A Living Cycle

I feel like I'm the only one who hasn't blogged about this yet, but whew, UN orientation...some definite highs and lows, scary and otherwise. I'm excited about the group as a whole, though sad to see that all the familiar faces I've worked with before were drawn away from me. It's not that I don't like new groups by any means. It's simply that every new group has so many quirks, goals, ambitions, motivators, outside influences on behavior, and so on. I often love learning these nuances of people, perhaps as part of the human frequencies I wrote about before, but it is admittedly draining. After having taken all summer to finally crack the last few members of my Info Lit team, it feels like it may take just as long to do the same with this new group, although there are only about half as many students. I think as far as managing other people and driving them towards both productivity and enjoyment of their work, this summer's project has been the most taxing by far. But I feel like it's something I should be comfortable doing, which I am. That said, the school year promises to be one of my most challenging yet, I think.

Now that I've accidentally written part of an assignment for the project, I'll move on to something else that I've been contemplating: the role of women in video games. It's easy to say that they're unrealistic, made to be either objects of male possession or quippy, foxy heroines. Much the same level of fantasy is achieved in most male roles in video games as well. But what about the women that have no names and well-defined parts in games? How often do they come up? How many shooting games have females thrown into the NPC (non-player character) population? Does it change the way you play if there are any?

Most instances of female filler characters I can think of are civilians: random women walking down the street in the Grand Theft Auto series, women carrying pots on their heads in Assassin's Creed. Sometimes there are entire throngs of women without any men, as in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Gerudo Valley. But how often do we really see men and women stacked up against the hero of a game? Why is it that nothing springs to my mind?

There may be several reasons for this, one being that I do not play the plethora of games that other kids my age do. Another reason may be that if you're only going to make one model with slight variations to populate a game, males are to be expected and are also easier to model. That aside, I'm now quite curious to know whether or not making a more balanced population in games, let alone one that might accurately represent the 60-40 distribution of women vs. men on this planet, would have any impact on the players. Would the players even notice? Would they have the sense of something being different without being able to place their fingers on it? Would they pick up on it right away? Would they treat the women computer characters any differently than the male counterparts? Too many questions, no way to study them at this point in time.

This whole idea is just one that I'm not sure has been taken into consideration yet for this project. Yes, video games are popular among young men. But the role of women in these games is often one of low or disrespectful status. As in society, is that what the target demographic will expect in any video game? Is that going to be a difficult hurdle to overcome? My answer is yes, but I also see many ways in which it could be done. The most prevalent in my mind at the moment is only half baked, but I have this overwhelming feeling that if we want to convince these boys that things are not as nice the way they are as they might believe, we must first present them with what they expect to see in a game, and then turn it completely on its head, in steps that are gradual enough that they would not confuse the player or make them lose interest.

Just some things kicking around my head on this first weekend after our commencement of the project. Developing this strategy any further, or developing any strategy for design at all, is still far in the future. However, I cannot stop these thoughts from being a dominant part of my mindset when going into the research. Hopefully that will prove to be a good thing.