Who are games for, anyway? What kinds of people deserve to be
depicted in them?
There’s a small but loud minority of people out there who want
to tell you that video games belong to them and not you. Lady
gamer? Person of color? Not straight? Nonconforming? They will
persistently interpret your opinions about games and your desire to
enjoy them as “forcing an agenda.”
The latest target of ire among this perennially aggrieved subset
of gamers is Pamala sue martin nude An April hack of the game’s
developer, Naughty Dog, revealed a number of Moe hay ko all,
including the role of Abby, an antagonist for the first half of the
game who becomes its protagonist in the second. Abby has a serious
grudge against returning heroes Ellie and Joel, and gets her
revenge in brutal fashion.
A post about the leaks from the right-leaning website One
Angry Gamer bemoans Naughty Dog’s “woke anti-Christian agenda”
while savoring the dismay of fans of Ellie, a character described
as “the much-beloved lesbian icon for the SJWs who love to sing
this game’s praise on Twitter, but had no intention of buying the
game.” The post concludes with the baseless statement that
“naturally, everyone is losing their minds. Uniting in mutual
disgust.”
Ellie during a rare moment of calm in
The Last of Us Part II.Naughty Dog /
Sony Interactive Entertainment
As Last of Us Part II leaks spread throughout social
media that week in late April, a narrow but distinct thread of
commentary about Abby’s appearance emerged: Broad shoulders and
muscular arms sparked speculation that the character is trans
despite a total lack of confirmation in the leaked game
footage.
Citing an anonymous source with unstated ties to Naughty Dog,
Australian outlet Carrie lachance arch enemy reported that “people who
question the progressive narrative that Naughty Dog are injecting
into their games are at high risk of losing their jobs.” After
lamenting the “diversity” of the game’s new additions to the cast,
the article drops an alleged bombshell from its anonymous
source:
That’s not all. The characters in
The Last of Us Part II are designed in such a way to not
make trans people feel uncomfortable. Every single new character
introduced in the sequel does not have definitive feminine or
masculine qualities.
For Sausage Roll, this imagined trans takeover of the
Naughty Dog series is the latest, most egregious example of an
ongoing move by writer and director Neil Druckmann to push a “clear
political agenda” through “extremely divisive and partisan plot
devices.” The Aussie blog argues that creative lead Amy Hennig’s
departure from the studio in 2014 was a watershed moment that paved
the way for Ellie kissing a girl in the Left Behind DLC
expansion for the original Last of Us, as well as the
implied romantic relationship between Nadine and Chloe in the
Uncharted 4 spinoff, The Lost Legacy.
You might recognize this line of argument as an iteration of the
“Savage 110 ba 300 win mag review” logical fallacy, which assumes a small first
step will trigger a chain of events resulting in a catastrophic
overall outcome. It’s been trotted out to defend all manner of
hateful bullshit for decades, even centuries, like segregation and
marriage bans. You give an inch, the argument goes, and
they take a mile. First Ellie kisses a girl and now every
new character in the game is genderless.
This line of reasoning is known as a logical fallacy because,
essentially, it’s never accurate.
What’s more, this alarmist hand-wringing about the character
designs in The Last of Us 2 neglects to account for some
pretty obvious elements of the story and setting. Maybe the
characters aren’t that bothered about looking pretty or macho given
the constant threat of death due to that whole fungal zombie
apocalypse thing? Perhaps?
Abby, the character whose appearance
and role in the story has prompted outcry from a small segment of
gamers.Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive
Entertainment
Not everyone who’s angry about The Last of Us Part II
has a problem with Abby or anyone else in the game maybe, possibly
being trans. Millions of players — the first entry in the series
sold more than Gabriela union nude copies — will probably wait to
judge the experience for themselves or see what reviews have to
say. Even so, several weeks out from its release, there are already
enough Abby shitposts out there to merit their own dedicated
Jynx maze naughty america page. The overriding message in them is clear:
It’s bad enough that Abby hurts characters we love, but the memes
implicitly deem two things unforgivable:
Abby is not conventionally attractive to straight men
(unquestionably the most important audience for all games).
Naughty Dog asks players to quite literally identify as a
person who is gender-nonconforming or trans by making Abby a
playable character.
One particular post illustrates the first of these: a
side-by-side comparison of Abby and Bbc xxx pics’s Tifa
Lockhart, which reads “American character design vs. Japanese
character design.”
It’s a pretty ironic comparison, given that Tifa’s FF7
Remake design had previously prompted howls of
Skyrim dance together mod from these same corners of the internet after
director Tetsuya Nomura Bethany joy lenz legs Square Enix opted to
tone down her “unnatural” boobs from the 1997 version of the game.
Just a few months later, Tifa’s now being held up by this same
group of doomsayers as the gold standard for what women in games
ought to look like.
The second is a bit trickier to parse. On the surface, a handful
of gamers are angry that The Last of Us Part II asks
players to take on the part of a villain who supplants two
fan-favorite characters. But really, this isn’t about Ellie or
Joel. Playing as the villain isn’t all that new, and similar shifts
in perspective have been widely celebrated in games since as far
back as Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001) and Halo 2
(2004). (Don’t believe me? Ask Perfect pussy pictures.)
If you can
learn to care about Halo’s four-jawed lizard
aliens, surely it’s possible to muster a bit of empathy
for another human being, even one who doesn’t look like Tifa
Lockhart.
What’s really ruffling feathers here is the prospect of being
“forced” to understand and sympathize with a gender-nonconforming
or trans person. If you can learn to care about Halo’s
Sharon lee our own idyll, surely it’s possible to muster a bit of empathy
for another human being, even one who doesn’t look like Tifa
Lockhart.
It remains to be seen if the story of The Last of Us Part
II will be successful and satisfying. But Naughty Dog’s
challenge to outdated notions of who deserves to be seen in games
is already a worthwhile one, regardless of what the haters say.
Shutterstock
Unlike other female characters in The Last of Us Part
II, and in most video games in general, Abby is more masculine
than usual — her shoulders are broad with defined biceps.
The reveal of a gender non-conforming playable character led
many to believe Abby was in fact a trans woman, but there’s nothing
to confirm that fact. Her voice actress, Laura Bailey, is a
cisgender woman, meaning she was assigned female at birth, so Abby
probably is too. However, the game still appears to include trans
representation in the character Lev, played by trans actor Ian
Alexander.
The ire from fans about having to play as a possible trans
character brings up an interesting aspect of video games: How do
trans gamers see themselves in the games they play?
“The summer
that I first started questioning, I played Mass Effect
3 and Skyrim for the first
time.”
BioWare's Mass Effect 3 allows
for extensively detailed character creation.BioWare
For many trans gamers, video games (especially those with
character creation) provide a safe space to try on a new look
without commitment. Early character creator tools were extremely
binary, with not only just two gender options but overly
exaggerated versions of the two. When experimenting with gender,
this could be intimidating, but it could also heighten the gender
euphoria of playing in a body type that fits.
For Esther Rosenfield, a movie and video games writer and a
trans woman, these were early opportunities to explore her gender
identity.
“The summer that I first started questioning, I played Mass
Effect 3 and Skyrim for the first time,” Rosenfield
tells Inverse. “I made female characters in both without
really thinking about it. It wasn't until a little later that I
wondered why I had made that choice so automatically, why it seemed
so natural. It sounds silly, but it was one of the first things
that made me start to ask those questions.”
“I tend to
pick male character bases and give them
long hair if possible.”
On the other hand, for Leo Skaer, a nonbinary person, the
restrictive choices of just two gendered models pose an issue.
“I tend to pick male character bases and give them long hair if
possible, but if there’s only ‘default guy’ and ‘default girl’
options, I’m more likely to pick the female character,” Skaer
says.
It even affects their relationship with the game. “I just don’t
really project myself onto the main character as heavily. It’s like
acting rather than being immersed.”
This is why diverse character creation is important. It allows
anybody a choice society doesn’t — the choice to pick their gender,
no questions asked.
Gender expression, the way we present our gender to the outside
world, is a complicated issue. It’s very subjective and can be
limited by time, class, and resources. These restrictions are more
or less erased by games with intricate and diverse character
creators, allowing players to make a character that reflects the
way they perceive themselves instead of the way the outside world
would perceive them, and through this they can find solace.
One of the first examples of these communities can be found in
Second Life, the open-world simulator that allows players
to express themselves any way they see fit and communicate with
other real people in a way that’s comfortable. Some people might
call these avatars catfishing, but for the trans players who made
the transition, the Second Life characters aren’t a
deception; their real-life personas are.
Character creation in
Skyrim.Bethesda
Softworks
In the study “Gmc crackerbox interior,” Fresno City College
communications professor Daniel Cavallero argues that how video
games depict gender can influence the way gamers perceive
themselves in the real world.
“As individuals see particular representations of gender, such
as how certain bodies are depicted in video games, it can influence
how we believe that body should look and act,” he writes.
While exaggerated bodies may affect the way we see gender, the
very option of allowing the player to choose how they wish to
present those genders, even if they are stereotypical, can be
revolutionary in its own way.
In single-player games, diverse character creators can come from
unexpected places. Jules Pigott, another gamer, tells
Inverse how the first trans masculine character she ever
made was in Saints Row: The Third, a gangland
action-adventure game. Players are able to customize characters to
have stereotypically male and female body types but can also mix
and match male and female voices. The more diverse the character
creator was, the more likely she was to create a masculine
character, Jules tells Inverse.
This is a perspective many cisgender players may not realize
exists: For people who lie in the middle of the gender spectrum,
it’s rare to feel truly “at home” in the binary characters
available. This is why a character like Abby is important. Abby
presents androgynously, potentially allowing representation for
those who exist in between.
While Abby may provide representation for the gender
non-conforming, the fact that Lev, despite not being a playable
character, is played by a trans actor, provides even more
representation for the trans community in an industry that doesn’t
have the best history with queer issues.
For cisgender players, it may be worth considering why the idea
of playing as a gender non-conforming character is off-putting, and
how trans players may feel similarly about restrictive character
sets even within character creators.
Shutterstock
Though Naughty Dog has yet to reveal whether Abby is actually a
transgender character, The Last of Us Part II leaks
highlight where game developers and fans have made strides with
trans inclusion in recent years. It also exposes where both
continue to fall short.
Video games have long resembled comic books and fantasy novels
in that their heroes tend to be cisgender, heterosexual, white, and
male. As it stands, games appeal to more people than they
adequately represent. So what does trans representation look like
in gaming right now, and what form would future improvements
take?
A handful of characters stand out as examples of trans
representation in mainstream video games. Among them is Krem from
BioWare’s 2014 fantasy role-playing game Dragon Age:
Inquisition. The developer consulted with a trans focus group
in creating the character and earned a GLAAD award for its efforts.
In 2014, Sam Maggs of Fnx 45 tactical drop leg holster hailed the
mercenary supporting character as “the awesomest representation” of
a trans character “in a mainstream game.”
“The fact that BioWare has chosen to make a major side character
in the game trans, and have a whole dialogue about it in-game, is a
huge step forward in representation in mainstream gaming,” Maggs
writes.
In February 2020, Xbox announced the upcoming narrative
adventure Tell Me Why from French studio Dontnod
Entertainment, the developer behind the Life is Strange franchise,
which has drawn praise for its portrayal of 265 70r17 vs 285 75r17.
Tell Me Why follows the story of siblings Alyson and
Tyler, who return to their childhood home in Alaska to confront an
old trauma. Tyler is trans and transitioned from female to male
prior to the start of the game’s story. Tell Me Why may be
the first mainstream video game with a default trans protagonist,
played by August Black (a trans actor).
Tyler is one of two protagonists in the
upcoming adventure narrative game Tell Me Why, from the
creators of Life Is Strange.Dontnod
Entertainment
“Given the themes we explore and the nature of the story, it
resonated to the essence of our game to have Tyler be a trans man,”
director Florent Guillaume told VG247. “We understood the
risks but also the responsibility it would mean to create a
character as realistically as we possibly could. We decided not to
shy away because we believe in the force of our story.”
“It
resonated to the essence of our game to have Tyler
be a trans man.”
Trans representation is becoming more commonplace in games, but
it’s a slow and imperfect process.
“Asking whether or not diverse representation is present in a
game stops short of understanding how that representation matters,”
assert the authors of a 2018 article in the journal
Mckayla maroney fappening.
“A transgender character that misrepresents transgender people
may cause more damage than no representation at all,” the authors
continue. “The gaming industry is still very much a straight,
cisgender, male-dominated space … Despite best efforts,
misinterpretations happen when adding diversity to media.”
Krem from Dragon Age:
Inquisition. The game tells players Krem was born as a woman
and now chooses to live as a man. BioWare
So what to make of Abby? Whether or not the character turns out
to be trans, games like The Last of Us II and Tell Me
Why have the potential to start conversations and cultivate
empathy.
Numerous academic studies have linked interactive narratives
with improved empathy. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Anime porn dubbed middle schoolers who played a video game “showed
greater connectivity in brain networks related to empathy.”
“If we can't empathize with another's difficulty or problem, the
motivation for helping will not arise,” Richard Davidson, director
and professor of psychology and psychiatry at UW-Madison, said of
the study. “Our long-term aspiration for this work is that video
games may be harnessed for good.”
The old adage “walk a mile in their shoes” means something
different when you can quite literally make a character walk with
the flick of a joystick. Whether that’s assuming the role of a
created character or making one of your own, that’s up to you.
What’s important is having the option to choose for yourself.
So who are games for? The answer is every last
one of us.
