Spent far too long this week arguing on internet forums, which is like fighting sand, no ones really interested in discussion and will never be convinced to change their opinion. Its just arguing for arguing’s sake.For a niche game Dragon’s Crown has been quite prominent in the games media over the last week or two, the reactions have been mixed, even from the same website (e.g. compare the varying response on Penny Arcade between the comic, the positive comments from Mr Holkins and Krahulik and the negative article from Mr Kuchera). Though a lot of the commentary has been questioning the design of the sorceress characer (and to a certain extent the amazon).
One piece (more of a twitter post than a news piece) in particular by Mr Schreier on Kotaku was titled “Game Developers Really Need To Stop Letting Teenage Boys Design Their Characters” and consisted of two sentences where he said the Sorceress was designed by a fourteen year old boy. So more or less the level of “journalism” one expects from the gaming industry in general and Kotaku in particular. That piece was posted 12/04, on Tuesday Mr Kamitami (the main artist behind Dragons Crown) posted the image below on his Facebook page:
With the caption “It seems that Mr. Jason Schreier of Kotaku is pleased also with neither sorceress nor amazon,The art of the direction which he likes was prepared.” This lead to massive “discussions” on a lot of major gaming forums about what exactly the poorly translated comment meant, the two prevailing but opposed opinions being “Mr Kamitami is a homophobe and insinuating that Mr Scherier is gay as an insult” and “Mr Kamitami made a light hearted comment pointing out that he also draws male characters in the same exaggerated fashion”. Of course, online gaming forums being the haven of rational discourse that they are this disagreement over intent wasnt at all contentious ;)
Mr Schreier followed up Mr Kamitami’s facebook post with the following piece “The Real Problem With That Controversial, Sexy Video Game Sorceress” where he spent some time actually outlining his objections to the sorceress’ design. Mr Kamitami at this point apologised stating “While the picture of the dwarfs was meant to be a lighthearted joke, after it became bigger than I thought it would, I reflected on the rashness of it. I am sorry. I have no hard feelings about the article.”
Today Kotaku published a letter to them from Mr Kamitami where he talks about his design choices, the origin of the dwarf picture and so on and it makes for a fairly interesting read – http://kotaku.com/the-artist-behind-dragons-crown-explains-his-exaggerat-482450927
Personally I dont have an issue with the Sorceress’ design, I think it looks stupid but I dont think given the context and the overall aesthetic of the game that its particularly troublesome or offensive. I have no objection to other people feeling differently about it or the reporting on it. I just regret that a lot of the reporting was shallow and examined the design in isolation without giving any attention to the context it was used in or the level of detail that went into the games overall artistic design (in particular “it was designed for/by 14 year old boys!” really misses the point). In particular all of the Kotaku pieces read more like barely coherent blog posts than “proper” reporting.
Based on reading earlier interviews with Mr Kamitami I always felt that the joke was just a result of poor translation rather than a homophobic slur, I think if we werent so obsessed with controversey, both in the gaming media and media at large it likely would have been quickly clarified without all the drama. I found Mr Kamitami’s brief explanation of his design choices to be in line with both his previous work and with Dragon Crown’s overall design.
The tit for tat (no pun intended) stuff between Mr Schreier and Mr Kamitami seems all too common nowadays where journalists and game industry professionals seem to forget how the internet functions. Personally I find such exchanges widly unprofessional and just sort of, sad (e.g. the ones between John Walker & Arthur Gies, the furor over Robert Florence leaving Eurogamer, Adam Orth’s unfortunate comments about always online, etc.) Though this particular “altercation” seems to have come to a fairly reasonable end