996, arguably one of the best of its kind in terms of gameplay. The title protagonist is the digital embodiment of the 1980s Hollywood action hero packing massive firepower and a mouth spewing trash talk and one liners first quipped by badass-type movie stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Campbell, Clint Eastwood, and Roddy Piper. The futuristic world in which he battles armadas of aliens and pig cops is basically a parody filled with porn jokes and pop culture references from around the time the game was made. Along the way, Duke encounters women in the form of the most offensive female stereotypes, which can be easily divided into two categories. On one side, there are passive scantily clad dancers, strippers, and prostitutes who exist solely to "shake it" for the player when he hands out some cash. On the other side, there are "pod girls," captive women stripped naked and harvested by the aliens who would beg the player to end their misery.


One of the many "pod girls" found throughout the world of Duke Nukem 3D in which the player has the inconsequential choice of putting her out of her misery or just gawk at her for hours.



Bioshock Infinite is a first-person shooter created by Irrational Games and released on March of this year for the PC, Xbox 360, and the Playstation 3. It has garnered massive critical acclaim and is a landmark in virtual storytelling. Set in 1912, the story follows Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent who was sent to Columbia, a floating utopian metropolis embodying American exceptionalism, racial purity aka eugenics, and religious extremism. His mission: to rescue Elizabeth, a mysterious women with mysterious powers, from Columbia and wipe away the debt, which is paying off alot of money owed (or something deeper, as it is occasionally hinted). Forced to rely on one another, Booker (with his skills in firearms and Vigors, tonics that grant powers similar in nature to the Plasmids of the first two Bioshock games) and Elizabeth (with her ability to open inter-dimensional rifts through space and time called 'tears,' pick locks, find supplies, ammunition, and extra money; and decrypt codes) they unravel Columbia's many mysteries and fight against two conflicting factions, the Founders (Columbia's police and military forces operating under the authority of the prophet Zackery H. Comstock, Infinite's primary antagonist) and the Vox Populi (an American version of the Russian Bolsheviks revolutionaries mainly comprising of the city's non-White population), while searching for a means of escape.

Video games have come a long way in depicting women in ways that make them more human than all the Princess Peaches, Zeldas, artificial sidekicks, and scantily clad (or nearly nude) Dead or Alive fighters. Elizabeth, the second main protagonist in Bioshock Infinite, is a sign that it is about time to discard the traditional female tropes commonly found in most video games.



Generational differences in terms of game design aside, there is one crucial difference between Duke Nukem 3D and Bioshock Infinite that deserves mentioning for the sake of this entry. In terms of writing, the story of Duke Nukem 3D is far less mature than the story of Bioshock Infinite. The lack of maturity lies in how the women featured in Duke Nukem 3D were portrayed in ways that have been viewed in masculine terms since ancient times; ways which continue to plague the video game community and industry to this day. Therefore, one way for video games to grow up would be ceasing, discontinuing, and discarding all of the outdated storytelling tropes that degrade, insult, and objectify women as well as other people of different nations, sexual orientation, religions, and so forth all in future video games. It goes without saying that video games are no longer exclusively for straight white (or Japanese in the case of games made in Japan) teenage boys. That being said, continuing to make games that culturally conform to that demographic would be like continuing to sell whale oil in the age of electricity, continuing to have American superheroes pool their strength and resources into fighting a fascist army that no longer exists, and continuing to pray to ancient/ medieval gods and spirits for good harvests and good health in the 21st century, a time in which we currently have the power of science to make good harvests and good health. This, of course, brings me to another way for video games to grow up. In order to make video games that would cater to various demographics while also being enjoyable to play, it would have to be done by the right developers from those demographics. But the obstacle of the current developer demographics has to be overcome first if that is to happen. According to a 2005 survey of over 6500 American game developers conducted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), a good majority of them are male (88.5%), white (83.3%), and straight (92%) while females (11.5%), blacks (2%), Hispanics (2.5%), Asians (7.5%), others of international descent (4.7%), homosexuals (2.7% ), and bisexuals (2.7%) make up the smallest minorities. Also, game development business models would have to adopt ways that would ensure their finished products would connect to people besides straight white teenage boys while making them feel included. Resorting to a corporate top-down structure that restricts employees by sectionizing them based on technical discipline while being culturally, socially, and geopolitically isolated would not solve this problem, as the Japanese video game industry can attest with their struggle to contend with this structure that has been their tradition of making games and doing business. In that regard, a new development approach should be something like this: an interdisciplinary collaboration between individuals with different views and cultural backgrounds without throwing the organizational structure into disarray.

Having gone over two examples of video games from different generations featuring women in widely different ways while also getting a brief glimpse into an industry that appears to be stuck in the age of straight white male heroes, I'll just end with a message on one way to have video games grow up to the video game industry: we need more strong female protagonists like this: