Post by Layla Littlenymph on Sept 20, 2015 14:52:18 GMT -5
The Ardent Weekly Ledger
This weeks feature excerpt from The Ardent Weekly Ledger, is an interview with Damon Slye, President of Mad Otter Games. We are happy to see Mad Otter continue the staff interviews that began with Tiberius, back in issue 2 of The Ledger.
In previous excerpts we focused on one key article within The Ledger. In this particular edition we were a little torn because there is another article concerning gender in gaming that we felt deserved equal attention. The fact that our own Panthera (Kaya Kittyfeathers) is quoted in that article was almost enough to sway me, but since that particular article concerns issues that apply not just to V&H, but to gaming in general, it was decided to hold it aside for posting on the general gaming board. In fact, the majority of this edition is centered around the theme of gender in gaming, which is mirrored in the interview with Damon, below. We will build and expand upon the original article and feature it in the gaming board sometime within the next two weeks. I hope you find the expanded article as compelling as I personally found the original to be. If you would like to see the original article for yourself, just use The Ledger link provided at the end of this thread, and pull up volume three from The Ledger's index.
~LL
Name: Damon Slye
Company: Mad Otter
Position: President
Damon Slye needs no lengthy introduction. He’s Chief Otter, founder of the company, and a very talented game designer. He’s here today to offer his thoughts on the subject of the role of women.
Q: When you first started working in the game industry, over twenty years ago, the presence of women in the business was largely unseen or felt. How have you watched this change over your lengthy career, and what was it like when you first began?
A: At the first EA artist symposium that I attended in 1986 there was only one female game developer, Anne Westfall, who together with Jon Freeman built Archon. There were maybe 50 total game developers at the symposium. There weren’t many female gamers back then either.
Q: Specifically, who are some female game designers working today that you admire and why?
A: I saw Brenda Romero give a great talk at the Login Conference in Seattle a few years ago. One of her points was that a game designer should be more than an optimizer of the game’s metrics. She said, “If you optimize hockey, you end up with boxing.” The ability to concisely say precisely what you mean is a hallmark of great game designer. Oh, and more than that, she packaged her thought in an entertaining visual metaphor, hockey into boxing, with a slide on the screen of a hockey fight! The entire talk was filled with moments like that. Her more recent projects are interesting. She’s been building board games made out of physical objects. For some reason, I’ve never done that, and it sounds really hard to me- I am such a digital person- despite the fact that I do really like board games.
Roberta Williams who created the King’s Quest series, along with many other great games, was there at the genesis of the game industry. She was making games at a time when it was unusual to be game designer period, and even more so a female game designer. Some of the readers may know that Sierra, the company that she and her husband Ken founded, bought Dynamix (the company I co-founded), so I had the pleasure of working with Roberta and Ken. What I especially admire about her is her bravery to forge ahead to build games and to create a company at a time when it really didn’t make financial sense. Games were not a thing back then. That kind of burning passion to create I love to see.
Q: When you first dreamed up the concept for V&H, how much did the role of women figure into it? (i.e. did you set out to create a game in which men and women would be equal?)
A: I wanted to build a friendly world. There was a quote from the futurist Paul Saffo that I included on the front page of the design document: “You get large by allowing the many and the small to gather on your lawn.” That sentiment persists in the world of V&H today, and the community. So, I never set out to build a game that would have a high population of women specifically, I just wanted to build a fun game that would bring in many people because the game world was a nice place to spend time.
Q: Villagers & Heroes, in its portrayal of women, is devoid of demeaning sexual stereotypes. In such a competitive industry as this, especially one in which indie games struggle to survive, have you ever been tempted to depict women in a more provocative manner knowing that it would increase your demographic and revenue?
A: I was never tempted to resort to cheap gimmicks like using images of scantily clad women in our ads or in the game to attract more players mainly because I don’t think it would have worked for us since that’s not what V&H is about. A game’s core values should permeate the art, the features, and the marketing and presentation of the game in order to be successful.
There is a game that’s pretty famous among game developers whose ad campaign started with mildly provocative images of medieval women, and over time devolved into women in modern-day lingerie. All pretense was stripped away. When I was playing the game, it had none of that stuff in the game itself. The chat was filled with angry players who felt ripped off because the game itself didn’t have any of that. The chat was funny.
For V&H in particular, I can’t imagine having, for example, a piece of armor that for the male is full armor, but the female version is just a bikini or shows more skin. I think it would be okay to have an outfit that is little bit on the sexy side, but it should be balanced. If the female outfit is going to show some skin, then the male version should as well.
Q: Harassment is a frequent occurrence in MMO’s, which is to say that female players are routinely subjected to unwanted advances, as well as unfair treatment from their male counterparts. But this is not the case in Villagers & Heroes. How do you account for this?
A: I have to thank the game’s community and the game moderators for this. They are really nice people, and they are vigilant, and take action quickly when a rude troll or a bully shows up. So then the next question is why we are lucky enough to have such wonderful players? Maybe the friendly art style of the game appealed to nice folks. Maybe the goal of having a nice place to spend time attracted nice players and repelled the trolls. Or, maybe we were just lucky. The game FaunaSphere shut down a little before V&H started up. That game had a great community, and many of them found their way to V&H.
Q: Were you surprised when it became clear that Villagers & Heroes had such a large female player base?
A: I would say I am happy and proud that we have so many female players! We did not set out to build a game for women or for men for that matter. We just wanted to make a game for everyone — not a game that appealed to some specific demographic, but a game that is fun for all kinds of people. It’s great to see that now more and more women are becoming gamers. This is good for everyone, and it’s healthier.
Look at the movies. The movies I like are the ones that have strong male and female characters. They are more realistic to the real world. And by strong, I don’t mean big muscles- I mean characters who understand who they are and are well-developed in the plot. It’s boring when the characters are all cliches that never surprise the viewer- for example, when the guys just talk tough, beat up other guys, and blow things up, and the women are just things who need to be rescued.
Q: Several years ago, there was an incident in Villagers & Heroes which has come to be known as the ‘red bra’ episode. Please relay what that was, and why today it still has such significance.
A: The outfits in V&H are gender neutral in their appearance. However, there was one piece of armor that was nearly identical for the male and female warriors, but due to the different geometry of the female avatar, what looked like a simple crest on the male version of the armor, looked like a red bra on the female version! We didn’t notice this- it was not intentional! However, our female players did, and they let us know. They good-naturedly threatened to have a “bra burning party” in the game. It’s funny because you can’t actually burn items in the game, and even if you could, metal armor would not burn- but that shows the great sense of humor the V&H community has. Still, it was embarrassing to us- we don’t want to make a game where players have to wear something that they are embarrassed to wear, so we fixed it.
Also in this edition:
* Gamergate: Gender in gaming
* Ardent Stories: The Women of Ardent, A player submitted article, by Mackiai
* Did You Know?: Maddie's Tale
* Behind The Scenes: Furry Tales ~ The Answers!
The Ardent Weekly Ledger is a weekly publication from Mad Otter. New editions available every Friday.
Each week, we will be posting key excerpts from the most recent editions.
Current and archived editions can be seen in full at The Ardent Weekly Ledger