GamePolitics reports that a Danish anti-domestic-violence Flash game allows users to beat a woman, I guess as a way to teach dudes why it’s wrong to do so. In fact, if you have a webcam, your swings and backhands will be interpreted by the model as real strikes!
Is it just me, or is this plain wrong? Look, I applaud the concept of games that deal with mature, heartrending themes like violence. But when the point of the game is to beat up a woman so that you’re “taught” to feel bad about it… no. Just no.
My answer is the usual: I just spent 90 minutes beating crap out of women. In Tekken 6, of course. Both, me and my opponent (my sister in law) picked exclusively female models as our avatars. Yet, that is fun, this is, well, I guess edutainment and none of it is real. Or even realistic. I don’t think that a game (or interractive piece of software at least) where you get to genuinly feel like a person doing something really bad is a bad thing in itself. Falling back on my comments about Modern Warfare 2’s airport mission, it never really registered with my spirit/ emotions because it didn’t require me to invest anything. If this flash game makes me invest and makes me FEEL as a result of my actions, then it does something right. If I suddenly stop in the middle of my actions because I am disgusted by what I see on screen, then, shit, it works.
Of course, I never played it (and I don’t have a webcam) so I don’t know if it does inded work or if it’s a noble idea stuck inside shitty implementation.
Two games immedeatly come into my mind where I was really questioning my (violent) actions despite the fact that I was required to go through with them in order to advance: Manhunt 2 and Shadow of the Colossus. In both cases murdering was clearly not the right thing to do and yet the games manipulated me into doing it in order to go on. Sure, they employed vastly different techniques to do so but in both cases, violence was cathartic, visually spectacular but most definitely wrong in ethical and emotional terms. So they worked.
However, can cheap, simple edutainment games provoke similar reactions in me… Allah knows.
In Tekken 6, though, those women could kick ass. In this game I gather she just stands there and asks you not to hit her until you’ve got her bloodied enough that she winds up on the floor in tears.
Heck, Lara Croft is a girl, and she’s exposed to violence; that I can live with because Lara’s a fiesty chick well-equipped to protect herself. But I shiver at the idea of a game where the whole point is to beat up a woman. Interestingly, I might not shiver at the idea of a game where the whole point is to beat up a man; I’d just think it was dumb. The violence-against-women connotation, in this context, doesn’t sit well with me.
It certainly does seem an odd idea, but I find it hard to criticize when it’s aimed at a particular market that I’m not part of (Danes) and, more to the point, I can’t even play out out of context because it’s actually regionally limited to the aforementioned market (anyone out of Denmark is blocked). That being said, it’s also hard for me to justify. It doesn’t seem like it would be a particularly effective statement about domestic violence, nor does it seem like it could possibly simulate the experience of hitting someone, if that’s what it’s setting out to do. Given the ranking scale described in the article, it seems the idea is to satirize the romanticization of pimps and masculine power. That would probably only be effective towards people that already understand it. It seems the label changes from ganster to 100% idiot after you knock the woman to the floor. That doesn’t strike me as a particularly strong condemnation, nor does it say much for the advertisement in general since without completing the game (and beating the woman) the only message is “Hit the Bitch.” The game presents only one goal (and only one possibility) and then scolds you for interacting with it. You can talk out the dispute, you’re stuck, you’re only possibility is to hit the bitch. That’s actually a much more disturbing message…
It’s the intent, don’t you think?
I never played Tekken 6 but I suspect the underlying premise was not to have guys beat up chicks. As Steerpike correctly points out, “the idea of a game where the whole point is to beat up a woman makes me shiver.” Exactly. It’s the whole point thing that gets me. Blunt instrumentitis.
Sigh. So. Stupid.
As Meho said there may well be something noble underneath its shitty implementation (after all it was designed by an anti-violence group) but because it doesn’t contextualise your actions until the very end, albeit the experience totally misses its mark and will more than likely attract all sorts of predatory media outlets as a result. Somebody in the Gamepolitics comments section said: “If the user had their virtual hand automatically stopped an inch from the woman’s face with the message “It’s not this easy to stop domestic abuse”, that would be less shocking and still make the point” and as a graphic designer I reckon this is right on the money. It makes use of interactivity without careering head first into controversy and cheap shock tactics as well as putting forth the message elegantly. I think one of the obvious problems with it being interactive is why the hell would you want to ‘hit the bitch’? Because the game tells you? This would make a very challenging and enlightening project for game design students simply because of the limitations that the message imposes and of cause the sensitivity and seriousness of the issue. Hit the Bitch seems awfully hamfisted and clumsy for the task.
“I think one of the obvious problems with it being interactive is why the hell would you want to ‘hit the bitch’? Because the game tells you? This would make a very challenging and enlightening project for game design students simply because of the limitations that the message imposes and of cause the sensitivity and seriousness of the issue. Hit the Bitch seems awfully hamfisted and clumsy for the task.”
Right on the money. To expand on my previous comment: the challenge is in manipulating you into doing something and then showing you the result of your action that you might not like. This is exactly what Shadow of the Colossus did. Manhunt 2 was a little less subtle in its implementation of the idea but it still got the message home. I am quite afraid that this flash “game” is more an educative/ satirical interractive piece of software than a real game and therefore has less emotional/ spiritual potential…
I’m going to refer to Portal again. It’s one of the finest games to subliminally manipulate you and then say “A-ha! Look at you! Pathetic creature of meat and bone!” It pre-empts you, it doesn’t want to hold your hand and tell you what to do. It’s perfect as far as I’m concerned but my point is that Hit the Bitch doesn’t give you any motivation to hit out. It’s a difficult thing because to get the message across, in this case at least, you’ve got to want to hit her. How the Friar Tuck do you do that?
I’m a married man so I guess in my case the question would be “how do you stop someone from trying?” But your point is of course good. This is why I refer to this as edutainment software rather than a game since it doesn’t seem to have enough “gamey” parts. It tells you to hit her rather thanmake you want to hit her.
I see this in a similar light to those adverts you get that try to discourage you from smoking, drink driving etc. They’re usually short and punchy so they grab your attention and stay with you. Taking this into account and assuming this game/experience is trying to do the same sort of thing then the amount of time there is to antagonise the player or give them agency to hit her is limited at best. Perhaps the short format isn’t best applied to these sorts of subjects.
I’m not sure what the point is here. Are you infiltrating a group of evil foreign woman-abusers and forced to go along with their agenda so you can stop them later?
Haha, No Bitch.