Text/Mian Mian (Wu Lukong also assisted in this article)
Lead
Who would have thought that a game's praise rate would go from 80% to 36% in two days.
And the cause is 11 optimization content involving modifying character standing pictures and deleting low-level interesting words, which has caused users such as Douban, NGA and Weibo to hedge the good and bad reviews of this game as a competitive platform.
The game is only 36% positive
The gender position contradictions involved behind them will not be unfamiliar to everyone. Also controversial is the "gender marketing" that the production team questioned, because the 11 optimized content was completed within 48 hours of going live and the team was only 6 people.
From the perspective of motivation, whether the game involves intentional "gender marketing" is difficult to confirm. But judging by the results, this is a disaster-level game marketing. It not only destroys the player's trust in domestic games, but also the massive bad reviews are also dangerous for the EA stage (early access) of the game, and the feedback of non-gameplay is not positive for the development of the game.
Naturally, "simulator events" are not isolated. A small stone can also stir up thousands of waves, when the previously silent minority enters the seat, there will be more and more stages of binary contradictions, and the "simulator event" is just a microcosm. This article intends to use "Retirement Simulator" as a small incision to review the events and explore whether the game does not stand up to scrutiny on gender issues. Does it have an impact on the development of indie games?
Controversial optimizations
01
A tragedy caused by an optimization
When the topicality overrides the game itself, the game reputation is either excellent or extremely bad. Retirement Simulator unfortunately falls into the latter category, with 64 percent of Steam's bad reviews complaining that it's unfair to men and a spy on the female camp.
Perhaps you will wonder, retirement is a beautiful thing, how to cause the topic of confrontation between men and women, is it because the retirement age is not the same? (Mistaken)
Out of curiosity, after combing through the timeline of events and their causes and consequences, the experience of "Retirement Simulator" is indeed somewhat magical, and the timeline of events is as follows:
To put it simply, this indie game "Retirement Simulator" started out with a good reputation, launched on April 20, and on the evening of April 21, according to the developer's Weibo self-report, it is still 80% of the special praise. It is this Weibo mention that includes character painting, dialogue content and character label optimization, as well as the producer's expression of "equality between men and women" on Douban, which has caused controversy on Weibo, Tieba and forums, and has been called evidence of "changing all women ugly" and "pandering to feminist trolls". On April 22, the game's Steam page poured in bad reviews, and on the evening of the same day, the praise rate fell to about 60%, while by the evening of the 23rd, the game's praise accounted for only 36%. Not to be outdone, female players opened a retweet draw and appealed for support.
Coincidentally, during this time, the two camps held similar views despite their different positions, "If we do not brush up on good (bad) reviews, our needs will be ignored." ”
Male left female right
At this time, the balance was not yet out of balance. But female players began to recover their sanity after April 24, and what is the respect for the lack of female mainlines for the time being? Some players also jump out of the gender perspective to propose that the optimization be completed in less than two days, is it related to marketing? Games in the EA stage do not polish the gameplay, but consider whether political correctness is the opposite of the cart before the horse? At this time, "Retirement Simulator" is already difficult to ride the tiger and the two sides are not flattered.
Things are actually not complicated, overall, behind the game controversy is the competition for the right to speak. The male player's point of view is: the producer did not recognize the gold lord, and the female boxer bought the game? Since the producer listened to the opinions of female players, they brushed bad reviews to show a sense of existence, and mocked female players for only saying that they did not buy. Female players are more like being wrapped up in a move forward. The Douban group "Female Players Federation" involved in this incident will find that there is not much discussion about the game in the group.
Whether "Retirement Simulator" belongs to the male game is not a matter of the moment. However, the producer Douban said that the equality between men and women has not been achieved, modifying the options for women's standing painting and dialogue, but there is no response to the stereotypical labels of "daddy" and "ordinary and confident" that men say, and a bowl of water is not flat, does this involve reverse discrimination?
Producer Douban dynamics
But in any case: Retirement Simulator's praise rate should not be paid for by female players, and women do not need to prove themselves to buy or give praise. After all, the original intention of the game purchase and evaluation should be out of curiosity and feelings about the game itself, right?
02
Game Femme or Femininity?
Without the investigation, there was no right to speak, and out of curiosity I went to play for 8 hours.
The first is two diagrams on the cusp of the storm:
Standing painting of a figure involving a male gaze
Smoothed body after optimization
Does the image of the Retirement Palace involve the male gaze? The answer, of course, is "yes." The staff of the retirement office has one person and two jobs, and during the day is a pretty girl in formal clothes, who transforms into a breathtaking retirement palace in fantasies and dreams, such an identity setting is unnecessary but fits the needs of male protagonists. From a visual point of view, a part of the visual center is also on its secondary sexual characteristics, which is in line with the meaning of male gaze - women as the observed, men are the subject of gaze.
But the chest is erased, seemingly once and for all, but it makes it unspeakable and can be changed at will and become taboo. The body itself is not original sin, what is problematic is the gaze with position. If women can choose female protagonists, they can also freely choose to gaze at gender or animal bodhisattvas (?). It seems to be more convincing with reason, but this has also become an imitation of "male condensation", such as the controversial Weibo number "Two-dimensional Gaze Male Bot".
Does the character involve slandering a male figure? Judging from the gender ratio and positive and negative nature of the characters, there is no case of individual slander against men or women. But individual labels throw with discrimination and stereotypes.
Are these optimizations worth thinking about more than the words of female gamers?
03
The topic of "flattery" that cannot be avoided
The controversy about "charming men" in various games has a long history, and "Retirement Simulator" is not an isolated case.
A domestic independent game developer told The Teahouse that it had also received criticism from players about the female character of the game before, but because the feedback received was after the release of the game, the matter was closed.
Such controversies are more common in the two-dimensional games and animation categories. For example, the characters of games such as "White Night Aurora", "Original God", and "Blue Route", as well as the animation "Changing Dolls Fall in Love" in January this year, the characters have been criticized by female players for their excessively large second sex characteristics, and female players will also be expelled from female compatriots for expressing "I also love to watch". However, because of the high loyalty of users in this category, there is a continuous and comfortable aesthetic style and demand, objections to appearance are either ignored as "non-players" or automatically dissolved by internal conversion into "charming houses".
Diametrically opposed Weibo comments
Comments about proto-gods
By amplifying the environment into the world cultural environment, there are more dual issues fermenting, especially in overseas markets. A game manufacturer shared with a teahouse that when going to Europe and the United States to go to sea in a cooking simulation game, although black characters were deliberately added, in the end, players complained: black people making fried chicken involves discrimination. Compared with the game content, whether the studio is sexist and anti-gay has also become a consideration for people to resist, such as the experience of Detroit: Becoming Human.
In such a harsh public opinion environment, "Retirement Simulator" is positioned as a mass game, which does not guarantee user loyalty, and the value of game content has not kept up, which is indeed too risky.
Behind the frequent topics of flattery, it cannot be ignored that the size of female players is growing, and they are making their voices heard. According to the 2019 China Game Industry Report, the total number of female gamers in China in 2019 has reached 300 million, accounting for 46.2%. But on the other hand, when the new player says the doubt of "charming man", in the eyes of those who are already familiar with the rules of the game, they become the strange person who says "the king is not wearing new clothes".
"A game that targets men, why embrace female boxing?"
In the face of such a problem, when we understand that the game field of female players has expanded from simulated management to multiple fields, why does Retirement Simulator, as a game that integrates cards, music games, simulated management and cultivation, belong to only male players?
Perhaps what really needs to be broadened is not the player's vision, but the player's strength.
04
From retirement simulators to gender issue simulations
Why did a retirement simulator end up as a gender issue simulator? In addition to the producer's self-initiative issue setting and the factor of female players joining, what is more important is the division and opposition within the group.
An increasingly rigorous review environment, complemented by self-censorship and mutual reporting, has led to a conservative environment for game development, further emasculating player demand. And that's why both men and women in the Retirement Simulator incident are worried that "if you don't say it, your needs will be ignored." But left-right mutual bo can not bring good results, and no one knows where the solution exit is.
Questions about how the Retirement Simulator event will affect indie game development? The teahouse consulted two independent game industry professionals.
Independent game producer Kuriko (pseudonym) believes that in a complex environment, it is difficult to avoid deviations in the original intention of the game from development to arrival at the user, and it will feel more uncomfortable. "We may have started out of our own hobbies, aesthetics or XP, but in the current complex and changeable environment, it is easy to ferment different meanings, or more than the original meaning, which is a very sad thing." 」
On how to handle the boundaries between game project establishment and development and user feedback. He believes that it is necessary to prioritize and choose the highest priority factors at present, "if the project content is really put in the highest priority, what is the fear of other voices?"
Another game industry related person A believes that "the game itself is no problem, and the marketing operation is really a negative teaching material." If you don't pry, you have to talk less, and everything will be magnified in the spotlight.
Not every indie game developer will be so determined, and indie games are going through a more rigorous test.
Does a perfect game really exist? Perhaps I'm looking forward to a fun game more than a completely correct one.
Finally, I would like to share the experience of playing "Retirement Simulator". The retirement game is documentary in the plot, using transition animations, choices, events and other ways to show social issues such as "old age for the elderly", "old age with grandchildren", "eight children", "domestic violence", etc., of which the dialogue with the granddaughter is more interesting. But the gameplay is too stacked with numerical values, if it is not a time management master, I am afraid it is difficult to complete the wish 100%. In the end, a year and a half later, I became an "idle room master" at the expense of my wishes to deal with events, study hard, climb mountains to improve my own value, but the travel master's wish was only completed for one week, and because the value was not up to standard, I missed many time-bound events. In the end, because the character was too tired and suffered from depression, he drank a can of Coke plus four weeks of happy water to recover his health.
I can't help but sigh that this is a poem and a distant place that cannot be reached after retirement.