Terminology Review: Girlfriend Mode

To recap the Borderlands 2 Girlfriend Mode situation, the creators of the game wanted to make a character and skill tree that would appeal to players who are less talented at playing first person shooters. They came up with Gaige the Mechromancer, a solid addition to the game.

The trouble started when the lead designer (John Hemingway) referred to the Mechromancer as 'Girlfriend Mode' in a Eurogamer interview. Here's his most quoted quote:

“The design team was looking at the concept art [of the Mechromancer class] and thought, you know what, this is actually the cutest character we’ve ever had. I want to make, for the lack of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree. This is, I love Borderlands and I want to share it with someone, but they suck at first-person shooters. Can we make a skill tree that actually allows them to understand the game and to play the game? That’s what our attempt with the Best Friends Forever skill tree is.”

It's clear that John Hemingway is not sexist and he never meant to offend anyone with his terminology. His comments, however, provide a good platform for discussions of sexism in game design.

I mentioned Girlfriend Mode the other day to a fellow game designer in one such discussion. We bantered for a while, and at one point, he asked, "If most of the people who play in Girlfriend Mode are players' girlfriends, is the term still insulting?"

His question struck a chord. At first glance, "Girlfriend Mode" may look like a harmless phrase, but it contains insidious sexism. Here's an analogy I used to answer his question:

"Pretend there is a restaurant owner who has a variety of patrons. He learns that he could get more patrons, and make more money, if he put more inexpensive items on the menu.

"So, he adds several low-cost dishes and puts them on a new 'Dollar Deals' page of the restaurant menu folder. The owner is excited for the new menu's debut, so he takes an interview with a reporter.

"When talking to the reporter about his concepts behind the 'Dollar Deals' page, the restaurant owner says, 'I wanted to make, for lack of a better term, the Black menu.'"

It's clear why a 'Black menu' containing a list of cheap food would be considered racist. The terminology makes the assumption that Blacks are poor. Worse, it implies that Blacks are a separate group of patrons who, as a group, need special treatment.

There shouldn't be any need to ask, "If most of the people who buy food listed on the Black menu are Black, is the term still insulting?"

The same logic applies to Girlfriend Mode.

It should be clear why a 'Girlfriend Mode' with the easiest gameplay would be sexist. The terminology makes the assumption that girls are bad at games. Worse, it implies that girls are a separate group of players who, as a group, need special treatment.

As a culture, we've gotten to the point where we see this as racism, yet this kind of sexism remains invisible to many. We need to learn to see it and excise it, or else the makers of games will continue to unintentionally alienate a large part of their audience.

In Support of Gamers of All Genders

The recent sex-based internet attacks on Anita Sarkeesian and Felicia Day are appalling and inexcusable. Watching the situation has reminded me that I can't just sit around and hope that misogyny in the gamer world will go away on its own.

So I'll say here that I support Anita and Felicia, and I'm glad that they have not been silenced or intimidated by the bullying they've received.

If you're unfamiliar with their situations, Squidy Girl has summed them up well.

More links:

• Anita's story on her blog, Feminist Frequency.
• Felicia's post about her attack.
• Jay Smooth's video empowering guys to speak up against sexism.

Twitter

You can find me on Twitter, @phorusrhacid

I've been busy, but not too busy to tweet!

Apple Noms

This post is only loosely related to gaming, but it is delicious.

I dedicate my Apple Noms to Fallout 3, which I was playing as I figured out the dessert's details. (I was going to call them "Apple Bombs," but that name is already taken by a mixed drink.)

You are invited to enjoy them as I do, as a winter snack after a long evening of gaming.

Apple Noms
Dessert. Generously serves 2.

Ingredients:

• 2 large apples
• "nomshell" crust:
• 1 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/3 c. butter
• 1 tbsp. water
• "funpowder" filling:
• 2 tbsp. brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tbsp. butter

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 F.
• Peel and core the apples, then set them aside.
• In a medium bowl, mix the flour with 1/2 tsp. cinnamon.
• In a small bowl, soften 1/3 c. butter. (I zap it for 30 seconds in the microwave.) Add the butter to the flour mixture, and use a fork to gently toss and mix until evenly crumbly. Toss in the water the same way. At this point, the dough should be crumbly yet moist, and it should form a clump when pressed together.
• Coat the outsides of the apples in the crust. Use whatever method works for you. I like to press pieces of dough to pie-crust thickness and tessellate them onto the apples.
• Use any extra dough to plug the bases of the apples, especially if you cored them all the way through.
• In the small bowl, mix 1/2 tsp. cinnamon with the brown sugar. Spoon it into the empty cores of each apple.
• Divide 1 tbsp. (refrigerated) butter in half, and mash the pieces into the apple cores as well.
• Dust the apple tops with cinnamon.
• Bake the apples in a covered glass or ceramic casserole dish for 45 minutes at 350 F. Then take the lid off and bake them for 15 minutes more.
• Let the apples cool for a few minutes before carefully lifting them from the dish.

Troubleshooting tips:

• If your dough isn't holding together, add water 1 tsp. at a time until it does.
• If your dough is too sticky, generously coat your hands in flour when applying it to the apples, and don't worry about the extra flour that will end up on/in the crust.
• If you use smaller apples, you will end up with extra dough.
• If the filling isn't filling the apple cores, add more brown sugar as needed.
• The final appearance of this dessert varies. Every kind of apple does something different in the oven. Some hold together perfectly, some seem to puff up, and others shrink inside their nomshells.

Variations:

• You can make your favorite pie crust and use it instead of the hax0red crust I use.
• If you are using a sour varietal of apple, mix 1 tbsp. sugar into the crust, and/or add more brown sugar on top once it is stuffed.
• If you use unsalted butter, add a couple of pinches of salt (no more than 1/8 tsp) to the crust.
• You can use lard or shortening instead of butter, but please don't use margarine. 
• You don't have to peel the apples, but if you don't, it can be tougher to get the crust to stick.
• This recipe can be doubled or halved.

Storytelling in Castle Crashers

I picked up Castle Crashers the other day. It's a well-made brawler with RPG and collection elements.

While various reviews mention Castle Crashers' simple story, the storytelling is well done. For example, at the beginning of the Marsh level:

You walk into the marsh and see that skeletons have killed a peasant. As you begin to fight the skeletons, two other peasants peek out from behind the terrain and watch your fight. They look at one another and nod, then leap out from the terrain and begin to assist you.

The designers could have just dropped in some NPC assistants; instead, they chose to tell a story that gave meaning to the NPCs' behavior - the peasants help you because you avenged the death of their friend. The game is full of little visual and gestural details that help the player understand what's going on - the sort of storytelling details that Scott McCloud writes about.

The game is also a good teacher - here's how you are introduced to sandwiches:

You reach a door that you cannot break open. Enemies run onto the screen intermittently, but steadily. Each time you kill one, it yields a sandwich that goes into your usable-item inventory. In fact, the unbreakable door itself is shaped like a sandwich. Everything points to the inevitable conclusion: try out one of those sandwiches, and see if you can't get the door open.

There are many good game design lessons to be learned from Castle Crashers. I recommend it.

Maintaining the Joy of Altruism in MMOs

Designers often rely on players' enjoyment of helping others when guiding them through their first steps in the game. New players may not yet understand XP or the advantages of leveling, but they do understand that the people around them need their help. First quests in MMOs often illustrate how the world is in danger; they give players the opportunity to assist while teaching them the basic mechanics of the game.

As players' time in the game wears on, they see more and more violent events. Many quests ask players to kill NPC animals or people. Art props in the game world often include bones and corpses, and less commonly, wounded NPCs.

My suspicion is that after a while, some players become inured to the violence around them, and become less likely to respond to pleas for help from the NPCs. At the same time, players learn more about how the game works, and discover how to direct their play experience towards the improvement of their characters. Some players become more likely to pick up a quest for its XP, gold, or gear than for the emotional reward of assisting the NPC.

If the joy of altruism could be maintained throughout a player's in-game career, it ought to provide for a more engaging experience. Briefly, here are a couple of methods that may help with this goal -

• Let the player see that they've changed the world around them for the better. Admittedly, this is easier to do, and more commonly found, in single-player games than in MMOs - but even a wave and a smile from an NPC can help them seem more human and less like XP vendors.

• Tell the story in a way that players understand. If a quest is too wordy, it won't get read, and if the story is too complicated, players will ignore it. Many games succeed by relaying the narrative with the help of the world itself.

Tidbits and Takeaways from GDC 2009

Design games based on your interests and hobbies. For example, Shigeru Miyamoto realized it was fun to weigh himself every morning, and from that we got the Wii Fit.
(from Satoru Iwata's keynote speech)

Our brains are wired with a 'Seeking Circuit'. Seeking out a reward, in and of itself, is at least as satisfying as actually receiving a reward. A person receiving a gift misses out on half the gift if it isn't wrapped.
(from Chaim Gingold's presentation)

Games need weenies - navigational reference points that draw the player towards certain locations, pique the player's interest in future activities, and help the player set goals. The term was coined by Walt Disney; it's in reference to how you might wave a weenie in front of a dog.
(from Scott Roger's presentation)

"If I had given up, there wouldn't be any Metal Gear series. There wouldn't be any Splinter Cell series either, I guess...." This made me lol.
(from Hideo Kojima's keynote speech)

Passing money over a social network damages friendships. Money is there for when friendship won't cover what you need. "Facebook wouldn't be Facebook if it was a giant Amway party."
(from Nicole Lazzaro's presentation)

People move towards light, but more importantly, away from darkness. This point was reinforced in several talks. Lighting is one of our most powerful tools in guiding player movement and behavior.

Blizzard's WoW quest designers had to deal with concerns about spoonfeeding players with quest bangs, the quest log, and quests after level 10, among other things. Jeffrey pointed out, "players need a lifeline to the best moments in game. This is elegant game design, not hand-holding."
(from Jeffrey Kaplan's presentation)

Lionhead Studios likes portals. They were working on a portaling concept before Portal came out. Peter Molyneux demonstrated an experiment that his team had put together - a pair of mirrors that you could drop objects into, and depending on the objects' attributes, they change as they go through the mirrors. "Portal proved how brilliant the guys at Valve are."
(from Peter Molyneux's presentation)

Want to make great games? Bring a behavioral psychologist on staff! Valve has just such a person: Mike Ambinder, PhD, and I made a point of attending his talk. In a nutshell, he encourages designers to take a scientific approach to game design.
(from Mike Ambinder's presentation)