Dan Floyd
So, a month or so ago Daniel Floyd, he of the neat and insightful animated shorts, teamed up with Leigh Alexander, the news director at Gamasutra and the proprietor of game news and commentary blog Sexy Videogameland, and produced a piece called Video Games and the Female Audience that hits all the right notes about video games, women, and their depiction therein. (The SVGL page talking about how it came about is called Women Audiences, Women Characters.) Now, one glance around my office, and at certain sectors of my hard drive, will tell you that I am not opposed to sexy, well-done images of women. Oh no, not at all… but I think there are times when it all just gets too vulgar, boorish, tawdry or any of another dozen words to that effect. So, yea, I agree with Dan and Leigh (if I may be so familiar) about how the industry presents itself and how that is, or is not, appealing or attracting female gamers.
And all this really hit home the night before last while performing my habitual tour of the magazine racks at Borders. There was the new issue of PC Gamer – October 2009 – sitting on the shelf staring back at me, promoting Star Trek Online (which being a long-time Start Trek geek I am really looking forward to.) Here it is:
PC Gamer Star Trek Online Cover
Go on. Get a good look. Apparently it is one of three covers available on the newstand (I only saw this one.) The other two are described on the magazine’s masthead page as a “sultry Klingon” and a “sweet custom made alien”, with this cover being the “sexy Vulcan”. Subscribers get a picture of of a starship.
So. Atari. Cryptic. You’ve got the cover of PC Gamer magazine, and the opportunity to present a defining, intriguing, exciting image for your upcoming Star Trek Online game designed to attract the interest of curious Star Trek fans and MMO players… and this is the best you got?
Really?
Can I repeat that… Really? Three covers on newsstands – front and center – promoting Star Trek Online, PC Gamer magazine, and the video game industry – the “sexy Vulcan”, the “sultry Klingon”, and the “sweet custom made alien”. This is the branding, the positioning, that you are going for with Star Trek Online and associate with Star Trek in general? This is the way you decided to go with a cover opportunity? Star Trek has admittedly always presented sexy women, but rarely this blatantly, cat suit or no cat suit. From a marketing standpoint, what is the upside for pushing the imagery this hard compared to the downside? Given that the three newsstand covers are sexy images, and the subscription edition is a not-quite-as-T&A starship, there was a deliberate decision made to put the three women out for public ogling.
Oh, did I mention there’s a fold-out/poster version of the cover image included with the issue?
Leigh Alexander
Hello? No wonder some have problems with how our industry depicts women. Admittedly, as Leigh herself points out in the comments for the above referenced SVGL post, other media such as film and television haven’t done a particularly good job of challenging gender roles overall and its probably not fair to point fingers at the game industry when the media industry overall isn’t getting the job done. But, please… I’m going to say it again… Really? We can and should do better. We have to do better than that. That image in particular could easily have said competent, skilled, smart, and yes even wow! sexy – as the women in Star Trek are often portrayed – without going as far as it did. I don’t think anyone is lighting a pitchfork and shouting “No sexy women in our game imagery!” – I’m certainly not at least – but can we pull it back from absurdly hypersexualized? Can we? Really?
Story by Design 