Bayonetta Meets Beyoncé

What she saves on fabric she spends on bullets.

This week I put the pop in "PopMatters" and talk about Bayonetta and Beyoncé.

I have mixed feelings about writing yet another post about Bayonetta's sexuality.  There are so many of them out there and the game is deeper than its image.  For those looking for a little variety, I highly recommend Todd Harper's weeklong series of Bayonetta posts that "leave discussions of her body and sexuality behind, in the hope of finding more about this fascinating game series to discuss than one issue alone."  It's good stuff!

Still, sexuality remains an integral part of Bayonetta's character.  She acknowledges her looks in a self-aware way most sexualized video game characters don't.  Bayonetta isn't one of those "Oops am I being sexy?" or "Wearing this metal bikini into battle is totally normal" type of characters.  She makes jokes about her admirers and taunts her enemies who try to lay hands on her.  The basic combat flow is about calculated restrictions: dodging enemies at the last second as they attack her provides the best attack opportunities and the highest bonuses.  Bayonetta punishes those who try to take more than she is willing to give.

This mixture of blatant sexuality and power resembles Beyoncé and plenty of other popular chart topping ladies.  I included a few mildly-NSFW videos in the post (just be ready to alt-tab at a moment's notice).  There's not a lot of subtlety in lyrics like: "Boy you know I look good as fuck / You wish I was your baby momma / Want me to come around and give you good karma, but no," but I argue that is precisely the point.  Acknowledging and embracing overt sexuality, even a type of sexuality that some people disagree with, doesn't negate your agency.

Then again, maybe all this is just me trying to convince myself that I don't need to nuke my browser's cache after watching a bunch of Beyoncé videos or hide my Bayonetta 2 disc under my mattress.

Mad About Madison

This post contains spoilers for Heavy Rain.

David Cage hoped Heavy Rain would show that video games could provide "adult experiences based on emotions; that it's possible to make games that are not based on shooting, on driving, on jumping, on solving puzzles, or whatever." In attempting to accomplish this, Heavy Rain relies on an unusual mixture of nontraditional gameplay and a heavy emphasis on its characters.

Because the game's mechanics are contextual, the characters must be sufficiently nuanced in order to convey believable experiences. However, it is extremely difficult to create characters that can inspire empathy without simply using them as tools to manufacture emotion. Unfortunately, in the case of Madison Paige, story and gameplay techniques mix with long-standing gender tropes to transform her from a person into a prop.

Our friend Denis Farr wrote a comprehensive piece over at The Borderhouse about the many thematic problems with Madison Paige, and I highly recommend reading it. As Denis states, "While violence visits all the characters in the game, there is a sense that all the scenes involving Madison have a tinge of sexual assault threatened on top of everything else." The perpetual threat of sexual violence is established in Madison's first scene, in which a group of attackers enter her apartment. At this point, most players will have completed a shower scene that contains several lingering shots of Madison's nude body, including a few focused directly on her breasts. David Cage explains this scene by saying:

"I think it really helps to build a relationship with the character. You saw her really fragile and vulnerable and naked, and this is out of the way now, and then you can really start to like her as a character. I think that the perception of Madison would have been very different without this first scene where you share intimacy."

While it is true that this scene shows her vulnerability and fragility, it does little explain her "as a character." Besides being an insomniac and having an inexplicable crush on Ethan, the only thing the player learns about Madison is that she is a constant target for sex, violence, and the combination thereof. The game never goes into her background, her motivations, her skills as a reporter, or the toll of all the harrowing situations in which she finds herself. Furthermore, the gameplay continually suggests that Madison can only react to the problems that befall her, instead of assuming control and agency over a potential situation, both before and as it develops.

Madison's thematic portrayal is continually defined in narrow, gendered terms: in addition to the nude/rapist scene, an insane doctor tries (and for some players, succeeds) to drug her, tie her up, and threaten to penetrate her with a power drill. In another scene, she goes to a nightclub looking for clues, and finds herself herself stripping for the club's sleazy owner at gunpoint. Madison is able to escape both of these situations, but in doing so does nothing to transcend her role as the game's avenue to explore sex and violence: she can kill the doctor with his own formal phallic symbol and she gets the best of the club owner by threatening to crush his testicles. As Denis notes: "To engage him on any level, she still had to threaten his sexuality."

The Heavy Rain DLC continues to define Madison in terms of sexuality and violence. In Giant Bomb's playthrough of The Taxidermist, she is threatened by the prospect of being turned into a literal sex object:



If she avoids being butchered and stuffed, the scene's climax sees her wield another large, deadly phallic symbol between her own thighs before she plunges it into her attacker's crotch. Again, Madison is defined as an object of sexual violence whose only means of engagement is reciprocal sexual violence.

David Cage describes the DLC as: "just a short story of something that happened to Madison." In doing so, he eloquently summarizes the main problem with Madison, as well as Heavy Rain in general: things "just happen," both in terms of the plot and ludic narrative. Madison seems to be unable to control what kinds of situations she finds herself in and is continually in a reactive state of existence. At the same time, the game's mechanics reinforce this lack of agency for both the player and the character.

Heavy Rain's gameplay is an inherently reactive: since the action takes place in quicktime events, there is little the player can do except wait and react to the prompts on screen. The player's main source of agency is deciding whether to activate these events. Disappointingly, yet not surprisingly, the three male playable characters (and the player who controls them) all have far more agency in terms of choosing their actions than Madison: Ethan can give up or fail the origami challenges. Jayden can decide whether to use lethal force, take drugs, or work on the investigation. Shelby can choose whether to help Lauren on multiple occasions and whether to have mercy on a sick, yet reprehensible old man.

As Madison, the player has no choice but to deal with things "that [just] happen" to her instead of making active decisions about what paths to take. Madison is strangely eager to act as Ethan's nurse and personal investigator, and the player cannot deviate from these roles. The nightclub and strip scene forces Madison into a sexually violent situation while simultaneously forcing the player to participate in it, as any attempt to deviate from tightly-scripted event stops the game's progress. To initiate the sex scene between Ethan and Madison, the player makes the decision as Ethan. It is both a thematic and ludic impossibility for Madison to control her sexuality: either the plot is foisting unwanted sex on her or the decision is being made by the player while they are controlling a male character.


The vast majority of actions the player and Madison take together are either in service of a male character or part of a narrative attempt to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and sexual violence. Be it mundane tasks like carrying groceries or harrowing action sequences, Ethan, Jayden, and Shelby have a variety of motivations and experiences that define multiple aspects of their characters. By contrast, even Madison' smallest actions, like putting on makeup or cleaning Ethan's wounds, serve to supporting male agency or traditional, vapid images of femininity. Heavy Rain confines its female lead to a supporting role, and in doing so fails the Bechdel test in both a narrative and gameplay sense.

Trying to create "adult experiences" in games is a noble goal, but Heavy Rain shows that it is not so much the genre, but the execution that matters. Even the "shooters" that Cage dismisses can convey complex stories and emotions. A game like Portal demonstrates how a character's vulnerability can be explored and utilized for dramatic effect while still allowing the character (and the player) to retain her agency. Chell is in constant danger, but the game and its story is structured to create a proactive experience: Chell and the player are empowered to take control of a situation; to face challenges on their own terms rather than just reacting to them. The result is not simply a story of female empowerment, but player empowerment.

Madison, David Cage, as well as the rest of us, could probably learn a thing or two from Chell.

A Bad Case of Avataritis

Two articles regarding avatars piqued my interest recently, compelling me to jot down my own ideas on the subject. The first is a piece by Martyn Zachary from The Slowdown titled Avataritis, in which Martyn laments the over-abundance of character customization in videogames to the detriment of in-depth development of a preconceived character. The second piece led me to the first and is it itself a response to Martyn's Avataritis. Once again, Chris Lepine of The Artful Gamer draws my attention - this time with a psychological approach to avatar creation. Though I will cover their points briefly, reading these two insightful posts is well worth your time.

I would not be the first to criticize the videogame industry for churning out uninspired stories starring the strong and capable white male killing everything that moves - or the objectified female doing the same. I do not believe it is particularly contentious to say videogame narratives lack character diversity in numerous ways. If we take this for a given, character customization can be, as Martin puts it, "a convenient narrative cop-out." Developers can avoid the pitfalls and potential costs of writing a unique, compelling and well-structured non-normative personality by giving that responsibility to the player.
Lepine follows up by identifying an "armoured gamer" trait that restricts whom a player can relate to based upon their physical similarities. Many gamers may see, and are encouraged to see, avatars as an extension of themselves. They immerse themselves into a story by creating a physical representation of themselves within the game world . In an industry dominated by white males, diversity is expectantly deficient. I combine Chris and Martin's sentiments when I spread the blame around, putting the onus of change on gamers and developers alike.

When given the opportunity, I exclusively play a female character. My Mass Effect character is a red head with a mean scar across her face. In Fallout 3, I did my best to create a lead of mixed descent. I do this specifically to experience non-normative stories. I interpret my father-daughter Fallout 3 story differently than I would a father-son story. In this regard, character customization allows me to circumvent the game industries reliance on normative player characters. If I am going to tell my own story within a story, I would prefer it be unique.
I also enjoy making my character each time. I can easily spend an hour designing my avatar and experimenting with all my aesthetic options. Here is where the creative process falls short. As Martin points out, "character creation" is better described as "character transformation." Our protagonists always have some foundation, be it in their physical or mental characteristics, that exists within a preconceived world. This is where homogeneity shows itself.

Bonnie Ruberg of Heroin Sheik and Simon Ferrari of Chungking Espresso have both called out Bethesda for their sloppy inclusion of female protagonists in Fallout 3 - sentiments I can safely affirm. Alex Raymond of While !Finished finds similar normative trends in Mass Effect, and actually received a response from Bioware defending their design decisions by stating they are "unapologetically aiming for a wide audience." Both these games successful depict diversity in important ways, but still succumb to common narrative tropes.

This presumption that gamers are incapable of engaging with protagonists unlike themselves, particularly when it comes to race, is insulting. This belief simplifies both players and avatars. Chris Lepine puts it well with this statement:

"We don’t have to be, want to be, or know how to be the characters we see on screen. All we need is characters that perform understandable actions and reactions. Relations. Emotions. Desires. Wants. Wishes, drives and urges. None of these ultimately have to do with ethnicity, gender, looks or otherwise."
As a Latino gamer, I still find numerous stories starring white characters engaging. Other gamers can find non-white male protagonists immersive also, even if it takes some getting used to. Humans have an amazing ability to empathize and interact with individuals unlike themselves. Designing games based upon our preconceived notion of what would be easiest for the majority of players is a terrible idea. The result is already apparent: a plethora of stories cut from the same cloth which, on occasion, sloppily include stereotypes as if to appease a quiet minority.

There are a lot of diverse stories out there, and plenty of writers to tell them. A membership survey by the International Game Developers Association finds its development community to be 83 percent white and predominantly male. Naturally its output is largely homogeneous; but it need not be. Ursula K. LeGuin, and numerous female authors, have told compelling stories through the eyes of male protagonists, Ian McEwan and a few male authors have done the same with female protagonists.

One's personal identity need not limit their creative capabilities or grant them arbitrary authority to speak for their own very diverse community. Avatar creation, be it top-down or bottom-up, requires tact and maturity. For many, the games industry seems to be short in both departments. That is on all of us to amend.