4. Feminism
As a reasonable human being, whenever someone mentions feminism, I generally don’t condescend to them and use pseudo-facetious masculinity as thinly-veiled bigotry. Unfortunately, this isn’t the usual response. “Feminism” is a word that, to many, means troublemakers. In a large sense, that’s true. Feminists are rabble-rousers who upset the status quo. It’s a movement, and that is defined by the fact that one isn’t sitting still. While it comes in many forms, it isn’t “that thing from the sixties;” it’s an ideology that means addressing the unbalanced whenever and wherever it exists.
And in games, it exists. Right now, developers born in the sixties of feminism past are developing games, and they are built with the teenage power fantasies that Milne accredits to modern developers. Few would deny that women in games are portrayed poorly, but excuses are offered over solutions. Milne himself says that women “stuff” should be tackled only after more women are in the industry and it can be handled more maturely. This is almost elegantly wrong, if not for the fact that it is so insulting. His contention would have “women stuff” unaddressed, allowing the medium to stay festeringly frat and utterly unwelcoming to women.
Milne also argues that a person can rape another person in a game and it is acceptable narrative if told maturely, but the idea that people should be treated equal is just not something an audience can handle? That is catastrophic.
