Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Capture the Babe: Sexist?!

I was having a gander through the forums on a nerd - ahem! - gaming website the other day (I love how general that term can be) and I stumbled across a thread talking about Duke Nukem Forever. Now for those of you who have enough of a life as to not know about the palaver surrounding DNF let me give you a brief outline.

The Duke Nukem series, running since 1991, has become infamous in the gaming world, firstly for its incredibly chauvinistic, sexist approach. But more noticeably for the ridiculously long development time of DNF. Originally planned for 1997/1998, it was repeatedly put on hold until the developers (3D Realms) got sick of all the nagging and simply said it would be released “when it’s done.”

And now, 14 years after work began, and after a huge amount of piss-taking at its expense, ranging from simple name calling ‘Duke Nukem Whenever’ etc. to tirades of bile spewing mockery such as this:



The thing has been announced and actually has a date stamped onto its aging forehead.

Now, the particular article about Duke Nukem If Ever, was concerning Fox News. Ah yes, surprise surprise they found something to complain about. They chose to centre on the game mode Capture the Babe (in which players can give the girls a “reassuring slap” should they begin to freak out), and the general sexism that is present throughout the game. Personally I find this hilarious, but then I’m a terrible person.  What Fox doesn’t seem to understand about Duke Nukem is that this is the whole point. It pushes these things right to the edge and makes fun of them, thereby disabling their potency. I’m not saying that they make it okay to do this to women, but by no means am I saying that that is their intention in the first place. It’s just immature fun.

I’d say the forum article is well worth a read, if nothing else, just for some of the comments:
Escapist Forum Thread

And here is what I suppose must be the Fox News piece itself:
Fox News DNF

DISCLAIMER: This blog does not encourage any form of sexism or domestic violence. Lock up your wives, your sisters, and your daughters. ‘Cos they be rapin’ e’rybody.
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3 comments:

  1. Ali Al-Jamri29 March 2011 at 15:23

    I was with you until the disclaimer.

    But seriously, I'm really looking forwards to this game. I always wanted to play Duke Nukem 3D but it's a tad too old-school for me and the controls are archaic. Anyway everyone even vaguely aware of the game is aware that the rampant chauvinism in it is meant to be ridiculously over-the-top. Typical fear-mongering Fox News making a mountain out of a molehill... Duke Nukem Forever takes itself about as seriously as Italian Spiderman does.

    And now for something only tangentially related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNLlwkwP64

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  2. Unknown29 March 2011 at 16:05

    You can change the video but clicking edit html when you compose, then in the embed html it will say width and length, just change those dimensions and viola!

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  3. Domrovitch29 March 2011 at 19:27

    I completely agree Ali, I've never played one myself, but you can hardly know much at all about gaming without picking up on certain... reputations, shall we say :P and btw, loved Italian Spiderman, made me giggle a treat.

    And cheers Charlotte, I'm learning the artful business of blogging slowly it seems but help is always welcomed. Especially when it means I don't look like an ignorant bumpkin!

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