Women And Games...

Women And Video Games...

So apparently there's a mode in Dead Island that gives you a "Feminist Whore" power up..

Dead Island Maker Gives Leading Lady A "Feminist Whore" Skill

One of the unlockable skills for Dead Island leading lady Purna allows her to deal extra damage against male victims. It's called Gender Wars in the game, but the original skill was named "Feminist Whore." [UPDATED]

The errant bit of renamed text was discovered by a resourceful computer gamer who found the original skill name buried in the code for the non-retail version of the game that was accidentally sent to digital game store stream.

In the code, the game lists some of Purna's skills as "TeamSpirit1Purna", "SharpApprenticePurna" and "FeministWhorePurna".

Reached for comment this morning Techland confirmed that Feminist Whore was indeed the original name for the Gender Wars skill. The inappropriate name was caught by the developers and changed, they said, but remained in one debug, diagnostic file which ended up in the actual game.

Reached for comment this morning, publisher Deep Silver confirmed to Kotaku that the line of code was in an early build of the game.

"It has come to our attention that one of Dead Island's leftover debug files contains a highly inappropriate internal script name of one of the character skills. This has been inexcusably overlooked and released with the game," Blazej Krakowiak, Techland International Brand Manager, said via email. "The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke. The skill naturally has a completely different in-game name and the script reference was also changed. What is left is a part of an obscure debug function. This is merely an explanation but by no means an excuse. In the end that code was made a part of the product and signed with our company name. We deeply regret that fact and we apologize to all our customers or anyone who might have been offended by that inappropriate expression.

"The person responsible for this unfortunate situation will face professional consequences for violating the professional standards and beliefs Techland stands for."

Why yes, "The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke". The joke is "I'm misogynist lol". But hey, maybe whore is not an offensive word. why yes, I am a male, why do you ask? Am I not allowed to comment because of my gender?! Maybe the real sexist is... YOU!!!

Perhaps an apology should be issued to whores the world over for being associated with feminist. But really, just look at the character. She's wearing two belts and oversize combat boots. It looks terrible.



I have to wonder if this shit really effects anyone. I mean, does anyone not already see that video games are generally created by guys and have always come off as really insensitive to women. Do I even need to rehash this video of potential future video game developers.



I wouldn't blame you if you stopped that video half way through. It really is awful. And that's why video games have these jaw dropping awful pieces to them.

Like, I picked the black rapper guy in Dead Island and freaked out when I saw that one skilltree of his was called Fury where you build up Rage so you can chimp out but I guess all the characters have a Fury tree. Now I don't want to play the game because it seems aggressively mediocre.

But really, this is not by any means limited only to Dead Island. Look at this little piece I'm just going to drop right here in this blog post.



Gotta say, besides the outrageously racist stereotypes portrayed here, the motion capture on Keanu Reeves in that thing was pretty amazing.

Oh yeah, I can't help but mention this comment left in the article...

Generally speaking, what kind of guys do you think populate the video game programming industry? And how do you think they get treated by girls and women as they're growing up? Do they see many examples of them valuing intelligence or do they see them fawn over the jocks that are bullying them?

For the talk of misogyny among the game industry and gamers, I guess it's pretty easy to forget how guys that aren't macho stereotypes are subject to their own prejudice by the opposite sex. So, a little resentment towards women among "nerdier" men shouldn't be surprising. When men feel they're hated by women (whether it's true or just how they perceive it), it's only natural some of that hate is going to be returned. Does that make it ok? No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that writing off this resentment as simply men only viewing women as sexual objects or just men behaving badly is overly simplified and lacks and empathic understanding of the problem. A little lecturing isn't going to fix this issue.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Again, let's take a look at what sort of writing for the characters can be found in this video game:



Why yes, carrying on the proud tradition of Australian cockney Jamaican accents. I wonder which bullies in the upbringing of that programer can be the fault of that.

Maybe I'm just being harsh. What if the character just happened to enjoy fried chicken and water melons? There's nothing inherently offensive about that, right? I bet you're wondering if the Asian woman who is pictured wielding a Katana speaks with a ridiculous accent? What do you think?



If you weren't downloading this game illegally before, you better be doing so now! Though, is this all that bad? The actual skill gives bonuses to kill men, so it sort of offsets the unusual title of the skill.

This problem will go on forever. I mean, just take a look at the sneak peak of the latest Resident Evil video game. Not only does the female character have stupid hair, but the article points out itself that the character also has a wet suit that has a huge fucking hole just perfectly placed to show off her tits. Lovely. It's pretty clear this shit will never go away.

Now if you excuse me, I gotta go play call of duty on my Xbox on this weekday afternoon while calling 12 year olds I'm playing against some stupid fucking Hadji.