As much as I adore this article! You make some really well thought-out suggestions here… Sounds to me like writing the gradu for you was a learning experience in itself. :) I will most certainly come back to this article once I start writing my own gradu.

Mr. Carey, you earned yourself triple bonus points simply by having suggested anything by Bananarama. However, I can’t help thinking that your song is as much de-motivational as it is motivational, at least based on those lyrics! And just for the record, I don’t believe for a second that you haven’t understood what you’ve been writing about either!

And I think you’re absolutely right: the hobby shouldn’t be more inclusive just towards women, but everyone in general. Ironically, my own article about inclusiveness in the hobby didn’t turn out quite as inclusive as it could’ve been, and I am sorry about that.

My objection isn’t to the inclusion of rape as a plot element in general, it’s one based on the idea that it has, frankly, never been discussed in an RPG in a mature and sensitive manner. I’m not saying that the subject should be completely taboo, just that in a hobby with so much persistent male privilege most authors are probably not best-equipped to deal with the subject matter with real understanding or sensitivity.

Furthermore, since rape is such a sensitive subject matter and is to a large extent not equal-opportunity, its very inclusion in a casual manner without actually adding much value to the game can serve as a trigger for rape survivors. I also find comparing rape to murder as difficult subject matters go rather insensitive: rape, for the most part, isn’t equal opportunity, and there are no “murder survivors.” Also, I would also argue that talking about “murder” in RPGs is a misnomer: most RPGs aren’t about violence, they’re about action. Most RPGs operate on an action movie level of violence (i.e. shy away from actually discussing the real-life trauma and consequences of violence) and not on a cinéma vérité level of violence. (The exception that proves the rule: Unknown Armies is a prime example of a game that actually discusses the fact that, in a real life context, physical violence is often a very bad idea, and since this chimes so well with the game’s actual level of lethality I find it one of the best and most mature games on the “violence” end of the action-violence spectrum.)

I agree with you on the idea that fiction isn’t real and that we shouldn’t shy away from the difficult subjects. However, what we include in fiction can often betray our inherent passive ideologies. I find the casual mention of sexual violence in games like Pathfinder troubling and insensitive (not only to the concerns of rape survivors, but also of the fact that the game isn’t exclusively marketed to mature audiences and is also played by minors), even though I know the intent isn’t to glorify rape, and the fact that many people in the hobby overlook its inclusion betrays the fact that the hobby lacks a degree of self-consciousness about the gravity of such subject matters.

I’m an advocate of people voting with their money and in now way wish to impose censorship upon anyone’s work. However, I am also a firm believer in self-censorship and feel that sometime’s the most mature and sensitive way to approach a difficult subject matter is to admit to the fact that you might not be the best person to discuss said matter. In a hobby so vested in male privilege as RPGs (and geek culture in general) such subject matters should probably be left alone for the time being.

You’re also absolutely right in saying that the use of scare quotes in my article was done in bad faith and I have removed them. My sincerest apologies for that. I don’t consider you an advocate of sexism (or rape, for that matter), just that like a lot of well-intentioned people in the hobby you might have trouble seeing past your privilege. In a hobby with so much inherent sexism as is, humorous sexism isn’t probably the best of ideas. (See also: white people making ironic racist jokes.)

There weren’t 5000 people at that one, and I don’t think it made any difference. It seems like the same situation with introducing tuition fees for foreign students and switching to English-only MA programs (like recently at Aalto’s Business School) — every couple years someone makes a “suggestion” and waits to see what kind of stink comes up. As soon as the stink becomes bearable to the people in charge, changes are made. So, good for the students for having stunk up the steps of parliament!

Fiction is not real. We have been through this with the Satanic Panic and more recently with computer games being called ‘murder simulators’. This is really no different than that.

A similar controversy has stirred up recently around the authors of ‘Grimdark’ fantasy books and there as here, with games, the criticism is bewildering. Do we really want to whitewash all fiction and entertainment so that it contains absolutely nothing provocative, affecting or difficult? That would seem to me to be even more problematic (presenting worlds where nothing bad ever happens or exists) than presenting worlds where it does.

Unlike passive media people are capable of running games their own way and the bar for producing and distributing your own material has never been lower. If people want other material they are freer than they have ever been to make it and get it out there. That would ADD to our options rather than taking away – which IS what ‘feminists’ (scare quotes intended) in gaming seem to prefer.

Machine Age Productions while also being a bit censorious and ideologically hardline DO actually produce their own stuff so if you want to support that kind of gaming then support them: http://machineageproductions.com/ – I have in the past despite our differences.

I do worry about the ability of some people in the hobby to differentiate reality from fantasy but it is posts like this that worry me, not the guy that’s really into his character and dresses up for cons.

Pax.

What bothers me with the ongoing discussion is not only that comments about the problematic representation of women in gaming are often snorted at as fun-hating feminazi propaganda, but that actually constructive criticism is almost always written from a male, heterosexual, cisgender perspective. (Not to criticise you, but the discussion generally, mind you.) As you said, the argument for objectification of (female) characters goes that men get the elven megababes, women get the oiled hunks. Apart from being purposefully misleading by making men and women seem equal, it disregards the fact that there are men who aren’t that into ladies, and women who aren’t that into gents. Furthermore, there are people who don’t identify with either gender and people whose preferences aren’t limited to either gender. Even if we weren’t problematising characters’ becoming sex objects, we might want to think that there should be varieties of eye candy for all.

Seriously, it wouldn’t harm geek culture to be more inclusive not only for women, but for all kinds of people, all kinds of forms of being and identifying oneself. This diversity should also show in the ways games represent different characters. There are some indie RPGs (I know one for certain) that put feminism and female existence into focus. That is a start, but I hope RPGs as well as geek culture in general could begin the transformation into the all-invited funfest I feel it could and should be.