Gaming - I don't need GamerGate because...

This thing called GamerGate is starting to turn from a flash in the pan to a sustained conflagration. I didn't pay much attention to it at the start and have been waiting for it to go away, but that just isn't happening. Since the debate about social issues around gaming and geek culture is something that I keep coming back to on this blog, I guess we've reached the point where it makes sense for me to make some sort of comment on the existence of this controversial movement.

The exact nature of the GamerGate movement is something that is being furiously debated on many corners of the internet. To some writers, it is a grass roots movement to overturn a long-term culture of dishonesty and unaccountability amongst game journalists. To others, it is a brutal male campaign to drive female writers out of the games journalism industry. Despite the vast volume of material, it didn't take me long to figure out the basic truth.

GamerGate is a hashtag.

To align their actions with the GamerGate movement, all a person has to do is to attach the statement that they support GamerGate to them. In the same way that not everything credited to Anonymous is the work of people who collaborate with each other, not everything done in the name of GamerGate is the work of a united band of people. Since applying the symbolic title to yourself doesn't require a third party's approval, different people who support GamerGate have entirely different ideas about what it is they are supporting. GamerGate stands for 'fighting against corruption in the gaming press', but the definition of corruption is somewhat varied. To some people, it means bribery and undisclosed conflicts of interests. To others, it means the growing (though actually still very small) presence of feminist and social justice related discourse in the gaming press. To a slightly confusing third group, it means both.

There is strong evidence that some women who have spoken out against GamerGate have been driven from their homes by detailed threats to rape and kill their entire families. This is a more important issue than anything else surrounding GamerGate and deserves to be focused on to the exclusion of the original point. If a politician is kidnapped by terrorists who intend to behead him, it simply isn't the time to continue publicly debating whether he should be fired for cheating on his expenses. Yet the debate still rumbles on about whether these kind of outrages are any kind of reflection of the main GamerGate movement and what it should mean for the future. Is GamerGate an attack on women that is being shielded by crowds who accept its cover story, or is the criminal element a rogue offshoot emboldened by what it falsely believes is a wave of popular support? If a symbol is disgraced by some of its bearers, should it be discarded to isolate them or reclaimed by public displays of the true meaning?

The second question is actually really interesting on a philosophical level and I'm sure that powerful arguments can be made in both directions. However, the answer in a given case will typically be related to the original purpose of the movement and the likely results of its future actions. It's one thing to claim that the church should continue to exist in spite of the inquisition and the crusades. It's another thing to claim that the Ku Klux Klan should continue to exist now that it (probably) doesn't murder people any more.

Although some of the articles supporting GamerGate have done more to drive me toward hostility than anything else has, I haven't yet bothered to dig down to the roots of the the first moments of this event and try to figure out what was going on in the heads of those involved. What I have seen, however, is that many people now genuinely believe that the main body of GamerGate is a force for good. Although I suppose any incidence of dishonest behaviour is worth a little head shaking and tut tutting, the only logical conclusion I can come to is that many people believe that 'corruption in game journalism' is a threatening source of harm for gamers.

To me, that's a bit weird.

The main reason that I stayed ignorant of GamerGate for so long is that the bits and pieces I encountered whilst reading other things didn't actually interest me very much. I was vaguely aware that some sort of activism was going on in response to possible revelations of hidden agendas among game journalists, but that never sounded like something I needed to care about. Despite the fact that I consume a large amount of game journalism and buy games whenever I have the money, I didn't feel like such an issue was actually a threat to me.

On reflection, this may be due to the specific nature of myself as an individual. As a trained historian, I've read a remarkable number of documents with undisclosed biases. Taking a critical eye to what I read and sifting out the agendas of the writer is just something that I naturally do all of the time. If gamers are genuinely afraid that corruption is going to result in them being taken for a ride, it suggests that they don't know how to read the articles they are consuming properly in the first place. If you truly are worried about being suckered by dishonest games journalism, allow me to explain how you stop that from happening to you.

One of the most basic skills that all history students need to learn is the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. Obtaining factual knowledge of the past is a key part of the discipline and documents from the period in question provide a wealth of information. However, such records are nearly always filled with the opinions and interpretations of the person who felt motivated to write them in the first place. It is vital to be able to weed those out and examine the facts yourself independently, potentially coming to very different conclusions.

A fact is a concrete, objective truth. An opinion is a conclusion or a value judgement, which is usually presented as a logical progression from the facts stated. In gaming journalism, opinions are things like '10/10', 'game of the year', 'this game sucks' and 'sexist and objectifying'. Facts are things like 'over 200 quests with multiple possible outcomes', 'I encountered 5 game-crashing glitches in the first hour of play' and 'there are only two female characters in the whole game and both of them are strippers'.

The trick, therefore, is to divide the accounts of a game's actual features and content from the level of enthusiasm that a particular critic is displaying for the game. If a writer declares something to be 'the best game of the year' and goes on to describe a game-play experience that you would find completely uninteresting, the thing that you should take away from this is that you have no interest in the game. I can entirely accept that not everyone is going to enjoy Gone Home as much as I did, but I'm bewildered by the number of user reviews that savage it for being a 'walking simulator'. The reason I'm bewildered is that the game's publicity was fairly open about there being no combat or puzzles, which suggested to me that I was going to be walking to the exclusion of shooting and jumping.

No games journalist is going to deliberately present untrue facts about a game that has been released. There is simply no possibility of getting away with it. However much it might help the game's profile, Ubisoft would be unable to bribe anyone to announce that 'actually you CAN play a female character in Assassin's Creed Unity'. Such a claim would be thoroughly disproved for free by others almost as soon as it was made and the journalist would potentially lose their entire career.

Of course, lies can be told about games that are still forthcoming – purely because the developers themselves are the only source of information on the subject. In this case, journalists might well end up repeating those lies to you because they have no means of detecting them either. If you think that such advance coverage is the result of the developers actively soliciting it, you'd be absolutely right. In the real world, people don't create a product and then wait for the press to beat down their door. Promoting your product is how you sell it and much of what journalists report has been actively brought to their attention. If you want developers to stand or fall on their products rather than their skill at generating publicity, the best thing you can do is not pay top prices to pre-own products that don't exist yet.

If you want to avoid falling prey to deliberate propaganda for a particular game, look out for articles which consist almost exclusively of opinions. A piece that tells you a title 'is set to blow gamers away', 'redefines the genre' and 'is the must-buy game of the year' without actually saying anything detailed about the features and content is not worth your time. Such writing doesn't have to mean that the author has been bought – but if you can separate the facts from the opinions, it doesn't really matter why the writer is being so enthusiastic. You'll reserve judgement and form your own opinion when you have more information.

Of course, not all authors are balanced about the facts they include. Many emphasise facts that support their conclusions and neglect facts that don't. This means that if you are going to base your purchases on the reviews you read, it is best to read several reviews (both positive and negative) before you come to a conclusion.

You'll notice that the value judgement of whether a game is 'good' or not is an opinion. This means that the final score a reviewer assigns to a game is always just an opinion. Viewing these scores as objective consumer information therefore slightly misunderstands what they mean. For reasons that Moviebob explains here, the very notion that critics exist simply to provide consumer advice is not true. Critics are perfectly entitled to examine the value of a piece to themselves in terms of their own broader perspectives and tastes.

Don't ask a critic 'will I like this game?' They aren't psychic and they've never met you. Ask them 'did you like this game?', 'do you think that the creative elements have value?' and 'what does it do?' Be aware that a game's score is based on answers to these questions. A critic who sells their opinion on the first two points is being dishonest with you, but it's still up to you how much you embrace their views as your own.

For some gamers, the habit of regarding their own tastes as an objective measure of value is quite acute. Many gamers seem to feel that developers are duty-bound to produce games that cater to what gamers (already know that they) want – and it is certainly a useful business strategy. Unfortunately, some define the term 'gamer' as 'a gamer like me', regarding significantly different recreational consumers of games as intruders rather than as a part of the community.

Gamers of this type tend to see critics as existing purely to provide them with consumer advice. More specifically, they expect the review score to be an objective assessment of how closely it panders to their own tastes. They expect this regardless of what the reviewer's own tastes are, since the critic exists to serve gamers and the only true gamers are like themselves. Reviewing games according to differing sets of values provides a varied range of differently reasoned review scores and validates diversity within the gaming community. A vocal minority of gamers get violently upset every single time this happens, questioning the integrity of the dissenting critics and their right to exist within the game journalism sphere.

Whatever your stance on GamerGate, don't be one of those guys.

Otherwise, just read critically and you'll be fine. Sometimes journalists will publicise the existence of a game without telling you exactly how much they like the creator. Sometimes they'll express a wish for a game to succeed without fully explaining the reasons behind their desires – or will explain them in terms of what the game's reception means for wider socio-political issues. Neither of these things will result in you being conned out of money, as long as you take the time to detach yourself enough to form your own conclusions instead of just absorbing theirs.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

Review - Gone Home (Spoiler free)

I'm a role-player at heart. When I play a game that casts me as a character – even one that doesn't meet my definitions of a role-playing game – I tend to enjoy it most when I get into the head of that character. This is really just an extension of the basic need to suspend disbelief, of course, but asking me to dictate the character's actions places me in a role-player mindset.

First and foremost, my enjoyment as a role-player comes from experiencing the world around me. I can enjoy the competitive skill-based element of an RPG, but the victory means far less if I don't care about the stakes. I definitely enjoy crafting and exploring an interesting personality, but there are few RP experiences more frustrating than guiding a well-crafted and interesting persona through a dull story and/or nonsensical world. By contrast, I can happily use my character as little more than an avatar through which to visit an entirely new world and explore every detail of an environment where anything could be possible.

Video games are equipped to bring that world to life in a way that no other form of RPG does. To actually see and hear the world in question and experience the pivotal events in real time is as awesome as a really good film adaptation of a novel. To have the entire world prepared for you in advance and no need to share the limelight with others is a luxury few other RPGs will afford you.

The downside, of course, is the fundamentally limited nature of a pre-built world. There's no fun in exploring if you won't find anything off the beaten path (except maybe a new type of random monster encounter). Bethesda games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 are among my favourite games ever because you can find actual people and stories in areas that the main plot does not dictate you must go. Yet even these can only afford to furnish an empty building with two or three interesting props, telling a story effectively but briefly.

Gone Home is a game that is dedicated to pushing the world-exploration feature of gaming to its limits in the most intimate detail possible. The concept is simple – amidst a powerful storm in 1995, you arrive home after a year abroad to find the family home unexpectedly deserted. There is a note on the door implying that there is a serious reason for this unplanned state of affairs, but no full explanation. The entire game thereafter consists of exploring the domestic Marie Celeste left behind by your loved ones in an attempt to piece together what has happened to them. In the course of this, you can pick up basically any object in the environment – and there are hundreds if not thousands of them waiting to be discovered. 

The sheer minimalism of this game has left some questioning whether it is actually a game at all. If they'd built this thing in the real world (which would almost have been possible) it would be labelled an 'experience' or an 'art installation'. There is no competitive element and little that requires skill. What there is is an finely crafted narrative experience that is definitely worth having – providing you have the right mind for it.

Gone Home is a game that will move you and make you care – if you let it. Gone Home is a game that will creep you out if not outright scare you – if you let it. But with so few actual pieces of overt theatricality built into the game, getting your head into it is a task you must fulfil for yourself. Being sufficiently immersed to care what has happened to all your character's loved ones and afraid of what might be down the next unlit corridor is something you have to manage without a cinematic cutscene or a weapon to point at the darkness. This isn't a game you play casually, power through or do whilst multi-tasking – it's a game you stick your head in for as long as you can, then quit until the desire to know the answers drives you back to it.

That's not to say the developers haven't done their work to engage you. This game has been thought out meticulously to the last detail. The house is a large old mansion, with a serious number of rooms and the potential for hidden secrets. However, your family only moved there after you left – leaving you unfamiliar with the environment and limiting the amount of stuff that has yet been unpacked to a workable (if very large) quantity. The targeting prompt has also been designed to bridge the gap between the character's knowledge and your own – with targeting familiar items resulting in prompts like 'It's Mum's old work mug' and 'It's that book Dad wrote'. The prompt also changes in reaction to some items – which helps to characterise you given that almost all of your own stuff is still boxed away.

As a mystery game, Gone Home obviously has less replay value than a lot of titles. I therefore recommend that you force yourself to take the play-through slow. The house is brilliantly designed to make your imagination run wild and learning the truth will close off the uncertainty with a gratification that is best delayed. I got two days out of the game by being methodical and taking notes on everything I found – but it's easily possible to complete in one or two hours if you are more focused on the stand-out items. The open-world approach actually makes it possible to complete rather prematurely if you find keys in the 'wrong' order – my advice would be to explore the basement and beyond before venturing into the attic.

To be critical, the game could probably have sustained more major plot threads. Gone Home succeeds on novelty – if this form of gaming becomes a genre, the next big title will have to be far more elaborate. However, each thread is developed in unprecedented detail – I'm still finding new items that keep altering my interpretation of old ones. I'd love to talk about my reaction to the ending, but I'm honestly unwilling to spoil the sense of mystery that will enhance your experience so much.

Obviously, a game like this has plenty of space for indirect character development. Different priorities might hand the title of 'best female character' to other contenders as diverse as Clementine, Samus Aran or even GLaDOS, but it should be mentioned that Samantha Greenbriar is almost certainly the most thoroughly and satisfyingly characterised woman in the history of video games. Ironic really, since the excellently portrayed adolescence shows that she herself is still developing as a person.

The price has been a sticking point for many user reviews and it's not surprising. For the same money, it is easy to find games that offer 10 or 20 times the number of play hours with more replay value than Gone Home has. Pick the right one and you'll also get a game with far more features, able to tell a powerful story whilst also providing skill-based action and a spectacular visual feast. On the other hand, the price doesn't really seem excessive for the amount of genuine artistic effort that has gone into crafting this product. Gone Home is a game you splurge on because you want to have the awesome and thought-provoking experience it provides and on that basis I recommend it. If you do decide to buy it, go for the direct sales rather than Steam - $20 works out as less than £15 and the direct buy includes a code to unlock it on your Steam account whilst leaving you with a game that'll run without Steam being online. Console releases are coming, but this is a PC game originally.

Final Score: 8/10. It ain't Portal, but this short game deserves a look.

Best Item: Sam's Reproductive System Worksheet (Music Room). Hilarious and characterful.

Worst Item: Although it advances some ideas, I could have done without the contents of the hidden panel opposite Sam's room.

Review - Tomb Raider 2013

It's not often that a game truly lives up to my hopes.

My expectations are another matter. There are plenty of games that provide the sequences that they display on their trailers, along with the overall story and experience that is advertised by the increasingly terse blurb on their box covers. But with playable demos becoming increasingly rare, it is less and less common for me to buy a game because I've already played the entire first level and I want more.

In this environment, the game I actually buy is often one of several possible ideas of the game that I've got floating around in my head after absorbing the promotional material. Inevitably, there is a favourite amongst them – the version that I would have made if I'd had the opportunity to run with the concept the adverts are pitching at me. Often, this isn't the one that actually got created.

With Tomb Raider, I knew exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted a gritty game that focused on story. I wanted that story to be based around the development of the lead character. I wanted that development to show the transformation of a normal person into a full-on action hero without ever losing our initial empathy for the ordinary person we were presented with. Finally, given what we were seeing of the character's experiences, I didn't want the increase in power to be treated as 'empowering' by the character. The game that I got ticks every one of these boxes.

Tomb Raider 2013 is very much a linear story-based adventure game. Navigating your way to the objective will often trigger a cut-scene or extended set piece, the climax of which often serves to relocate you to a new area or at the very least provide you with pressing business at the next waypoint. This may bother some fans of sandbox style gameplay, but I found many of the set pieces to be far more exciting and engaging than anything the normal game AI could have served up from the default third person view.

I was initially disappointed at the lack of dialogue trees in the cut-scenes – having just played through the Walking Dead, I wanted to be forced to make the harsh survival choices myself. In the end, though, I came to accept the benefits of the less interactive approach. Lee Everett is a perfectly good character, but he basically became a mouthpiece through which my own views were expressed as I played Walking Dead. Having Lara declare what she wants to do and then having to go through with the result provides the character with a specific defined identity that you get to know over the course of the game.

You can explore most areas with some degree of freedom as you head toward your objective and a quick travel feature eventually becomes available to return to previous areas. Lara's level of agility is pleasing, but slightly dependant on whether a path is intended to be taken. Compared to the things you scale in the course of the adventure, the obstacles that can defeat you seem pretty minor if they aren't designed to be climbed. Each type of climbable surface always looks the same, so pathfinding is not a problem – although sometimes you feel a little led by the nose.

I found the story so engaging that I didn't use quick travel until after I'd completed the plot – going back to dig up artefacts and other items never seemed as pressing as the next objective. I did then take the time to achieve 100% completion, which also made narrative sense – the game even includes a final journal entry that only unlocks when you begin post-game play. Interestingly, most of the game's puzzle tombs are optional side areas that can be returned to in this way. This pleased me a great deal, since it meant that being stumped by a tomb didn't lock away the whole rest of the game for me. Although I was eventually able to solve them all, it was nice to be able to walk away after I got bored of missing the same jump and come back later after more practice.

Continuing the subject of traversal, Lara lacks a 'stealth crouch' which makes you feel awfully vulnerable when trying to sneak past enemies. This is perfectly appropriate when you consider how over-generous many games are regarding the invisibility this supposedly brings. Unfortunately, she also lacks a proper sprinting speed. It's undeniably impressive that Lara can keep moving at all after the punishment she takes, but I did sometimes wish she would amble toward cover a little faster when the air was filling with death. It's also unnerving to take such an unhurried run-up before jumping – but the reduced need to do so makes the jump puzzles far less frustrating.

Combat is satisfyingly bloody and vicious, with the regular foes being smart and tough enough to be scary at first and fragile enough to rack up a terrifying body count when you get your hand in at head shots and close combat kills. An obvious problem with portraying Lara's gradual evolution is that the player is probably already quite good at this. Lara might cry and puke the first time she kills someone, but once the gamer gets control of her she instantly becomes lightning fast and terrifyingly accurate.

The main way in which this is addressed is via the voice acting. Lara speaks quite often, and the gradual evolution of what she says does take much of the game. While an early game Lara says things like “please, you don't have to do this!”, a late game Lara says things like “that's right you bastards, I'm coming for you all!” The verbose enemies also become increasingly scared and desperate as the game goes on, displaying little of the suicidal misogynistic optimism of Catwoman's foes in Arkham City or the enforcers facing Nilin in Remember Me. I especially enjoyed hearing the last few enemies in a lengthy combat-filled level expressing dismay that I must have already killed everyone between themselves and the entrance. This in-game dialogue does a lot to limit the inevitable dissonance between play and cut-scenes.

The second technique used to portray the gradual rise in deadliness is the purchase of increasingly merciless skills with Experience points. Lara doesn't even get to hit people with her climbing axe until you reach tier two. Kneecapping someone with a held arrow before forcing your shotgun under their chin and pulling the trigger is very much an endgame move. The only thing I disliked about this progression was that (on the PS3 at least) new moves tended to overtake the key assignments of old ones. Burying an axe in someone's brain might be a lot more efficient than slinging grit in their eyes, but I still missed doing it.

Narratively, the game very much keeps to a lone character approach. Whilst several other crew members survive the shipwreck that strands Lara on the island, events usually conspire to split you up by the end of each shared cut-scene. I found the main character arc to be pretty satisfying as a heroic origin story. The first main area of growth lies in her responsibility toward the others – moving from miserable guilt and begging for aid to assuming leadership and acting as a defender. Indeed, her frequent moves to rescue the others instead of just looking out for number one stand out as the main thing that differentiates her from the head of the enemy cult. The second field of change lies in her attitude to the supernatural – initially dismissive, Lara gradually comes face to face with the kind of ancient magic that has always been a feature of her previous incarnation's adventures. The mix of these two elements alongside gradual toughening up provide the script with enough material to sustain the story. The final conclusion also provides motivation for further adventure – which thankfully doesn't come down to a need to repeat the adventurous thrills or make use of her new-found power.

Visually the game looks great. The graphics aren't quite as sharp as they look – hit pause and you'll see a fair few jagged lines in the frozen image – but are pretty effective when in full flow. For those of you with a PS4, an otherwise identical 'definitive edition' has recently been released with graphics upgraded to the specs of the new console. More importantly, the designers have faithfully adapted the distinctive style of the concept art to produce a recognisable style.

Unlike the previous Tomb Raider games, the protagonist isn't really presented in a sexualised way. Lara is still beautiful of course – and her voice is exquisite if you have a thing for posh British accents – but her clothing is pretty modest, her proportions realistic and the camera angles keep their mind on the job. Gradual model changes do cause her clothing to get torn to pieces during play, but this isn't done in a titillating fashion and is accompanied by subtle but copious scarring on the exposed skin.

It's not a perfect game, of course. The opening sequence is a bit disjointed and the game doesn't immediately hit its stride. Keep Lara separated from her companions limits the development they receive – each is distinctive but they don't really get to progress beyond one-dimensional stereotypes. Regenerating health undermines the grittiness of the violence, with damage only being consequential for a few seconds outside of plot-related injuries. Plot injuries are quite lasting, but being a Croft somehow seems to confer immunity to internal bleeding and infection. The decision to capture both motion and sound from Camilla Luddington's performance makes Lara's heavy breathing a little intrusive during arduous physical manauvers and the phrase 'I can do this' gets rather over-used in early voice-overs. Thankfully it largely gets phased out as she starts to actually believe it.

Some players may be displeased that the strong female lead spends sections of the game taking direct instructions from a male leader/father figure over her radio. On the other hand, this kind of voice in your ear feeding you objectives is perfectly normal for an adventure game and is less intrusive here than in many cases. Frankly the game probably needed a strong positive male figure somewhere – for various plot reasons almost all of the enemies are male.

The relentless suffering of Lara has also prompted some to question if the game is guilty of gender-inspired sadism. When you think about it, however, most action games consist almost entirely of being targeted for personal violence and struggling out of harmful environments. The difference here is that Lara reacts emotionally to these ordeals. There aren't many games out there that portray so much fear, anguish and uncertainty in a male lead – but it'd probably be better if there were.

Another possibly legitimate criticism is that this game isn't really a true successor to the Tomb Raiders we've seen before. Most of the tombs are literally optional side areas, the protagonist isn't there to titillate and whilst the game is in theory a prequel it is also a reboot that doesn't really work as a warm-up for the later games as they stand. However we might feel about these changes, it might be fairly complained that this game should have been an original title rather than cashing in on an existing brand name by paying lip service to it.

On the other hand, having a sense of where we are going really helps this origin story feel like it has direction – much like the reboot Batman Begins probably wouldn't work so well if we'd never heard of the guy. In particular, a couple of references to Lara's old twin pistol style give a sense of impending destiny that wouldn't exist otherwise.

DLC for the single player game is pretty limited. This probably speaks well of the basic game's story – it would be very hard to produce a story module that would plug in wherever you happened to be in the game at the time. I'd have liked to see a parallel story module covering the rest of the survivors, though. Available DLC consists of an optional extra tomb (which took me 40 minutes to strip at a very leisurely pace, including the extra 'this is DLC' loot-fest at the back) and six purely cosmetic extra costumes (each focused on one aspect of the character and all at least as modest as the default). These don't get damaged over play, but are otherwise fully integrated into the cutscenes. If it bothers you that Lara never loots a coat, get one of these. Oh, and you can also pay money for a limited selection of weapon upgrades and skills that are otherwise earned through salvage and EXP expenditure during play. If you really have no shame.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, which follows the common formula of using the game engine to run team deathmatch in a fashion that has changed little since the days of Quake. It's quite clever and pretty as such things go, but I really don't get why people value this part of these games as much as they do. Annoyingly enough, the multiplayer mode DOES feature croutch and sprint buttons that only work in this section of the game.

Some of the bad guy skins technically count as spoilers, so I wouldn't recommend going online until you've finished the single-player experience. If you're riding high on the feeling that you've survived all to emerge as some kind of invincible apex predator, a few rounds of multiplayer ought to kill that feeling for you nicely.

DLC is far more plentiful for multiplayer, consisting of new skins, new maps and (in a weird piece of market synergy) the weapons from Hitman: Absolution. Clearly, what the new Lara really needed was to be pointlessly associated with this:

Of course, no review of the game would be complete without mentioning the scene that attracted so much pre-release comment. Although barred by her NDA from attempting to cut in on all the free publicity, script author Rhianna Pratchett (the first woman to get the lead on a Tomb Raider game) has since made it clear that the scene is not intended to be about sexual assault, but entirely about the act of killing. Although there is an undeniable air of sexual menace to the sequence, failing any of the button presses appears to result in an immediate death by strangulation (the attacker has previously given the order to 'kill them all'). Succeed and the scene's lasting image will be how the man spends several seconds alive and trying to speak AFTER you blow a hole through his head (which funnily enough was omitted from the trailers).

Pratchett naturally wasn't too pleased about producer Ron Rosenberg's comments regarding the scene. She has stated that she absolutely didn't intend for the sexual assault element to be a pivotal moment in Lara's backstory – or she'd have made it worse. In her words, “if I felt that a female character needed sexual assault or rape as part of their backstory, it would be in there fully. Not as something you might see on Eastenders of a weeknight."

Final Score: 9/10. This game will likely remain one of my long-term favourites.

Best line: (Lara, dismissing supernatural myths about the Sun Queen) “A woman wields that much power, sooner or later someone will call it witchcraft.”

Worst line: (Excerpt from a found journal by another survivor) “I wish I could be more like Lara... she just blows me away. Not only is she brilliant, she's also an amazing ass kicker.”

Gaming - Why are people fighting to stop change in gender represention?

The subject of the portrayal of women in the fictional media is one that's coming up a lot at the moment in various contexts. Nowhere, however, is that debate engendering a more bitter battle than in the field of video games. Change in other areas is slow – due to a lack of will to change from an existing profitable formula to a more enlightened one and a simple blindness to issues obvious to insightful commentators. However, the process of change within video games is one that some people are actually fighting viciously to stop. In this article, I'll be looking at why.

It's easy to prove that historically female video game characters have been thinner on the ground than their male counterparts. Even today, a flat majority of playable protagonists are male. In fact, the situation is so bad that when a video for the 'No Right Answer' column at the end of August decided to debate the identity of the 'Strongest Female Video Game Lead Ever' both of their short-listed choices were NPCs. There are many criticisms I could make of the video, but the fact that some gamers are unclear on the concept of what a 'female lead character' actually is really speaks for itself.

An increasing number of games permit the player to select their own gender, but story-led games of this type often presume a male when any kind of default canon is established for tie-in fiction. When playing the generally very good Dragon's Dogma, it was extremely noticeable to my gamer wife that all of the plot-critical female characters seemed physically attracted to her female PC as well as my own male (to the point of hilarious soft-focus jingly cut-scenes). Whilst games like Dragon Age II have embraced widespread bisexuality for inclusiveness and player choice, we really didn't notice the other men swooning over my character very much – leaving a distinct feeling of 'we assumed you'd pick a male character..' in the game with the best custom creation I've ever seen.

Beyond this, video game characters display the same kind of physical 'ideal' as comic book characters. The default body type of the majority of female characters still approaches porn-star extremes. As far as costume is concerned female armour in video games is notorious, being seemingly constructed to expose as much of the body as possible.

It's generally pointed out that male characters are idealised to the same degree. This is broadly true, except that the males owe more to what men want than what women do. Whilst there are a lot of young males who genuinely seem to think that having breasts the size of her head is the last word in sexy, I'm not sure there is the same female consensus regarding biceps wider than your face. In any case, male characters do not often flaunt their bodies in the same way in terms of demeanour and clothing. Male characters as a whole also display a lot more physical variety, if only because there are more of them. To quote Bob Chipman, the most popular male video game character of all time is 'a short, fat, hairy guy with an unglamorous blue collar job'. 

Ladies.

Mostly, the traditional logic behind these design choices has been 'gamers are young males'. However, I suspect that another important argument in favour has simply been 'why not?' A sexy female character gives male gamers a better experience than a non-sexy one. If you're going to have a female character either way, why not give a portion of your audience the extra pleasure in a medium that exists almost entirely to please?

The answer to this can be seen if we change around the demographics concerned a bit. Imagine if it was an omnipresent convention that all male video game protagonists express homosexual interest in another male at least once during a game. I'm not saying that all those straight romance sub-plots are thrown out, just that some brief peripheral bisexual reference is made that has no real bearing on the wider game. Would this be regarded as a little bonus for the gay male gamer that had no bearing on anyone else's play experience?

 The results are very much already in on this one. Some time ago, a straight male gamer on Bioware's forums expressed great displeasure that at one point in Dragon Age II a male NPC makes a romantic advance on your protagonist, even if you are playing a man. He felt that including such content was 'neglecting' the straight male gamer demographic by including something that made them uncomfortable (in an 18-rated dark fantasy game, incidentally). This is far from the only protest about forward gay NPCs in the Dragon Age series and unfortunately it has had some effect. Even when responding to the absurd post, the developer who did so admitted that he doubted he'd do it again – despite having previously adopted the logic that it made no sense for all romantic interest to be up to the protagonist to initiate.

An even more extreme example can be seen in the story of the more recent game Remember Me. Not only did some publishers refuse to consider the game simply because the main character was female, but others baulked at the idea that she would initiate heterosexual romantic contact with NPCs because “you can't make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game.” There's so much wrong with this that it's just not funny. I strongly considered buying the game (which looks pretty cool, despite reportedly mediocre implementation of some of the ideas) if only to vindicate the publisher who finally did take a shot with it. I failed to do so only because of a typically eye-watering release price combined with a reputedly small completion time – a problem that Christmas has now fixed.

The bottom line is that including content designed to appeal to sexual demographics outside the straight male leaves straight males feeling 'this is not for me'. The fact that this causes them to think 'therefore it should not exist' is a BIG problem, but if all games triggered that feeling they'd be quite legitimate in asking the question 'why is nothing for me?'

Now flick back to female characters. Dressing like a hooker is a choice (or so the designers who dress these characters tell us). Acting in a manner designed to provoke everyone in the vicinity (most of whom appear to be beyond the fourth wall at any given moment) is a choice. In the real world, these are not choices that everyone makes – and many who don't do not regard them as aspirational fantasies or embodiments of the heroic ideal. Factor in body image fantasies that are more about what men want to see than what women want to have and a lot of female gamers are going to be left thinking that the character is explicitly not intended for them. When EVERY female character evokes that feeling, female gamers get left asking 'why is nothing for me?'

In the early days, individual female gamers wrote that they played games and were sure others did too, so could they have games for them please? Nowadays female gamers have read enough such articles from others like themselves to point out that they are obviously a large demographic - and that continuing to build games on the basis of 'gamers are young males' is to build them on a provable fallacy. Female gamers are getting louder within the gaming community and we're starting to see signs that change can happen. The reaction to these signs from some male gamers has not been pretty.

Almost any time a female commentator talks about the direction that games should take or the problems in attitude of the current content, there is a torrent of abuse directed at them from certain sections of the gamer community. When a player within an online game is identified as female, sexist abuse and harassment are frequently directed toward them.

While this kind of behaviour isn't present in all sections of gaming and such backlashes are sometimes suffered by male commentators too, there is a definite undercurrent of 'fighting for a cause' where women are concerned. Some gamers have claimed that sexist abuse and harassment are part of the 'culture' of the gaming community (which is odd, since they probably don't consider the presence of women a traditional part of that culture) and that wiping it out would diminish that culture. Gamers have lashed out at negative reactions to the above-described portrayal of women in modern games, claiming that such criticism threatens to 'neuter' future game production. As indefensible as it would still have been, Anita Sarkeesian didn't receive that infamous torrent of abuse because her attackers were too angry at what she said to remain civil. The whole thing happened before her disappointingly over-laboured first video even hit the web. The point of the attack was to silence her before she spoke, out of fear that if she was heard something might change.

A far more subtle undercurrent of this attitude can be seen in the recent savaging of game critic Carolyn Petit, who awarded GTA V a mere 9 out of 10. The principle flaws? 'An unnecessary strain of misogynistic nastiness' and 'serious issues with women'. Before the related comment threads were overwhelmed with back and forth about whether calling the transgendered reviewer 'she' was appropriate or not, there was a lot of complaint that the lowered score was unfair because Petit's discomfort with those issues didn't affect the quality of the game.

On the surface, one can have a certain amount of sympathy with the complaints. Marking down GTA for a lack of political correctness does feel like raising the bar at missing the point. On the other hand, a reviewer's assigned score has no meaning whatsoever except 'this is how much I recommend you play it'. Surely, therefore, it makes sense that anything which dents a player's enjoyment ought to lower the rating they assign.

Is saying 'marking down GTA for misogyny is unfair' the same as saying 'misogyny is not a valid thing to call out as a flaw'? Is saying 'marking down GTA because you didn't enjoy it is unfair' the same as saying 'the success of a video game shouldn't be judged by its ability to please gamers called Carolyn'? I fear the answer is yes to both questions.

I'm not saying that all those who argued against Petit's objections are the same type of people that send hateful threats, but the outcry seems to be based upon the same fear – that lowered reviews based on objections of this type will cause developers to alter future production,Therefore, such things can't be allowed to pass unchallenged.

Faced with such a campaign, it's no surprise that some people have attempted to calm the rabid fears driving these actions. One of the popular arguments is simply that whatever happens to future games, no one is going to take away the ones you already own.

On the surface, this is fair point. The ambition of software distributors to make continued use of single-player content dependant on an internet umbilical to their expensively-maintained servers HAS made spontaneous game loss a reasonable worry in another context, but it really doesn't apply here. No amount of change in ideas will result in people coming to your home to confiscate your hard copies, nor is it likely to result in the termination of the 'service' of server-linked games. So why worry?

Unfortunately, the ability of a game to engage with us on a purely visual level is severely tied to its level of technology. Movie special effects that looked 'real' when we first saw them are now so outmoded that we can see the flaws and their spectacle suffers gravely as a result. Video games are the same and their technology is galloping along just as fast as cinematic magic. Whip-wielding teacher Quistis is theoretically a desirable character – certainly belonging alongside Tifa and Lulu on the list of 'characters the Final Fantasy protagonist SHOULD have romanced'. However, the odds of her appearance exciting a modern player are somewhat reduced by the fact that she apparently consists of about ten polygons. There was a time when FFVIII blew audiences away with its stunning visuals, but that time has long past. Gamers who want these kind of portrayals don't want to be playing the same games in five or ten years time. They want to be playing the latest triple A game using cutting edge graphical wonders – just as long as it uses them to do exactly the same thing as all of its predecessors.

Another argument is that as long as a market exists for these games, there's no reason they won't still be made - they just won't be the only thing being made any more. If more women are coming into gaming and men aren't leaving, that means more games are being sold – so more should get made. If the same number of men are still willing to buy the same number of games, they should still get the same number being pitched at them – right?

Sadly, game publishing history has given little reason for confidence in this argument. There is hardly any sign that the corporate meetings of the big-money publishers contain ideas like 'our market research shows 60% male and 40% female, so let's get 3 games aimed at men and 2 games aimed at women out this year'. To all outward appearances, the meeting goes more like this: 'our market research shows that most gamers are male, so let's make sure all 5 of our big launches this year specifically target that demographic'. This is even true with the genres and play types being funded, as more and more games start to try and emulate Call of Duty.

Only a handful of game producers have figured out the secret formula that unites almost all gamers – their love of playing a really good game. I don't classify myself as a wild fan of tower defence or point-and-click adventures, but I definitely made time for Plants Vs. Zombies and The Walking Dead. In fact, a love of really good games is the only logical reason that female gamers exist so widely in a medium that stubbornly refuses any conscious attempt to appeal to them.

Unfortunately, a widespread realisation of this simple fact has yet to occur. It would be nice to think that absorption of a changed attitude to the presentation of female characters will lead to diversification – but it's a perfectly reasonable fear that it will instead lead to an absolute change in the ubiquitous paradigm. If these figures fall out of vogue, they may rapidly become practically extinct.

I'm not actually sure that an argument exists that can calm the fears of those who are fighting to prevent any change to the representation of women in games. In a sense, they are correct – something that they enjoy really might get taken away because other people disapprove of it. The benefits of the accompanying artistic growth might be clear to most, but they don't necessarily care about that. If the game industry starts catering for everyone who pays it money, it really will become slightly less indulgent for those who formerly were the sole focus of all the attention.

Sadly, having a stake in what happens doesn't mean that no-one but you should be considered. The notion that being the greatest numerical group gives you the democratic right to be the sole focus of decisions is a highly toxic one that is seen in too many contexts. In any case, vile attacks on those that desire change cannot be condoned. Using intimidation to oppress or drive out a growing minority is again something widely seen – as those who think being the majority gives them all rights to all things cannot bear the thought of actually ceasing to be the majority (or of having the pre-existing fact that they are not get recognised).

At its heart, these attempts are nothing more than an effort to ensure that all art produced within this medium conforms to a single style and message. Beneath the veneer of defending a dating kind of pleasure, it is possible that the true motive for all of it is that the message in question is 'everything is for men'. A physical shift within gaming to pander less exclusively to males would merely represent a far more terrifying (for them) decay of the unquestioned idea that male privilege was the proper order of things.

Disturbingly, this isn't just happening at consumer level either. Some publishers are in on it too. According to one anonymous account I read whilst reading up on this issue, an attempt by a male-to-female transgender game developer to give a female character a major part in an upcoming game was rejected - for the stated reason that “you just want everyone to be a woman don’t you, well some of us like the fact we’re men and don’t want our games brainwashing people into thinking they need to be like you.”

This would be inexcusable even if the character was transgender, but as far as I can tell that wasn't the case. Not only did the person in question (who sadly isn't named) presume all gamers were male, he consciously believed that exposure to the idea that women can be aspirational figures would be devastating to their sense of gender identity. He understood full well that games can have a cultural and intellectual impact upon 'people' (meaning young males) and considered that inviting them to put themselves in a woman's place or see her as a pivotal figure in the virtual world were poisonous notions to be kept out of gaming.

Of course, not all male gamers are part of some massive conspiracy to uphold the foundations of male privilege. In fact, a great many are encouraging of the idea that representation of women in games should improve and diversify and almost all are deeply opposed to the horrible abuse a minority of gamers throw out. What is important is that male gamers who feel this way stand up and say so. Those championing the status quo will readily claim to be speaking for the entire male gamer segment, which most of the industry still regards as the sizeable majority. If their words are the only ones heard, it gives the impression that our silence endorses their statements. Once it is made clear that the male gamer demographic is almost entirely opposed to such attitudes, the raging of these people will make far fewer headlines and draw far less attention. 

Article on Dragon Age II complaints 

Article on Trans representation in the industry 

Christianity - My testimony and other thoughts

I've been writing about a variety of subjects on this blog, essentially determined by what I feel is interesting or important at the time. It seems fitting, therefore, that I write an article about the subject which is most important of all to me – my Christian faith. I hope you will find it interesting and will get something out of it.

I was born into a Christian family. My parents were both committed Christians who attended a house church twice a week. To give you some background, this church had started out as a regular prayer meeting at a local Methodist church. When the time slot became unavailable, the meeting relocated to the house of one of the members – a man called Fred Dunn. He was overjoyed at the answers to prayer that the meeting was receiving and said that they could meet every night if they wished to. The meeting continued to be richly blessed and in time Mr Dunn received a ministry for preaching, prophesy and other gifts besides. The meeting became essentially a non-denominational church in its own right under the name Bethesda and still continues today.

I was taken to these meetings from infancy and my parents certainly taught me that Christianity was true. That said, in general it didn't take me long to start questioning what my parents told me if other sources disagreed (especially teachers). I remember my mother telling me about her own journey to faith when I was very young. She said that she'd believed when she was a child, then had some doubts as a teenager because other people believed in other religions. How did she know that she was right and they were wrong? I don't remember her answer, but I do remember absorbing the existence of the question. This small house meeting was not tied to the expectations of the wider community and had very few young people, so it's unlikely that I'd have continued in Christianity for very long out of simple inertia.

Of course, personal proof was not hard to find in a place as blessed as Bethesda. I don't remember the first time I heard someone speak in tongues or felt the blessing of God myself, but it would have been pretty young. All the same, my definitive moment came at home rather that at church. We left the home in question when I was 6, so I was certainly younger that that.

I'd closed my eyes for some reason I can't recall. As I sat there, the blackness of my eyelids parted vertically and I saw a bright yellow light beyond it. There was a man standing in the light with his arms upraised. He was wearing a white robe tied at his waist with some kind of brown cord. The face was one that I recognised. He looked exactly like the portrait of Jesus I owned – one that Mr Dunn (who had himself received visions in the past) had regarded as a good likeness.

I was very young, but I had a solid grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality. Perhaps I'd have dismissed this event in the intervening years if it had been the only proof, but that would have been a disservice to my younger self. I remember exactly what I thought at the time. I thought that this settled the question of whether there was a God and whether there was a Jesus. I was now certain of that. What I needed to know now was: what is true about Jesus? This is still my attitude to Christianity today and I am still learning the answer to that question – as I expect I always will be.

This is quite a dramatic claim to be making, I realise. Yes, I am flat out stating that I have seen Jesus. That this was when my Christian faith first became entirely concrete.

There are reasons why I don't normally make these statements. Many of my friends don't believe and what I have just testified will not change that. Although they respect my intelligence and integrity (I hope) generally speaking they regard claims of miraculous visions as delusional. I therefore place them in an awkward position when I directly claim to have proof. I have observed in some prior debates on religion that claims I've made to have proof behind my faith have been completely blanked.

Yet I find it displeasing that people who I have treasured as friends for over a decade in some cases honestly have no idea about this stuff. So I'm going to put it here. You can digest it if and when you're ready.

This isn't the only vision I've had, but such revelations are not commonplace. In the day to day, week to week prayer life of the Christian answers are not received like that. However, getting an answer IS normal. The way that Jesus normally touches the heart is with a wonderful sense of peace, which radiates out from the very centre of your being and fills you up. This is a hallmark of God that no other display of supernatural power can replicate, a display of his character that can move anyone to tears through the sheer beauty and sense of love that is borne within it.

When you pray about something, you know that God has his hand upon it when you get peace. When you ask which way you should go, you follow the road that has the most peace when you contemplate it. To feel such peace is one of the meanings of the phrase 'being blessed' – although it can also thankfully refer to having a bounty of good things within your life. Jesus has answered many of my prayers this way, and he has led me well.

A powerful blessing of peace when you ask for something generally means that you shall receive it. I've prayed for help in many difficult situations and had things fall into place. It's impossible to prove to another person what was a miracle and what was just chance, but if I ask for something and it happens I certainly always say thank you. However, feeling some peace doesn't always mean everything will go away. I remember praying once when in despair about bullying as a teen. The bullying did not immediately stop – but the fear which was causing the vast majority of my actual suffering melted away completely as I prayed.

Sometimes a small feeling of peace simply means that God has heard you, rather than 'yes'. When my Grandad was taken ill for the last time, I prayed for quite a while that he would recover. I felt enough peace to know that my prayer was heard, but not enough to expect a miracle. When I eventually prayed that my Grandma would be okay if he did pass on, I got a very powerful sense of peace. I knew well enough what that meant. He died shortly afterwards, but my parents were able to extend their house and take my Grandma into it. Despite her severe medical difficulties they never had to put her into care, and she lived as a happy and much-loved member of their family unit until her passing at the start of this year.

The feeling of peace can be felt anywhere, because God isn't limited to church buildings. All the same, it is possible for certain places or church gatherings to be inherently blessed. Simply entering what I can only call Holy Ground can give one a sense of peace – when I lived at a house opposite St. Michael's church I always noticed it the moment I left the town centre and entered the square. Likewise, peace can be felt more easily and powerfully when praying and worshipping in a good church gathering – the blessing at a Bethesda meeting is stronger than I've felt anywhere else. This is a genuine endorsement by God – meaning that rote rituals of consecration do not of themselves ensure such an effect. Lincoln Cathedral was dead as a doornail when I visited it and seemed more interested in raising revenue than in functioning as a place of worship. It also means that the feeling can drop away if the preacher or group leaders make a mis-step, allowing you greater ability to discern God's truth from what people say is God's truth if you're paying attention.

This method of discerning the truth is at the core of how I explore my Christian faith. Many Christians believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God. Since our perceptions are not infallible, they argue that the scripture should always have the final word in what we believe. Unfortunately this neglects that our interpretation and application of these scriptures is entirely fallible, even assuming that the original meaning was accurately translated from a uniformly inspired and perfectly expressed set of originals. In fact, my faith in the Bible is based upon the endorsing blessings that my God gives me when I read it – blessings I've found almost entirely lacking from the teaching of other religions. If I feel that God is leading me to do something different from what I'd have guessed based on how I read the Bible, I'll generally follow his metaphorical 'voice' if I'm sure.

Sadly, many Christians don't really understand the way that learning works. When I did science at junior school, I was taught things as facts. When I did science at secondary school, I was taught that these were oversimplifications and therefore technically untrue – then taught new facts. When I did A-Level science, the pattern repeated. I am sure that if I had done a science degree, it would have done so again. This is not a pattern distinctive to science – learning always works with broad strokes first followed by refinements and deeper mysteries, and you never get to know everything.

Christians should expect the same sort of paradigm shifts as their knowledge of God grows. Unfortunately most denominations set up certain 'core beliefs' which cannot be challenged within that church. The sorry state of understanding regarding the Trinity is an obvious symptom of this, as is the historical backlash by religious groups against paradigm-shifting scientific ideas which have sometimes proven accurate.

Of course, Christians do have good reason to be ideologically orthodox. Every spiritual or scientific teaching (and they are both just ways of trying to get an accurate picture of the reality around us) will claim to be 'the amazing truth'. Many spiritual teachings which claim to develop Christian teaching are erroneous or outright lies. Having found the Way, the Truth and the Life (even if we don't comprehend every fact about Him) Christians are naturally wary of being led astray (as some sometimes are). How do we discern truth from lies here? Ultimately, we do it by the same test that we used to determine if Christianity was true at all. It's simple, but the inertia created by being attached to the rest of a denomination can slow down the process or drag you the wrong way.

This is not to say that fellowship with other Christians is bad. Lives dedicated to Jesus should be fruitful in changing the world around us for the better, yet it's naïve to think that this is a one way process. The world changes us too, and eventually we will reach an equilibrium that is appropriate to the relative sizes of the two parties. As well as providing a more blessed atmosphere, more answered prayers and the teaching we need to grow, church is a reset button that allows us to notice if we're slipping away from God inch by inch and correct it. When I say this I don't mean that it's a chance to receive peer pressure and a lecture on the virtues of conformity. I simply mean that you can forget how special your walk with God used to be if you busy yourself with other things for a couple of months, or develop wrongful practices without ever sitting down and listening to the Spirit for long enough for him to challenge you about them.

This balance with the world around us brings the discussion back to my own life. Many Christians come to faith as adults and have to begin learning the new lifestyle after decades of practising a different one. Being raised a Christian with a personal commitment to it, I never faced that critical life change. However, there are complexities to being a child Christian too. There are many life lessons that the Bible cannot teach you – simple facts and norms about living day to day and in relation to other people that have to be learned by actually living in the world. To be a Christian child is to learn how to live like everyone else, whilst also learning how and where to positively differ from it at the same time. This is a tough ride, and it's lonely to know that most of the people around you can neither understand nor value the part of yourself that's more important than their approval.

I got baptised on 9^th July 1995, at the age of 13. By this point I had been a dedicated believer for a long time, but I felt led to make the important step of taking that particular action. Christianity isn't just about arriving at the moment where you repent of your sins and receive forgiveness, nor about agreeing to a set of rules. Furthermore, repenting in that way isn't about going through your diary and denouncing specific deeds in your past, but about regretting any wrong you have done because you want to do rightly.

The Christian walk of life isn't about following rules – rather it is about a relationship with God and about gradually allowing him to perfect you within it. This isn't a process that any follower of Jesus has ever completed on this Earth, and no-one can ever become like Jesus (the definition of perfection in this model) without letting him take the lead. It is of course easier to theoretically dedicate your entire existence to Christ than to actually change any specific part of your life in response to his leading, but the act of making that commitment is a really important one. I got a wonderful, peaceful blessing as I came out of that water, which persisted undimmed for the entire rest of the day.

The last thing Mr Dunn told me before I left for university was this - “people say that the way is straight and narrow, but it's not. It's just straight.” This sounds like a strange thing to say, as it appears to contradict Matthew 7:14. What I have always taken from it is that not all Christian lives need to be carbon copies of each other. We are all following Jesus and desire to be like him in terms of spiritual righteousness, but we can come toward him from any point and bearing in the world. Just because two Christians have extremely different lifestyles, it doesn't necessarily mean that one is automatically a better Christian than the other. We might have to abandon any number of paths we've laid out for ourselves to keep moving in the right direction in our Christian life, but 'running the race' doesn't involve stepping sideways into anybody else's lane.

This was a word that I definitely needed to take with me into university life. As I mentioned before, Bethesda didn't have much of a youth element. With the exception of a Christian meeting at school, I had little history of socialising with other Christians my own age. The new church I joined in my student town had a large youth culture and there were university societies as well. These groups were wonderful to have fellowship with, but they had a very unified culture which I did not automatically fit into. Even more strangely, many of them seemed to have very limited social links with the non-Christians around them – whereas I naturally formed strong links with several 'alternative' societies very quickly. It would have been very easy for me to make the mistake of trying to change myself to fit the local Christian scene, but changing to myself just to be like everyone else wouldn't have been beneficial for me. Whilst my theological differences sometimes caused friction with the leaders of student Christian scene, the non-Christian societies gave me something very important – an environment where people could equally belong whilst being different to one another. It's only in the later years of my time in this town that I've developed a solid group of Christian friends – many of whom regard themselves as misfits in the local Christian community. But I've had enough fellowship with them to know that Christ is truly in their heart – and on that basis I call them brother and sister.

I've often been told that I'm not like other Christians by my non-Christian friends – and I can't say it hasn't worried me form time to time. After all, Christians are supposed to stand out as different. I've also found myself standing bemused as my brothers and sisters in Christ fretted over the presence of sinful practices within the rest of the student community. Surely this should bother me more, as it does them?

I have a naturally blasé nature in many respects – yet I like to think that the main reason I'm more able to accept the non-Christian society around me is the faith I am able to place in God's plan for others. I firmly believe that God had a plan for my life before I was even born, and unlike some Christians I am equally sure that he has a plan for everyone else. These plans will work in God's own time – and if they can succeed, they will. At my age, Fred Dunn was a drunken, brawling thief with no visible interest in Christ. I'm sure melodramatic Christians would have declared that he was 'going to Hell' at that age, but the truth is God had the entire thing in hand the whole time. It is not given to me to know whether my friends will make it (with the exception of one, whom I asked God about many years ago and got a reassuring answer) but I see enough love of goodness in them to hope that one day they will come to love Him.

Becoming a Christian is your own choice – one that I cannot make for anyone else. Until it is made, everyone is a sinner in need of God's forgiveness. While desirable, reducing the rate at which a person commits sins doesn't actually change that one way or the other. I don't even believe all sins should be illegal under state law – whilst we might regard them as morally wrong, Christians were never commissioned by Jesus to confiscate free will from all nations under threat of force. People have a right to make their own choices – even wrong choices – unless the harm to others (or more contentiously to themselves) outweighs the harm in tyrannising them. Our duty as Christians is simply to pass on the revelations we have received about how a person should live – revelations that make no sense without Jesus at their core. Thus we preach him foremost, and what the truth of him means after that.

Christianity is a reaction to the truth. If it is not true, I have no interest in basing my life around it. Since we are fallible creatures doubt will always be possible, but a person who doubts all information about their environment cannot function. Seek him and you will find him. Ask other Christians and they will tell you their testimonies. Ask them to pray with you or pray on your own, and he'll be there. Christianity isn't the easiest life, but I recommend it.

God bless.

The Bethesda meetings now have a website which archives some old recording and gives contact details for their continued fellowship. It can be found here: http://bethesda-fellowship.co.uk/index.html

God's Place In Life by Kingspikearcher

Tomb Raider Revisited

While I am sure that there are people out there who would spit feathers at the idea of a genuine Christian encouraging BDSM and condemning anti-pornography legislation, I regard my Tomb Raider article as the most controversial one I've put out to date. The inclusion of an attempted rape scene has drawn a lot of negative criticism and it would have been easy and safe to pitch in on that. Instead, I wrote one which was broadly defensive of the decision.

Accordingly, I was surprised when it received basically no response at all. The interface here at Blogspot can certainly take a share of the blame (I've yet to successfully post a comment on an article) but no-one really said anything on the sites where I promote my new posts either. Fortunately after bringing the subject up with a couple of people (yes, I'm that needy for feedback) I was able to get some comment. The basic summary of what was said came down to “I enjoyed it, but I didn't really agree with it”.

This is of course totally awesome. If my writing can entertain people even when they don't agree with what I'm saying, I must be getting fairly good. In a fashion it's the best compliment I've had on my work to date.

Just as importantly, I don't actually seem to have upset any of my friends. Although they might be offended by the game, defending it doesn't seem to have left them offended at me. Perhaps I'm pushing my luck returning to the subject a second time, but the lengthy discussion I had with a certain friend left me with a lot of interesting ideas to write down. Rest assured, I'm not trying to cause offence when I write this.

It seems appropriate to start by listing the comments made in brief. As I recall, they came down to the following:

Rape is very common, and sexual assault practically universal. Primarily the victims are female - rape statistics for men in prison are same as for a women in the western world overall. Ergo the matter is an uncomfortable topic for EVERY woman.

Female characters being dis-empowered in this way because they're female is offensive.

Rape is a cliché, used as rite of passage for too many female characters.

The scene is intended to provoke protective instincts in men, not engage with female gamers.

The first point was the one which got me thinking enough to decide that I should write a second article on the subject. That rape is common is sadly something that I know very well. I've known at least six rape victims (and prior to his unexpected arrest, one rapist) and can easily figure out that this is potentially the tip of a larger iceberg even among my own social circle. This certainly does upset me, but it doesn't make me personally unable to watch fiction that deals with it. It makes me appreciate the seriousness of the issue, but I'd hope that everyone outside of XBox Live can do that without a specific example.

As my friend pointed out, for women it is somewhat different. Only one of the victims I've known of was male, and he was a child at the time. These horrible tales didn't leave me thinking that it could have happened to me – only that it must never happen to anyone else I know. We'll be coming back to that one later, but for women there is certainly a reasonable fear that it could have happened to them. This means that every woman in the world ends up factoring the need to avoid something that happened to a friend into the way they live.

The problem is compounded by the fact that since groping and unwanted embraces can easily classify as sexual assault, pretty much every woman has experienced that crime personally. Social acceptance of that fact has come under increasing fire in recent years, being labelled as 'rape culture'. Whilst the extreme nature of that term has caused a lot of people to argue back, 'sexual assault culture' definitely has a degree of perceptible reality. Since this assault is essentially a lesser form of a horror that women are already conscious of the need to avoid, it obviously brings the risk home that much more. Thus Lara's experience becomes something that reminds every woman of a bad experience in their own life, rather than a bad experience in somebody else's. This is an important point that I hadn't fully realised before, making the scene an issue for more of the potential audience for the game than I'd have expected.

However, what really got me thinking was my friend's conclusion to these facts. Not unreasonably, she felt that (male) authors should be less cavalier about including rape scenes - and that if they understood the above they would reach for that development less often. This is likely a common feeling amongst female audiences.

So exactly why is the media being so slow to respond to such feelings? Well, here is the opinion of female audiences in a nutshell:

'Female audiences want (male) authors to display increasing awareness of the horrible pervasiveness of rape in the modern world. They want them to display this awareness by depicting rape LESS pervasively.'

This just isn't the way that the media normally works. I'm sure there are plenty of (male) authors out there who are increasingly aware of how common rape is and how much long-term damage it does. In response to that, they write a story about rape. Partly this is out of concern – raising awareness of the problem can help change happen and increase concern for victims. Partly it is out of an increasing understanding of reality – a desire to portray the world as it really is. If every woman has to deal with this to some degree, wouldn't a realistic Lara have to as well? Partly, of course, it is out of a desire to sell more copies by being 'topical'. The concept that an author should refrain from writing about this topic because it is both widespread and important is one that will need to be shoved explicitly in their faces for a long time before we see any results – and some will refuse the notion on general principles anyway.

Of course, interactive gaming ought to be leading the way in this field. As an experienced role-playing GM, I'm conscious of the need to avoid entering territory that is personally uncomfortable for the players I've got. Whilst you can't expect mass media producers to avoid creating any products that will be uncomfortable for someone somewhere, they really should avoid creating something that is unpleasant for an entire gender (unless the work is intended exclusively for men, which we'll come back to). Absorbing the above ideas is probably something that they should do a quickly as possible.

Another point that stuck in my head was her insistence that this would only be considered for a female character. As my friend put it, “they'd never think of doing this to Dante or Kratos”.

My initial reaction was that this was a false comparison. Lara Croft is in theory a normal woman, whilst Kratos is a magic superman whose adventures consist mostly of punching gods in half. One would expect that Lara's troubles would be closer to our own and that she'd have a more arduous time of it.

On deeper reflection, the implications of this comparison were quite important. From a geek categorization standpoint, Lara is not a superhero. From a functional standpoint, she is. Lara is a power fantasy and women who play her seek the same experience that a player of God Of War, Devil May Cry or Arkham City does.

I've stated before that I don't consider the female superhero to be fully developed as a concept. Although a long history of gender-based exclusions have left women hungry for characters who 'can do anything a man can do', it seems unlikely that the sum total of female dreams is to replicate traditional male dreams. An emphasis on agility notwithstanding, Lara is basically just a gender-swapped Indiana Jones. This limitation aside, Lara has certainly been embraced by female fans and effectively offers the superhero experience.

There are certainly some folks out there who don't want their power fantasies to have any trace of vulnerability, but they are a minority. Spider-man is one of the most iconic superheroes of all time because Peter Parker has all the same problems we do, not in spite of it. Arguably the most over-powered superhero of them all, Superman still has to crawl like a dog once per film when someone dis-empowers him. So why is this scene such a problem for women?

The issue here is that Lara's moments of power come from assuming a role that has traditionally been associated with male characters. Her moment of vulnerability, however, is related to being a woman. It's as though she can stand in the pantheon of Earth's mightiest heroes only until someone remembers her gender, making her place there (and the place of all female heroes) more precarious. Instead of Kryptonite or the colour yellow, Tomb Raider's weakness is that however many powers she gets she will always have a vagina.

This isn't really something that the authors can be accused of doing on purpose. Although there are probably ignoble exceptions out there, it's extremely unlikely that male authors are writing these scenes to 'put the woman back in her place'. But if that's the message female audience members are getting from them... well, I can certainly see the scale of the problem.

Rape and sexual assault are often regarded as clichés where female characters are concerned in much the same way that unexpected pregnancy is. Because these are issues that specifically relate to women, there is sometimes the feeling that male authors reach for them out of laziness. They don't have the understanding of how to portray women required to actively engage with the character's gender in a more nuanced way, so they go for the obvious.

In fact, the situation is not unique to female characters. Cliché is used for most demographics. A black Lara would almost certainly be exposed to racism at some point. A gay Lara would encounter homophobia. A Muslim Lara would regarded by someone as either a terrorist fanatic or a scandalous harlot, depending on the prevailing NPC cast. Clichés are clichés because they work – in this case engaging with the specific major problems that come with being a character of that type. The rape risk for men in prison may be equal to that faced by women in the general western world, but the threat is actually far more of an omnipresent cliché for imprisoned male characters. It's likely that female audiences would be more forgiving of the use of such staples if it were clearer that straight white male characters also invariably suffer the conflicts specifically associated with themselves. The problem is... there aren't any.

This isn't strictly accurate, of course. As a man, I can say that there are indeed specific problems associated with being male. It's just that most of them are an awful lot more subtle than those described above, or affect only a certain subsection of the male community (such as prisoners or fathers in custody battles). As John Scalzi explained in a recent article, if life was a video game 'straight white male' would be the lowest difficulty setting: "This means that the default behaviours for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise... The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get."

Traditionally, there has been one massive exception to this rosy picture – that of compulsory participation in warfare. For most of human history, the possibility of being abducted by your own government and thrown into an unimaginably horrible meat grinder has been the exclusive terror of the young male. Perhaps perversely, most gender-conscious work on the subject has focused upon how unfair this was for women – who were forcibly prevented from choosing to share the fate inflicted upon their male peers. Since most of the time we watch/read/play combat-based fiction for excitement, power fantasies and the vicarious venting of aggression, the male hegemony upon combatant characters has been seen as another way that women lose out. In any case the problem has now been 'fixed' – when the spectre of conscription returns, a variety of positive social changes mean that the slaughter of the innocent will be more equitably distributed.

I've started to wonder if this lack of specific issues is why 'ordinary' males are seen as the default character type in a lot of fiction. There is a definite impression that 'female' is a character trait, but male is just the basic assumption. The blurb for the comedy series Darkplace spoofs this brilliantly - describing the main character as being joined by “best buddy Dr. Lucien Sanchez, fiery hospital boss Thornton Reed and woman Liz Asher”.

The fact is that while most stories are on some level about 'the human heart in conflict with itself', many tales don't directly concern the social issues a particular type of human has to deal with. Deliberately giving the character those issues brings the assumption that you are going to digress for long enough to deal with them – which you don't necessarily want to do. No author is likely to cast a Pakistani lesbian Scientologist as the lead without making some exploration of how these traits complicate her life in London. On the other hand, a white agnostic/atheist straight man can get through an entire tale without any of these facets being consciously acknowledged as character traits at all. ('Christian' is no longer the path of least resistance and 'devout Christian' never was). This means that white males are over-represented and the clichés used when depicting every other demographic stand out even worse.

I'm not immune to this myself. I recently decided to try and catalogue all of the original characters that I've created and used as a player in a role-playing game. Out of almost 80 characters, only 10 were female. Only 5 were defined as bisexual or homosexual and just 1 of those was a man. Most remarkably of all, only 8 had a recognisable non-white ethnicity. Obviously role-playing is a special case – your character is your avatar in the game and thus is usually like yourself except where otherwise stated. However, this is clearly something I need to bear in mind if I'm creating characters for any other purpose.

There is legitimate concern that opting for a rape storyline is inappropriate in a story where the protagonist becomes stronger as a result of the tale. The notion that going through this is a rite of passage that leaves one stronger is obviously offensive. I'm not sure that this applies to survival horror plot-lines, but the point can be fairly levelled at many works.

Yet even here, the conceptual errors of many authors are wider than a lack of understanding of the female mind. This can be seen in what is arguably the male equivalent – the torture scene. Whilst my preferences might bias me, I believe it's pretty much a fact that these events can leave violation trauma that is in many ways comparable to rape.

Male characters are somewhat more likely to be tortured during their obligatory capture than females and their indignities are vastly more likely to be shown on screen. However, the victim is almost never 'broken'. This gives the impression that the attempt failed even if escape is not immediate. When the hero gets their gory revenge, we are obviously supposed to regard the emotional issues as closed and the test passed. For that matter, male heroes who avert murder attempts by slaying the attacker are rarely supposed to feel upset that someone tried to kill them.

I strongly suspect that the female protagonist who escapes the attempt is also considered by many authors to have escaped emotional trauma – with any lingering discomfort fixed by the invariable revenge she inflicts upon the assailant's face and/or abdomen. When a female character responds to being groped by smashing the guy's head through the bar (which is an extremely common way to introduce tough women) there is never any sense that she would still feel violated. There may even be an impression that this is just a fact of being in that kind of an environment (see 'rape culture' above). This is all part of the wider emotional short-hand used in escapist action stories. From what I've seen, Tomb Raider might actually be better than most in this department.

The last issue – that the game is designed to provoke feelings in male players – has a specific source. When interviewed about the new game, executive producer Ron Rosenberg stated that "When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character" and that players would want to protect her. Since my feelings on the matter of women getting raped are a mixture of extreme protectiveness and potentially homicidal rage, this makes sense to me as a man. Whilst I have little problem projecting onto a female character, many men do. But neither of these notions make any sense for a female player – which suggests that Rosenberg doesn't think there are any.

I was aware of the quote when I wrote my first article, but gave it little attention – noting only that 'official responses to these comments haven't been as reassuring as they might have been'. The reason for this short shrift is that one man's misunderstanding of the game's audience shouldn't affect the actual experience of playing it. Tomb Raider will unquestionably be narrated from Lara's perspective. It is unlikely that she will ever appeal for aid to her patron deity beyond the fourth wall. Whether you truly project onto Lara or see her as an external character that you are guiding through the game should depend upon yourself as a player. I've taken the latter option with many unappealing male characters in the past, but hope to take the former path with the new Lara. Rosenberg might not expect women to buy the game, but that won't actually prevent them from doing so.

Unfortunately, I must admit that we are talking about the executive producer here. His comments should be representative of the team. Can it be that the entire creative team for this project have been labouring under the delusion that they are making a game for an exclusively male market?

I'd certainly hope not. I've known how important Tomb Raider is to the large number of female gamers out there since I read an article about it in 1999 – the people actually making this stuff really should have caught up by now. My friend suspects that the very inclusion of a scene like this shows that the female audience was never considered by the people making this game. I hope she's wrong – but if not the game will probably alienate female players for a whole list of reasons when it actually gets played. If that happens, it will fail – probably without spawning a single sequel. Still, someone else should reboot it in 3 to 5 years time...