I want to be mad about"Pretty Princess"mode in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile because I know it's using gender stereotypes to make fun of bad gamers. But I can't be mad -- because it's just so funny. Did I just hurt the movement?
The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is an Xbox Live Arcade game that's enormously proud of its moderate-to-high difficulty level. The game is so proud of this that it shames players who can't cut it (get it? 'Cuz... he's a samurai?) by unlocking a Pretty Princess mode that ranks below Easy on the difficulty-settings menu. Activating the mode not only makes enemies easier to beat -- it also reskins the game with pink and lavender hearts and replaces the visceral blood sprays with rainbows.
I have to ask you to use your imagination here because the developer didn't have screenshots or video of the mode for me to use -- but check out this gameplay video and make a mental swap of rainbows for blood.
If you can imagine a dark and gory game like this spouting rainbows and hearts and pretty-girl things, it's pretty absurd right? You think it's funny, right?
I don't blame you. But I do blame myself a little. Rainbow blood sprays. Pink hearts. Easy difficulty level.... This game mode is so blatantly sexist that I ought to turn in my feminism card right now for having laughed aloud during the demo when I saw it. And if you don't see it that way, I'll spell it out for you: The mode implies that only girls are bad at video games, and because you game like a girl, the game should treat you like a girl.
This is an outdated gender stereotype at best. The days when the female population of gamers ranked so low we didn't even have representation in the International Game Developers Association are way, way done -- and I've alreadytalked at lengthabout how a girl's biggest enemy in this industry is herself. At worst, Pretty Princess mode is a mean-spirited joke that alienates not only female gamers (who may or may not be into unicorns and rainbows and stuff) but also gamers who maybe aren't good at classic arcade-fighting controls that The Dishwasher builds its gameplay on.
I should be against this. Even if I enjoy a game or a joke or a comic strip, I have a responsibility to call out developers who seem to forget that I'm a woman and I demand entertainment from them just as much as their male audience. I, like them, am paying for a good time and have every right to it without being made to feel dumb or weak or less valuable than my male counterparts. I, like them, am a gamer with needs.
But I also have a sense of humor. Everyone in the video-game industry does -- it's a playful medium that attracts playful people. A lot of the humor also winds up being self-deprecating because so many of us are insecure at heart. We traditionally started out as geeks who got beat up in high school, fat kids who retreated to in-game fantasies, misfits with insanely high Pac-Man scores, and generally disenfranchised youth attracted to bright lights and happy-sounding noises. So we get a little silly, make a little joke, and get defensive when we think somebody's making fun of us.
So maybe I shouldn't give myself such a hard time about not immediately being angry with Pretty Princess mode. Yes, it's derogatory, but it is a good joke, right?
I say that and I think of Dickwolves -- the one-word name fora scandalwhere Penny Arcade squared off against several feminist bloggers over an off-color rape joke. That started out as something funny/sexist, too– but when the defensive mode kicked in (for both the feminist bloggers and for Penny Arcade), it got ugly. So ugly, a woman developer whom I respect pulled out of attending PAX East after Penny Arcade started selling Dickwolf shirts.
The Dickwolves incident is an example of a joke that went too far. I don't think Pretty Princess mode in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile goes too far– but the same arguments you make for one, you could make for the other. Dickwolves and Pretty Princess mode are expressions of free speech contained in a medium that's meant to entertain and reflect on the state of something. Dickwolves and Pretty Princess mode also make fun of something in a waythat belittles women. They're both relatively small, inconsequential things on their own -- but the audience they reach grows bigger every day and includes more people than the ones for whom the joke was originally intended.
I guess it all comes down to the conventional wisdom of jokes: It's only funny until somebody gets hurt.
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