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Girlfriend Mode-gate

In an interview with Eurogamer, John Hemingway said a gaffe. In all of the commentators both condemning his words and the two I could find being idiots about the matter, no one seems to have called what he said what it is, a gaffe. A gaffe is usually a term referred for politicians, but I see no reason why it can’t be used in this case. For those who don’t know a gaffe is when a politician unintentionally tells the truth. In this case it is an offensive truth that perpetuates the status quo of women in gaming being second-class citizens. It is the truth in Mr. Hemingway’s mind.

Now I will grant that he called it girlfriend mode by his own admission “for lack of a better term” and really didn’t put any thought into it. In some ways that’s even worse. This is where the lead developer’s mind goes to when put on the spot to describe a feature in his game. His boss has come out not like a white knight defending his charges (employee) and more like Dontos Hollard from A Clash of Kings. I wont fault him for the effort, just the way he went about it. Instead of attacking those offended it would have been easily resolved with a quick two line apology from Hemingway, while you quietly, but resolutely stood behind your man. “I’m sorry that I unthinkingly used a term that offended members of the gaming community. The feature is not called girlfriend mode and I should never have nicknamed it as such.” There I did your PR’s job for you.

But another meme that has come out of this episode is the idea that Eurogamer is to blame for blowing up the issue. What’s kind of frightening is that this isn’t coming from forum trolls or commenters, but from members of the video game journalist establishment. There’s a lot of ill informed, logically faulty and down right factually wrong with Colin Moriarty’s piece in response to the issue and I could go line by line pointing everything wrong in it, but I’d rather not. Others have pointed it out already and he or anyone whose mind could be changed will never see it. However, even disregarding the sexist apologism and overall ignorance of an entire issue the major thing that gets me is when he brings up Jason Schreier’s post on developers not wanting to talk to gaming press and be more open and uses this as fodder to why that is. In essence what Mr. Moriatry is advocating for is abolishment of journalistic principals to appease gatekeepers. I went over it a few times because I thought I must have read it wrong. But no he is saying that we shouldn’t hold people accountable for what they say in interviews if its off message, shouldn’t ask follow up questions about what was said and just sweep it all under the rug.

People reacting to the Eurogamer piece have been called out as sensationalizing it or taking it out of context despite the fact that those responding have done neither. Hemingway’s own words have sensationalized the piece, because what he said was sensational and just because you don’t know the context doesn’t mean those you disagree with are in the same boat. People haven’t just taken the phrase ‘girlfriend mode’ they’ve pointed to the whole paragraph in which that phrase appears and what it means in the larger context of the gamer community. They may just understand it better than you do.

I could go on for pages, but others have already done so.

The List

To get you caught up, Johnny Kilhefner was kind enough to create a Storify post about it.

Stephen Totilo of Kotaku comments, saying there is a better term and it came with Super Mario Galaxy, “co-star mode.”

Tami Baribeau aka Cuppy uses this as an opportunity to drop some Feminism 101.

Miss Lemonade (couldn’t find her real name) talks about what “The Girlfriend Experience” really is.

Ian Miles Cheong, editor in Chief of Gameranx, throws his hat into the ring saying “…it doesn’t mean Gearbox should get a free ticket form being “called out” for using the term.”

Cohen Edenfield writing for Medium Difficulty writes a piece starting off with the inflammatory title “John Hemingway Must Die” but thankfully the piece itself doesn’t follow up on the tone of it.

David Wildgoose, over at PCPowerPlay, adds on with “Girlfriend Mode” And the Definition of Sexism.”

Tyler Wilde at PCGamer also comments that we shouldn’t let things like this just slip by.

Mary Hamilton at UK’s The Guardian weighs in on the Hemingway’s comment.

Carol Pinchefsky at Forbes adds her two cents. Forbes, this is the place that ran the fake girl gamer article.

I do want to thank this incident for introducing me to a new blog, Play Like a Girl written by Clarice Meadows and her response to it.

Brandon Sheffield talks casual sexism over at his piece for Gamasutra. I would also like to highlight this comment, thought you can ignore pretty much all the rest as per standard internet policy.

Phil Hartup at New Statesman misses the point entirely but in the area of what games are by looking only backward to what they were rather than forward to all the things they could be. Though he is against the term as well.

Denis Farr writes a short piece on his blog Vorpal Bunny Ranch airing out his issue with Gearbox and what they represent in the wider community.

And Jonah Stowe at Game Church weighs in and I was with him until he perpetuated that it was also somehow Eurogamer’s fault.

Robert Florence in his Lost Humanity column addresses not the incident, but what happens next or rather what always fails to happen next.

Dennis Scimeca uses his weekly column at The Escapist to talk about the tactics used in such a teachable moment as this.

There was also a response by David Jaffe that I haven’t the stomach to read and I am utterly confused why he weighed in on this at all.

[Addition] I just found this post by Anjin Anhut of How To Not Suck At Game Design, some two months after the fact. It’s clear and to the point about the issue as a whole, but the main reason I’m including it is because it has screenshots of all the relevant tweets by Randy Pitchfork and Gearbox Game’s official twitter account.

[Addition +1] Jen Shaffer has just gotten around to posting her thoughts on the subject and how it connects to the larger scope of advertisement in and out of the gaming community.

6 Responses to "Girlfriend Mode-gate"

Matt Robb says:

August 22, 2012 at 9:29 am

I think the real problem with how people are reacting to his statement is that no one wants to start with what he most likely meant.

On one end, we have people taking the stand that he must believe that females suck at games. I tend to disregard this as people who are focused on the sexism subject and tend to reach maximum offense levels at anything that nudges the issue.

On the other end, we have people who just disregard the whole thing as a non-issue, which also isn’t fair, because, let’s face it, he used a gender-based term.

As you said, it was a gaffe, and should be treated as such. I’m not a fan of the unexplained apology that your PR line supplied. Anyone can spout out an apology without any meaning behind it. I’m also not a fan of the purely defensive stance he took. If you offend someone, you should explain yourself *and* apologize.

Take the fellow running for Congress in Missouri and his “legitimate rape” comment this week. Before I heard any opinions, while just hearing the sound bite, the word “idiot” came to mind. You could tell by how he was talking that he wasn’t really thinking about what he was saying. It was also pretty plain that it was an incredibly stupid thing to say no matter what his beliefs are. But since he’s in politics everyone and their dog is using the opportunity to tear him to pieces. I’m sure he’s lost his election not on the strength or weakness of his beliefs and abilities, but simply because he said something that was not only phrased badly, but did not need to be said.

Much the same as John Hemingway.
Eric Swain says:

August 22, 2012 at 9:56 am

Few things. This isn’t towards you, but rather to the general sentiment that we should get off the sexism angle and really should have spent the time discussing the concept of variance in difficulty for games to be more accessible and that this is all a distraction. I would have loved to talk about the design and artistic implications of such a system. The same type of talk that happened with the release of Kirby’s Epic Yarn. But one has to get their own house in order before inviting other people in.

As for a gaffe, it doesn’t have to speak to truth as regarding reality, merely the truth of what the person believes. An apology at this stage, yes would be nothing more than a cynical ploy to avoid the blowup and really it would have been the next day. But an apology right when things hit a fervor pitch could have been done after he realized the stupid shit he says and realized it hurt people. Everyone wants to give Hemingway the benefit of the doubt so in those circumstances I would too.

The congressman in Missouri, Todd Akin is a different case entirely. What he said, while stupid, is an encapsulation of what he and many others in his party believe that no one was paying attention to. And I mean they actually believe it to be true, it’s not just a political excuse, they defy biology and actual believe this. He has sponsored legislation following up on this belief, that got next to no press. Hemingway phrased a good idea very poorly, Rep. Akin is running on this shit. It’s not about what he said, it’s what he supported. And the awful thing is, according to recent polling he’s still in the lead. The Republican party will successfully distances themselves from him, labeling him as some fringe member, rather than the accurate representation of the party’s stance towards women and people will forget allowing his beliefs to affect policy.

Words have meaning and this dismissing of them is harmful on so many levels. Yes, people misspeak, but sometimes their words speak deeper truths that we would no confront otherwise. My biggest fear is this will disappear with nothing learned and nothing fixed.
Matt Robb says:

August 22, 2012 at 10:38 am

The comparison between Akin and Hemingway was kind’ve my point. By and large, they’re being treated the same way, except Akin believes what people think he believes, whereas Hemingway doesn’t seem to, because they both produced a gaffe.

In Akin’s case, what he said was a red flag for what he believes. I hope he loses his election because of what he believes, not wha the said.

In Hemingway’s case (in my opinion) it appears beliefs were ascribed to him that aren’t guaranteed by his words. Based on his defensive stance, I get the impression he was counter-offended by people calling him sexist. Could the whole thing have gone over better if he apologized while stating his stance or beliefs on the subject? Sure. That said, did anyone apologize to him for calling him sexist when he isn’t? Not that I’ve noticed. His gaffe was compounded by the counter-mistakes made by people blowing what he said out of proportion. His reputation has been damaged more than deserved, and the anti-sexism movement has been damaged by declaring an enemy where one did not exist.

If you want to successfully promote a cause, you need to ensure that your targets are legitimate, or a good portion of the more moderate of the population will begin to disregard you. If we want to clean up the very real problem of sexism in the gaming community, we need to take care that the intensity of our reactions match the events that occur.
Eric Swain says:

August 22, 2012 at 10:47 am

Here’s the problem with that thinking and I’ve seen it perpetuated elsewhere. I have to think that the people calling Hemingway sexist were on twitter, facebook or some other ephemeral means of communication because no one in the posts above call him that. They make the very clear distinction that it is what he says and the ideas that the term perpetuates are sexist. Some of the posts go on at length to explain that distinction. Even unintentionally people will perpetuate and reinforce sexists/racist/ablest etc ideology without realizing it. That is what Hemingway has done here.

The other issue is, is that for Hemingway this is a first time we can point at him for this type of thing, it isn’t the first time we can point at Gearbox as a whole for sexist pandering. It may not be true for the individual, but as a whole the institution is not inclusive or friendly to such inclusion. There is a subtle difference to be made between what a person is and the culture that person is apart of.
Matt Robb says:

August 22, 2012 at 11:14 am

Very valid points. I was unaware of the institutional trend being worse than the norm. The more we clean up the extreme, the better the “norm” gets.

A thought: Does the community track this sort of behavior in any organized fashion? I personally was only looking at the specific incident. It would be helpful if there was a site I could visit where we could track these events and so understand which instances seem more like “innocent” mistakes versus which mark a trend for an institution of some kind.

Frankly, I’d like for it to be easy to know that, if I went out and nabbed a copy of Borderlands 2, I’d be supporting such behavior, and so could avoid doing so.
Eric Swain says:

August 22, 2012 at 12:57 pm

As far as I know there is no site that officially tracks this sorts of blow ups. At Critical-Distance we track the issues and writings on them as they happen on a week by week basis. A truly big one will make it to the year end round up and these will be discussed on the year end podcast, but the keeping track of an individual or company’s behavior is really one of collective memory.

In Gearbox’s case I’ve read about some previous statements by the company I wasn’t aware of and there is the big matter that this is the company that bought, finished and released Duke Nukem Forever, which is a whole other level of problematic. Every time something like this happens though people can point to previous instances. Some are more well known than others, but all you can really do is ask somebody when something happens.

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