eschergirls:

This is an excerpt of something I wrote in my regular blog about this story:

http://www.themarysue.com/inclusion-what-jennifer-heplers-story-is-all-about/


Basically, a female video game designer did an interview 5 years ago and expressed some opinions about how video games could become more inclusive to other kinds of gamers outside the narrow niche (presumed to be hetero male also) that it is.  Some angry immature gamers found it recently, felt they might have to share their sandbox and got angry and of course, cue the death threats and awfulness.

Most of it is relevant to inclusion of women, queer people, casual fans, etc in “geek” industries and spaces, but one part specifically I think is relevant to this blog and the whole idea of who’s making comics (and making the decisions on who to hire as writers and artists, not just who’s drawing and writing) and who they’re making it for:

I think that the biggest detriment to more varieties of games being made which appeal to women and casual gamers, is simply the fact that people who don’t love games don’t become game designers. A game company tends to be filled with people whose best memories come from the games they played, who spend all their time swapping war stories with other gamers, and it’s not too surprising that they end up wanting to make games that recapture those experiences.


She has a real point when she says the people who make games are the ones who had good experiences and share war stories and therefore make games just for them… comics has essentially become the same thing, where the people making comics are the ones who grew up, or were young artists, in the 90s and liked that art… and it’s becoming this thing where they are just making it for themselves and people like them :\ The same with the plot, where it’s just continuity porn for people who liked comics back in the 80s and 90s and want to keep referencing what they like, and I really think that the creators and the niche that is like them have created an echo chamber where the same ideas just keep bouncing off and it’s really alienating to other people who like the IDEA of comics, video games, superheroes, power fantasies, fantasy, dragons, etc and WANT to give you their money but it’s made so inaccessible for us.

And she’s also right that it becomes this self-fulfilling thing, because if you walk into a comic store and go UGH at the comic covers right off the bat, you won’t become a comics fan, and if you aren’t a comics fan, you’re not going to go into the industry, and that’s a potential diverse voice gone. :\  As I’ve also said before, the art, the treatment of women as sex objects first, in a lot of video games and superhero comics serve to “mark” these spaces as for a certain subset of hetero guys, and tells the rest of us “this is not for you, you’re a guest here at best” and that also serves to dissuade people from feeling comfortable in these spaces, or like they can join the industry (the industry itself may have it’s own biases about who to hire too).

I remember a few years ago when DC wrote this letter at the back of it’s books asking/begging/demanding women read Supergirl (then drawn like a crustacean by Ian Churchill) and asking “why don’t women read Supergirl?”  Aside from the fact that she was written horribly at the time as well, even if she was written well, you’d have to actually pick up the book and want to spend $3 on it to find out, and if the art on the cover or in a flip through says “hetero male porn fantasy”, it’s not likely you’ll think the book is about a strong female character (which it wasn’t at the time anyways).

It’s similar to what Hepler says above, people likely to go into video games are ones who LIKED the video games they played, and people likely to read comics are ones who LIKE the comics they’ve seen, or the covers they see on the shelves.  It’s not neuro surgery. 

If you want to check out the full post:  http://ami-rants.blogspot.com/2012/02/female-video-game-designer-has-opinions.html  It’s there :)