By Julie Whitefeather 

There was a comedian named Stan Freeburg that was popular when I was growing up.  He had an album (many of you may not remember vinyl covered discs called “albums”) called Stan Freeburg’s History of the United State of America.  At one point in the album Christopher Columbus is standing on a sandy beach talking to the indigenous population.  The conversation turns to how Christopher Columbus is going to prove that he “discovered” the Americas.  It is at that point that a member of the local population turns to Christopher Columbus and says the following:

“What do you mean you discovered us? We discovered you! We discovered you on the beach here – it’s all how you look at it.”

Read on…

How I see it…
By Julie Whitefeather

There was a comedian named Stan Freeburg that was popular when I was growing up.  He had an album (many of you may not remember vinyl covered discs called “albums”) called Stan Freeburg’s History of the United State of America.  At one point in the album Christopher Columbus is standing on a sandy beach talking to the indigenous population.  The conversation turns to how Christopher Columbus is going to prove that he “discovered” the Americas.  It is at that point that a member of the local population turns to Christopher Columbus and says the following:
“What do you mean you discovered us? We discovered you! We discovered you on the beach here – it’s all how you look at it.”

The has been another case with one of Sony Online Entertainment’s (SOE) products that has sparked a round of what SHOULD have been a case of “It’s all how you look at it”, yet never seemed to get around to that point.

The case in point was the recent announcement that Pirates of the Burning Sea (POTBS) is going to close 7 of their 11 server.  This immediately prompted comments such as that made by Tobold (a popular blogger whose work can be found at tobolds.blogspot.com) where he said the following:

 “In spite of the waffle about how their servers can handle more people now, I don’t think anyone is fooled: PotBS is losing customers fast” – Tobold in “Pirates Sinking Fast”

I should point out that Tobold is far from being the only person with that particular opinion. In fact, from what I can see, that is a common viewpoint of the closing of the servers.  But the flipside of that particular issue is this – SOE has always held the opinion (at least publicly) that as long as the servers are paid for by the subscriptions they will remain open. At this point I would compliment SOE, rather than criticize them, for announcing the closing, which more properly might be viewed as a consolidation of servers this earlier in the game’s history. Most other developers would have waited around until the game was on it’s last legs to close some servers and make the game more affordable.  The devs of POTBS have indicated that it is to raise the population on each server and personally, I don’t think this is a matter of “waffling” at all.

More interesting to me than that, however, is why someone would develop a MMO that is nearly identical to a game that is already out and has been for awhile – that game is called “Voyage Century”.  To be clear on the point I will state that I am not claiming that POTBS is a Voyage Century Clone.  Yet in a market that already had at least two pirate games on the market (Pirates of the Caribbean being the other), both based on the “Free to Play” business model, why would you then turn around and create a subscription based game based on the same theme?  Looking at it from the perspective of a purely business standpoint I liken it to a situation I see when driving down the street and I see a business with an “opening soon” sign.  Quite often the business that is “opening soon” is opening where another business had gone OUT of business.  My first question at that point is to ask what the “opening soon” business feels they are bringing to the market that the last business didn’t.  In other words, what does POTBS bring to the market that Voyage Century and Pirates of the Caribbean does not? Off the top of my head one thing they bring to the market that the other two pirate games bring is the fact that I have to pay for a subscription to play POTBS and I can play Pirates of the Caribbean and Voyage Century for free. Beyond that, having played Voyage Century extensively I can tell you first hand that if you choose not the participate in any micro-transactions which support that game, it does not hurt the game play at all.

In the end when a game is subscription based, and the competition is free to play, you had better bring something new to the game.

But there is one more point I would like to bring up here.  When the point came that POTBS had to close some servers everyone started shouting that game was going under.  Yet when the direct competition became popular enough that they had to open a third server the developers where overjoyed. It is said that Abraham Lincoln was once asked “how long should a man’s legs be?” To which he is said to have replied “Just long enough to reach the ground.” True or not I will leave this part of the article with a new twist on that piece of advice…

“An MMO has to ‘have legs’ just long enough to pay for the servers – even if that is only four servers.”

Sexism in gaming…

From the earliest days of gaming, sexism has been rampant in videogames. Back when I played Ultima Online (UO) there was one aspect of the game that many of the women who played the game noticed, but most of the men never did – women died face up in a rather “compromising” position, and men died face down. From the earliest days of gaming it seems like women have been dressed by game developers in “Armor” that looked as if it belonged in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue rather than on a battlefield.  I have yet to see the results of the upcoming “Age of Conan Online”, but I have certainly read about the plans for barely clothed women starting the game as slaves. The jury is still out on whether or not the planned mature rating for the game, which allows for the state of undress of the women, will hinder their market more than help it.  In Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) their idea of a female dwarf is above and right. A female dwarf in LOTRO looks like nothing more than Gimli in drag than anything else. Compare that to my favorite depiction of dwarven women in fantasy, and that is in World of Warcraft. Yes, before anyone objects, I am perfectly well aware of the fact that Aragorn in Lord of the Rings says dwarven men and dwarven women are so alike in voice and appearance that it is difficult to tell them apart.  Still, I often wonder, if Tolkien had written the Lord of the Rings today; if he had written stories where the author makes it a point to exclude women from battlefields and there simply aren’t any female dwarves except those hiding in holes somewhere – I wonder if the books would be as successful.  Have you ever played one of multiplayer military shooters that are on the market?  A female character in those games is as scarce as hen’s teeth.  If you want to play a female evil character in LOTR) you will find them absent altogether.  Even when a female character is the central character in a videogame, as in the Lara Croft videogames, she is depicted as little more than as the fantasy of a 14 year old boy.

Yet if you try and bring up the idea that there is sexism in the development of video games it will bring long screaming matches and hate filled forum threads.  But when it comes to the depiction of women in videogames, be they MMOs or console games, game developers are still living in the dark ages.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather