[RESEARCH] Positive and Negative Stereotypes in Video Games and Media

There is lots of stereotypes in games and media all over the world, it’s pretty hard to miss it all. Yet is it good? Sometimes we do not notice the stereotypes, and it all just passes over our heads. But when it is noticed, there’s always thought and views upon it as if it is wrong or right.
Here are just a few examples of this through games and media:

In Video Games

Kushi (Okami)
The rice and sake brewing “goddess” according to a man named Susano in Okami. There are many female stereotypes in Okami, but Kushi is a good example of a strong and weak ‘damsel in distress’.
In the game Okami, she is faced with the problem of being a sacrificial damsel to the dreaded demon Orochi (an eight headed demon which is a representation of a true Japanese mythological serpent, Shinto). During the time period, a tradition was kept that each year for seven years, Orochi would choose a daughter from a family to eat; Kushi being the next. (You could say that Orochi dare pick the son of a family as they are too strong and may fight back.)
As Kushi puts forward herself to be the sacrifice, she turns to Susano (a warrior by bloodline) for help. Still, even if Kushi is stepping forward to make Susano save her, she is still showing she isn’t strong enough to defeat the monstrous Orochi by herself and is still needing a male character to come and save her.

 

Chell (Portal)
Chell (the main protagonist and puzzle solver in Portal) is a character with a strong representation of a Female Character.
In a world where she doesn’t belong, Chell has to go through tough and brutal tasks to run away from something she doesn’t want to be part of; being a test experiment. Through the story, Chell completes very masculine tasks by herself, yet still rocks the stereotypical beautiful feminine features (dismissing other female characters which look like men to accommodate their masculine actions).
Through both Portal 1 and Portal 2, as the main protagonist, she succeeded in passing through tough decisions to run from the test facility, managing finally to escape and free herself from the terrors below with no help from a ‘male’ character. Chell doesn’t fill the role of a damsel in distress, neither a female character for show. She shows a capable female which can escape from her own problems and fears.

 

The Kid (Bastion)
A silent protagonist from the indie game Bastion. Little is know as to whether he is a fully grown man or a child, but he still fulfils the status of a strong male character.
The Kid didn’t do well in education and took time to serve on the Rippling Walls, gaining money to send back to his frail mother at home. However, when his mother died, he decided to take on a different position on the walls in which gained trust between the troops around him. But then, the Calamity (a horrible apocalypse) struck, and all that was left was himself fighting through monsters.
As a male, serving on the Walls was the honourable thing to do, to serve and bring power to the country (a very masculine role). Because of this power which The Kid gained through years of service, he ends up saving a handful of people by himself; male and female. The balance between the people saved, however, is quite astounding as normally the female characters are the ones being saved. Not just the male and female.

 

In Films

Bryan Mills (Taken)
Father of a daughter, as a former man of an agency (strong male stereotype), he retires from his duty to gain a bond between him and his daughter.
For the daughter’s (Kim) 17th birthday, she would like to follow U2’s concert tour around Europe, yet her father is not too please about it. Bryan gives in and allows her to go, only letting his daughter fall pray to kidnappers in warm Spain. Through the film, Bryan tries to get back his daughter with his enormous set of skills learned whilst working at the agency.
As stated before, as the main protagonist, he surely shows a lot of skills and tough examples of a pure strong male character. Bryan never shows fear, only determination. However the female character (his daughter) is unable to save herself from kidnapping.

[DEVELOPMENT] Ideas Generating for my Game Design Document

We have been assigned to make a game based on gender issues in the games industry. With the ideas which have been generated, it then has to become one ‘slightly finished’ level based on your own idea.
Then, having done that, also produce a 2000 worded GDD which expresses (in detail) what was in the thought process and the lessons you had learned from the project.
There is some ideas in which I have already thought of for this project, however I am unsure at the moment how it will all plan out (hence the very vague statements).

What I Would Like to Show in My Level?

The game which I am creating is a Side Scroller. A side scroller may be a little bit too hard for UDK but it is always worth a shot. In the one level I am making I would like to show what it is like to play in a ‘dream’ state; broken platforms, flying debris, empty space underneath the platforms, etc. When that is achieved, I want to be able to then add musical soundtracks to it, giving the player a feeling of empty space and mystery to the player.
All of this would be great to have as a final product, which is why I will push myself to get this idea down as best as I can.

– With the open space, I will still have the player connected to one path line so they do not get lost at any point during gameplay. Hopefully, also, I can find a way to bound the player into a state where they cannot jump off of the platforms at any point of the game. Therefore, I’m focusing more on a visual playthrough.

– As the player progresses through the game, I want to create buildings to pop up and such to surround the player. This will only happen, though, as the player progresses through the game. As the player starts, there will be nothing around them but a pathway that goes straight forward.

What Platform Will I Be Making It On?

I will be making the level in UDK (Unreal Development Kit). I feel with UDK it can show off the level’s own true potential and that I could put across majority of my ideas into it. My fear being is that it will not turn out as I suspected, but I will do quite a bit of research to get past the fear of using UDK and possibly get fluent and confident at it.

– Possibly hope to use some of the ready in-built structures and put a filter over to create just a black and white terrain but with the character being somewhat coloured, as well as the AI character coloured to show their importance.

– I would like to build my own structures based on my ideas through the program itself, also. Possibly, also, go through 3DS Max and import my own creations into UDK itself; making the creation process very easy.

[DEVELOPMENT] Creating a Game With Just Two Words

There is a lot you can create with just two words at your disposal. In a lesson, we were given two random words to play with and create a game from, within the time limit.
The good thing about doing this is that it restricts you from making drastic choices and make you less attached to your idea, enabling you to not worry so much about telling everyone the filling details. This could be a bad thing, because your heart isn’t in the project, but at the same time you can easily go off and try again with another two words.
We were then told to create a Hollywood catchphrase. A Hollywood catchphrase is a sentence or a phrase which is meant to catch some one’s attention, create confusion or curiosity and make them ask “What? I want to know more!” The reason we were asked to do this was because we needed to pitch our idea to our Tutor, and if it caught his attention, he would ask for more.

First: Taking Two Words and Making a Random Game

Our first try at this, I stumbled quite badly because we were given such a short time limit. With the given two words (“Extreme” and “Rock”) I contemplated on making a game which resembled music. Realising, however, that I didn’t want to make it close and personal to myself, I went off the rails and took on another idea which resembled the two words instead of taking on the obvious.
Here is my game idea:
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Extreme Rock
Hollywood Catchphrase: “You haven’t lived until you’ve skimmed with bombs.”

You are a person trying to skim your rock (Or Bombs) to the other side of the river to destroy your neighbour’s house. Little does your neighbour know, you’re an extreme rock skimmer.
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Second: Taking Two Words and Making a “Facebook Game”

We were next assigned to create a game, using the two words randomly picked for us (“Mum” and “Mountain”), and make a Facebook type game. I found this quite challenging, but a little more easier. I had to consider what is currently on Facebook and try and make it user friendly, but also enjoyable and re-playable. Then I realised I could easily add another quality from other games, such as Curiosity.
Here is my game idea:
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Mum Mountain
Hollywood Catchphrase: “There may be a heaven, you just need to climb.“

A mother has ran out of food to feed her children. Your job is to lead the children up the mountain to reach the heavens and get to the only shop that is around, the grocery store.
This game is an online game, and the Mountain is updated every week. The updates include constant changes in obstacles (like monsters and such), areas where your characters can rest, care packages which your friends can gift to you, and hidden areas. Your friends can tag along and defeat the enemies with you or you can brave the harsh mountain alone. When you are defeated, you are sent back to the beginning with nothing.
Just like the web game Curiosity (a game where there is loads of squares which you have to click, and the last person to click the last square wins whatever is in the middle), no one has yet reached the top of the mountain, and who ever does gets some form of great prize at the end.
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Making a Platform Game into a Board Game [PLATFORM BOARD GAME]

To make a platforming board game was quite a tough experience for the whole group. To make it feel like a platforming game is one thing, but not having a controller in your hand and a screen in front of you was another problem entirely.

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Assignment in Class

What we came up with, as a group, is keeping the classic ‘Platforming Game’ in mind and transferring it onto paper. We decided to have platforms, but keep them as boxes with numbers on (from 1 to 97). The players progress into the game with two 6 sided dice, and using the amount they have rolled, jump that many spaces until they reach the end. Each player starts with 5 lives, there is areas where you can fall off platforms, and there’s areas where you can pick up chance cards to increase or decrease chances to progress further, save yourself, or unfortunately die. 

It was very lucky that we play tested the game before we took it into play, because there were more to be added to the game to make it very fair. This really helped us in the long run, as everyone really enjoyed playing our platform board game.
After playing our game, the feedback was just so amazing;

★ The system was not unfair in any way, there was much variety in the game of harsh and great times which saw everyone through the game.


★ The design was great, very colourful and amazing to play upon. It was very easy to determine what item or object meant what in the game, and there was a lot going on and to be aware of, which kept all players on their toes.


★ Even if people were getting a game of luck, others can easily catch up by just one slip up. This made the other players feel much more happier about playing it, rather then trudging through the game and trying to make the time pass by.


★ The only problem was that the game was quite unfair with lives. There shouldn’t have been a lives system in place, because it makes the game much more harsher then it already is.

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The Other Games

[Game 1] Scaffolding Construction

★ The rules were very hard to understand, there could have been more work to really order and reconstruct the rules a little so that they were more understandable for all players.


★ The toothpicks were very fiddly to use, making it hard to determine who’s toothpicks were who’s. Considering the game had a rule stating that you couldn’t go onto some one else’s constructed ‘platform’, really rendered that rule useless.


★ Some of the power ups that could have been bought in the game were too expensive. Making everyone choose the most cheapest options to make a quick victory (unless, of course, they had a mound of money to spare and used that to their advantage).


★ The character pieces that were added to the game were very fun to play with.


★ The game became very competitive as it progress.  


[Game 2] Pyramid Climb
★ It was hard to distinguish where you had to move about on the board. It was not clear that your movement space was either the big squares in the middle of the path or the boarders which followed the huge path.


★ The cards were not stated properly in the rules. However, with much discussion with the team who made the game, we finally understood their concept and managed to play them with ease.


★ The bricks that needed to be carried around the board were the game colour. This made people confused as to who’s bricks are who’s. Also, when a brick falls down or lands on a gap, does it fall down with the player or does it stay where it is?


★ The board itself, and its design, was beautifully done. Greatly crafted onto a board so it looks perfect and  made the game feel more hands on and very approachable.


★ There should be more trip ups in the game, instead of hindering the whole team, possibly focus on one certain player with trap cards, or trap areas. This would make the game more fun.


[Game 3] Super Platform Bros
★ Every character in the game has a back story. This really makes the game interesting and brings something like a board game up to the next level, giving character to the game entirely.


★ The rules are told by the characters themselves, which makes the game very interesting to play. They seem very complicated, but as the game progressed, very understandable.


★ The board is very colourful and well made. Graphically, it is very pleasing to the eye, and well drawn out and planned. However, the lines representing boxes are very hard to distinguish.


★ The worlds in the game have their own enemies you must fight, and a boss that you can battle at any stage of the game. There are 3 worlds in total, but 6 if you count the harder worlds which are above.


★ The game had missing rules for the enemies. We had to consult the people who made the game to realise what the enemies meant to the game itself.


★ There is no understanding of platforms.

[RESEARCH] The Difference Between Mechanics and Dynamics

Mechanics and Dynamics seem to be similar in many more ways then one, but they aren’t. In fact, they are nothing alike, but always support each other when game play is involved.


★ Mechanics are the buttons, objects, elements and their relationships in the game. It’s very self explanatory  mechanics tell the game to feed back to the player when the player reacts to a certain place in the game its self.


★ Dynamics is the outcome of a Mechanic. Depending on what the player has done during some sort of turn of events, determines the outcome of the game play when put into use.


So how about Mechanics and Dynamics put in perspective of games?

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[Game 1] This Is The Only Level
Quick summery of the game: You play as an elephant, getting past each and every stage in more ways then one, but there is only one level.


Mechanics: Using the keys, makes your character move back and forth, investigating different possibilities. You start from at the top of the map and make your way downward to the ending gap where the game then changes its mechanics completely. The mechanics never stay the same.


Dynamics: When each stage is completed the way you complete the game itself really does change entirely. This gives the player more room for thought as to how to move around with these new mechanics. It makes you use your brain more and the hints at the bottom of the screen really rely on your thoughts as well.


[Game 2] MeatBoy
Quick summery of the game: You play as a boy made out of meat, and you are completing each level to save your girlfriend (who is made out of bandages). Unfortunately she gets taken away by the evil Doctor Foetus.


Mechanics: The game is a straight out A to B game. Using your speed to dodge and rush away from danger, and your wall jump to gain height or climb up ledges. Each level comes with a unique system of ways you can complete them, saw blades and other traps can destroy your character and send you back to the beginning.


Dynamics: Each level teaches you something, enabling easy understanding of the much harsher levels to come. The danger zones give you stimulation to reuse the learned steps to progress into the game. The automatic respawn relaxes the player because the game is quite a hard game. Because of this automatic respawn, it makes the player also realise there may be another route they can take to complete the level.


[Game 3] Red Beard
Quick summery of the game: Playing as a small Gnome, you rush around the maps collecting coloured balls to activate certain platforms and get to the end.


Mechanics: The colour balls in the stages activate the coloured platforms, the player has to collect these by just walking through them, but cannot progress into the game without collecting them in order. The gnome can jump around and climb onto ledges to get himself to the end of the game; the ‘Goal’ post.


Dynamics: This game really works as a puzzle game, you have to find what colour balls you have to collect first to make certain platforms move, and where to so that you can progress upwards into the level. The blockages and lack of passage gives more variety to where the player can traverse, even if it is just going from A to B. It’s a game of learning as well. Having certain amounts of balls can determine what happens with a platform.


[Game 4] Super Mario Bro’s Crossover
Quick summery of the game: It’s Super Mario Bro’s with other characters from Nintendo games, with their own powers, just put into a Mario game. 

Mechanics: The mechanics vary because there are many characters you can play as, in general. Each character has their own ability from the game they came from; they are just an import and put into a Mario game. Because of this, their hit ratio, attack or defence could be completely different from another character, rendering them completely useless in some situations and great in others.


Dynamics: Nostalgia. Lots and lots of nostalgia. The characters used in the game could also make people think back to the other games they played back in the day and pick that character to play in the Mario world. This also gives the player another take on the Mario world as they know it. Because each character has their unique skills and problems, makes the world unique also.

Simple Rules Make All The Difference [SQUARES GAME]

Rules are quite an important thing in Games Design, just because it plays such a big part in game mechanics and how we play the game as a whole. Rules make games; without these rules there is no game to play.

 

If you look at the rules of making a cup of tea, it resembles the rules of games. You would think;

 

[1] Grab a cup.

[2] Boil the kettle to a temperature you prefer.

[3] Grab a teaspoon.

[4] Scoop out some sugar to put into the cup.

[5] Grab a teabag and put it into the cup.

[6] Put milk into the cup.

[7] When the kettle is done boiling, pour the water into cup.

[8] With the teaspoon, stir the water.

[9] Use the teaspoon to take the teabag out.

[10] Your tea is ready to drink.

 

Now that is a standard way of making tea. However, you may think that’s an easy instruction list of making tea, it isn’t. In fact, the key fundamentals of this list is really hard to spot unless you look at it from a perspective of a person who has never made tea before. This list would be pretty much useless.

How does this resemble game rules and ideas? Rules are the mechanics of games, like previously said, so they need to be said in a more easier way then: “Press this button” or “Jump over there”. Is the thought of “how do you do that?”.

 

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Assignment in Class

We were told to make a game based around the game Squares. Squares is a very simple and heart pumping game, but to make it into something else was quite a challenge. We had to use our knowledge of ‘simple rules’ and make our own game and our own rules of our game so that another could play it. 

I found this quite challenging, because it may be easy for the group to understand it because we discussed the mechanics of it, but some one who wasn’t in our group would have found it hard to comprehend. 

To make the rules simple, we wrote the rules so that they were very easy to understand them. Then, we made sure that the game was simple itself, by not making it complicated and full of a lot of details that really made the game much more harder to play and really understand. 

The game we made at the end was a fun symmetry game where all sides were the same layout, and you had to make squares (how many lines you drew were determined by die rolls) and race to the middle of the board.

After we had done that and people had played our game, there was a few hiccups which people pointed out to us, as a group;

★ The game could have really used a much more complex route. A symmetrical board is great, but really makes the game a game of luck because everyone knows the best possible route. We, as a group, could have made different routes, challenging paths, for each of the players so it wasn’t so easy to complete.

★ The colour of the pens we provided to play the game didn’t really show against the backgrounds we chose for each four corners. We could have either made the backgrounds lighter to make the pen colours more distinguishable against the board. This is really a design flaw, and happens to quite a lot of games. Colours are always an issue, no matter how you look at it.

★ The dice rolls made the game quite tedious, and made the game more of a game of luck (Just like the symmetrical problem, said before.) Maybe the route could have been shorter so that the dice could be incorporated in the game still, or just forget the die and choose another method of going around the board.

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The Other Games

We then had to examine other peoples games and share our own opinion on them. It is more about realising the mistakes that people had made, and how they can improve on their own game template.

[Game 1] The Straw Squares

★ There was not enough straws to complete the game. They could have helped this if they counted the amount of straws were needed and make sure everyone was supplied with enough.

★ The question cards were a great factor to the game. It made the experience of the game very competitive and fun, which is something all ‘board’ games need, a little push to compete.

★ The rules were very hard to make out, it took a while to understand the whole aspect of the idea. However, as the game went on, it gradually got easier and the game was much more easier to understand.

★ The game very quickly became tedious. We found it hard to continue.

★ Having the availability to get more rolls made the game very competitive and made us keep going. It was definitely one of the ‘wow’ factors which made us play for longer.

★ The point system was very hard to understand.

[Game 2] Dungeon Tag

★ The board was very small, and could do with more playing space for players. Having more space could expand the choices of tactics that each of the players could throw at the other players to trap them.

★ Rules were complicated but enough for us to understand completely what was needed to complete and win the game. Having greatly translated rules helps game play.

★ Having a competitive game was key. In the game, it was fun to work together to take down one person, but then managing to take out each other was such an adrenaline rush.

★ The concept of the whole board was very amazing, and was well worth examining. It had various details and great ideas.

★ The figures for the board made the game more believable to be a board game, rather then a paper based game. This gave the game more depth, and some what, a story.

[Game 3] Square Monopoly

★ The duel dice made the game much more harder to play, as it was quite a small board. Replacing it with just a single dice would have given the game much more play time, and made it competitive for all players.

★ The reason for the special squares (Train Station, Bus, etc.) had to do with the game. There could have been more explanation to what exactly they meant.

★ Rules needed to be a bit more explained as they didn’t exactly show how easy the game could have been, which left us hindered as to what to do next.★ Too much of a slow paced game which seemed to never end.★ Design of the board was very well done. It was like you were playing a ‘board’ game because of the quality.