A New Kind of Project
[Contains mentions of rape]
Today this post comes from the heart.
A few months ago, a sour event involving one of the grossest mishandlings of content promotion from a university I’ve ever seen has brought my anger and disgust at the Portuguese game dev community from a low simmer to full flame.
Long story long, some kids decided to remake a “controversial” - to say it euphemistically - game of the Portuguese game history mythos as their project for the year. In the original 80s game you can rob and kill various NPCs, rape your elderly landlady instead of paying her the money you owe her because she’s such a bore, asking for rent - but no worries, she likes it after all /s - rape your local prostitute by not paying her and have your avatar be raped by a racist mandingo caricature in return. All of this as graphically as it could be in ZX Spectrum pixel art.
This remake, supposedly, addresses those issues highlighted above in a more contemporary, respectful and serious manner. I say supposedly because it was never released to the public. What the public had to go on from this apparently “great nod to Portuguese history” - I’m paraphrasing a professor involved in grading these students who shared it on Facebook, before I instigated the “drama,” as the game dev community put it - was a teaser featuring the mandingo rapist reference, a bunch of *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* comments to guys saying they JUST LOVED THE ORIGINAL SO MUCH THEY WERE SO HAPPY TO SEE IT REMADE, and, I shit you not, a video posted on the university’s degree official Youtube channel of a gameplay trailer with dev commentary where they laughed at the raping of the elderly landlady - fair warning to the university: the internet never forgets, the video was downloaded and screenshots were taken.
I couldn’t give two shits if a group of edgelords decided to make this game privately, but a fucking university promoting it in this manner??? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. How many people did this go through in order to reach in this state? And in that entire process, no one from the faculty had the common sense of saying, “uh… maybe we shouldn’t put up the video in the official university channel where the commentator laughs at raping old ladies.”??? I was pissed at the way this was presented by official institutional channels so I started the “drama” by commenting on the university’s degree FB page that it was quite outrageous and in bad form the university promoting this game with this kind of material, and that as an institution that has the duty to care for the wellbeing and safety of both current and future students, and promoting so jovially a game where sexual assault is laughed at is at odds with that responsibility.
All content was promptly deleted from all accounts, no official statement from the institution, faculty was instructed to stay mum, direct blame to the students and mention they can’t stifle free speech. Very conveniently an interview to the students was released on a retro gaming zine, where they preached the same talking points as the faculty, conveniently circumventing the critique towards the university promoting the material in this manner, more talking points about freedom of speech (which ironically was stifled by the university itself, as no one asked to the materials to be taken down, and in fact them staying up would benefit discussion from both sides), and tongue in cheek complaining about “how sensitive people are now,” which made me doubt all the previous spiel in the interview about how it was a serious, contemporary remake.
Unfortunately for them, that interview went out on the very same day of the bombastic Blizzard news and the cultural issues surrounding the game dev community.
The remake incident reminded me of an episode in my university days where a professor showed the original 80s gameplay on Youtube during class, and all but me (the sole female of the group) were laughing at the rape scenes, even more on the mandingo rapes protagonist scene. It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life and I commented to my friend that the graphic rape scenes were fucked up, and he told me to relax because it’s just a game. That’s when I had the very palpable thought that if my class mates (mostly) all chose to rape me in that very moment, there would be nothing I could do about it.
This same professor has been found out that he has behaved extremely inappropriately towards female students for years, but because no accusations were proved when girls started to figure out they weren’t the only ones that he was a creep to, nothing happened. He is still teaching girls to cover their cleavage on their personal Facebook profiles because they look like sluts and will be deemed less employable.
All of this, the external big gaming companies, the small ecosystem of the Portuguese game dev scene, the incessant misogyny from vocal game consumers, all of this made me boil with rage, and against my more reserved and anti-social personality, I made a call for some of my lady professional colleagues to join me in my quest to find all the women and girls that either work or want to work in the games industry, either here in Portugal or Portuguese women out there, make a network of my women colleagues, and with this talent pool, give the tools and support to younger professionals and students who are thrust into a STEM-like, male-dominated environment - but with the added component that the consumers of our products are as toxic (or more) as the the development community - and help them thrive in it in order to prevent the great loss of female talent that could make games, and the game industry and community, better.
And this is how Women of the Portuguese Games Industry (WPGI) was born. Out of rage, sure, but tempered by hope of a better future for this amazing medium of communication and entertainment that I so love - videogames.
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