Dan Hsu in Duke Nukem Forever: 5 reasons it will succeed…and 5 reasons it will fail, mentioning Fox News and it’s Bulletstorm story from yesterday (hyperlinked with the words “raping people” in the original piece.) Fox’s (well known) fast and loose reporting aside, I am really sick of the gaming industry’s denial of the rape culture. It reminds me that game industry isn’t growing up because for the most part it refuses to — it’s still a late 80’s/early 90’s teenage boy obsessed with saving the world with a shotgun. There’s a quote from aboingboing feature that comes to mind, and a quote within that has really resonated with me. It’s about a visit to square-enix studios that ends with a visit to  Yoshinori Kitase, producer of many Final Fantasy games. The interviewer asks a question of Kitase about why so many years later, his games still so often feature young protagonists, setting out on life, trying to find their identity and place within the world?” His question even becomes an imploration of sorts to move on and offer something more grown up, more mature. Kitase answers back quite frankly “[That] games aren’t really for people in their thirties. The JRPG is intended for younger players because the journey of the character leaving the village to conquer the world resonates with them. He’s happy to continue serving this audience.”

Games are still being made to serve white, middle class, teenage boys.  Even games that ostensibly aren’t (so-called ‘girls games’) are being made in service of these boys’ dogmatic worldview — while the boys go out and save the world, the girls are the helpless princesses (who somehow also need to be domesticated servants? idk, Peach always manages to bake a humongous cake for Mario) in need of saving from not only the world and it’s untamable (by her at least) wilds, but from her own vanity.

Duke Nukem is a womanizing piece of shit who was conceived not as some ridiculous parody of macho-male culture, but as a ridiculous icon of that culture. The gaming culture’s love of Duke is wholly un-ironic. The thirteen-year-old boys writing, raving, and simply salivating in anticipation of this game want to live in the patently absurd reality 3D-Realms crafted for our hero — the same boys keeping score in Bulletstorm with rape innuendo.