Consent in video games is not a new topic. Every game, to a greater or lesser degree, engages in negotiation with its player. Agency, that most vaunted of concepts, usually implies a situation where the player is given space to play the games in a way that suits them, to exist within the gameworld on their own terms. Some games, especially those that involve relationship building, demand that you adhere to certain standards of behaviour if you want certain characters to like you, but that is not true consent, and certainly not when the player always has the option to reload and quit out. There are also games that explore consent more literally. Robert Yang touches on much of this in the essay that he wrote on his game, Hurt Me Plenty, which discusses the ways in which consent is represented in games and ways in which that representation could be made more complex.
I like Lara Croft. I have always liked Lara Croft. The Lara Croft that I understand—which is not always the Lara Croft described by her production companies, or her fans, or commentators.
I look at Lara Croft and see: a woman in her thirties of independent means who does what she most wants to: running around amongst cool, forgotten ruins, connecting with history and with objects that saw it. She wears shorts and a tank top and walking boots with thick socks. She wears a belt and a second belt with gun pouches attached to it, and a small backpack presumably full of kit. Her hair is tied back, obviously, and sometimes she intimidates people with Lennon/Osbourne glasses. Lara shoots people if they’re going to shoot her, and she is rarely happier than when she’s climbing a thing. I see a person I could be under certain circumstances. (more…)
It must have happened, but I don’t remember a time before I felt encroached upon by Mortal Kombat. I was five when the first game was released, and I was seven when the ESRB rating system was introduced in response to parents’ response to the game’s “fatalities.” This means that parents were alarmed by characters murdering their opponents, often by removing parts of their bodies, in exaggerated on-screen victory. The fighting game norm, even now, is for the opponent to fall down when defeated, as if tired or unconscious, but appreciably alive. Heads are rarely removed. Even rcthin Mortal Kombat, these deaths weren’t necessarily part of the “canon events” of the game, or even of the personal plot special to the player’s character. Fatalities were a gruesome, fantasy element of a fantasy game, and they were probably intended as parody or for sub-ironic enjoyment; the character Johnny Cage is a parody of Van Damme, and the first game as a whole is a pastiche of imported Asian martial arts cinema (the franchise continues as an Orientalist fantasy). Your average fan will say “the fatalities are too ridiculous to really be disturbing.” And indeed, they were, and remain, ridiculous. Too ridiculous? Sorry, no. Maybe for you. (more…)
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