We’re back this week with another Indie Game Spotlight! DON’T GIVE UP is about Tris, a sarcastic and cynical developer, who’s fallen into a slump and must work through that slump to find out who he is deep down. The game is about him. It’s also got other cool things like giant rainbow swords, the opportunity to play as your subconscious, cracking jokes on enemies, human vulnerability, and fighting demons.
Game creator Tristan (@tacopizzacats) spoke to us about the inspiration behind the game, real-life experiences, and the beauty of creative constraints. Read on!
Where did the inspiration for the story and the characters come from?
The game is actually semi-autobiographical! I was depressed for a while and just started making sprites, wasn’t even trying to make a game. Eventually I started experimenting with areas, they were way ugly at first (even uglier than they are now). But eventually I had enough pieces to try and make something out of it, I could say more, but that’s pretty much the gist of it. When I finally did get around to writing the story, I decided to make it about me and my struggle to step back into the light and less about something other people might want. Also when I say my game is ugly I actually say as a term of endearment to my own work, it’s a way of being humble but still loving what I’ve made.
What are some of the game’s mechanics?
OH SO MUCH. There’s 2 story lines, the protagonist Tris and his subconscious Subris that take place in their own respective worlds. A mechanic where you can trash talk your enemies to influence combat, real time battle, fairly free exploration with over 250 people and objects to interact with (including a 90’s references), a train system, and lots more!
How did you come up with the style for the game?
The style wasn’t so much a conscious choice, as a constraint of my abilities, haha! I used to draw a lot, but my skills aren’t what they used to be, and considering I did all the sprite work in the game, it had to be something I was comfortable with. That being said, I still think it looks very cohesive and intentional.
Are there any specific moments in the game that are inspired by a true story or an event in your life?The opening scene of the game is pretty true to life. It’s not really embarrassing for me to be open about that, and I think part of improving the difficulties of dealing with depression is not to hide it from the world.
Want to start playing DON’T GIVE UP? Head over to their Tumblr to find out how!!
I’m going through my thousand something drafts and deleting most of them, usually artwork I wanted to look at when I had time but time never came.
If you see one of these suddenly appear it’s cause I clicked the wrong button. Whoops.
Heard Tumblr’s been acquired by some wonky company and feel like heavily trimming down what I have here. I’m rarely ever on Tumblr anymore, so that’s why nobody’s seen me in years.
So yeah, just wanted to throw out a couple of projects that I thought were worth sharing with y’all. I don’t know how many people still follow my posts, I can’t even remember the last time I posted for that matter. But I had to take that chance and put in a good word for those two games.
Hopefully everyone who does follow me is doing well. I, personally, am probably doing better than I was 2 years ago. Not vastly so, but I do feel I’m in a better place right now. Mentally, at the very least. Much like Facebook, where I probably post once every 3-4 months cause relatives/old friends keep wanting me to pop by occasionally, I can’t promise I’ll be around much.
This is less of a return and more of me going “hey, how’s everyone doing, I’m still alive and hope you are too” before I head out again.
This was the other project I wanted to try and spread a little love for. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I certainly have issues with social interactions and anxiety, and no doubt a (perhaps not so) healthy dose of inner demons.
This is the developer’s second attempt at a Kickstarter, and the game looks really interesting so I would love to help it succeed. Unfortunately, the best I can do is spread the word and hope people are interested. There’s a demo, and the gameplay looks promising, but what really intrigues me is going to be the writing and the characters.
I almost never post anymore, but I do visit occasionally. Life just kinda gets in the way a lot of times, and speaking of lives…
This is a really interesting text-based game where you have to survive as a vampire in a world that knows they exist. Stay alive, gain power, make allies, and try not to fuck it all up. Wadjet Eye Games, developers of the amazing Unavowed and Blackwell series, are publishing this and that’s how I heard about it.
Richard Cobbett worked as a writer and designer on Sunless Seas, and I seem to recall that being pretty good insofar as the writing goes. What I’ve seen of Nighthawks’ premise so far, and what I’ve heard from Richard himself, has definitely left me with the impression that this will be a really good adventure.
~Selfie!~ [Fullbody commission] for @all-hail-trudos of Haley from Stardew Valley. Thank you for the support! >w<b I had fun elaborating the clothes from the sprite references (lace details!), and painting the sunflowers~
Dungeon Critters was announced as an all-new full length graphic novel!!!Natalie and I are really excited about this! It’s due to come out in 2020 from First Second, and we have a short preview below. Look forward to more updates because I won’t shut up about this comic.
Sorry for the silence over here lately but: I’m being published with Natalie Riess in 2020! Check it!
Bayonetta 2’s Sexless Sexiness and the Fetishization of Domination Through Violence
I think Bayonetta 2 is a lot of things. Most importantly, I think it’s a mechanically brilliant and exhilarating action game that makes excellent use of space. I think it bristles with a staggering amount of creative energy, and serves up one jaw-dropping spectacle after another after another, each of which individually could serve as the climactic setpiece in a lesser game. I think that, while many games tell stories about age-old conflicts between good and evil that leave the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, Bayonetta’s quasi-religious lore, the design of its angels and demons, and the enthusiasm with which the narrative careens along make this one of the most goofily enjoyable takes on the old formula.
But if there’s one thing I don’t think Bayonetta is, it’s a game that is in any way feminist or challenging to the patriarchal status quo. On the contrary, I think this game, like so many games (but moreso than most), reinforces patriarchal ideas about women’s bodies and women’s sexuality, and fails to provide us with anything that is actually empowering to women.
Yes, Bayonetta is extremely powerful. Yes, playing as her can feel fantastic. But the kind of power that she revels in is, I think, deeply patriarchal, and I believe that feminism is not, to quote a great Leigh Alexander line about video games, about feeling powerful and you getting your way. It is about the collective empowerment of women relative to men, but it is not so much about achieving power for women within existing patriarchal power structures as it is about challenging and dismantling those power structures and achieving a world in which women are valued and respected, like men, for their intrinsic humanity.
It’s made clear from the very beginning that Bayonetta 2 views its title character through a very patriarchal, very objectifying lens. Here’s the game’s opening:
The very first thing the camera does is make its way down between Bayonetta’s breasts and over her crotch. She is immediately objectified, actively broken down into pieces by the camera’s gaze. (I’ll refrain from using the term “male gaze” here but I absolutely think the gaze is patriarchal, and that people of all genders can internalize and identify with a patriarchal gaze.) This positions Bayonetta’s relationship to the camera and to the player as one in which she is being given attention and power as an object. She is deemed worthy of our gaze because she is physically beautiful, because the camera wants to roam over her body–if she weren’t so attractive, she wouldn’t be granted this attention and this power.
This moment also asserts that, for all her power, she is secondary; she submits to being ogled, broken down into pieces, objectified, and the player, who can make Bayonetta twirl and dance and perform attacks that tantalize him or her with a glimpse of the character’s naked body, is dominant. This is a very different relationship than the one that exists between player and character in most male-led third-person action games, in which the heroes’ power is not dependent on their sexual desirability, in which they are rarely if ever objectified, and in which, if they do appear naked (a la Raiden at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2), it’s played for laughs, and isn’t a reinforcing of patriarchal dominance and objectification. The idea of a camera erotically caressing a male video game hero in earnest is borderline absurd, and the fact that this is how the camera establishes its relationship to Bayonetta at the very beginning of the game cannot be dismissed as meaningless.
Some defend the character of Bayonetta as “sex positive.” The danger here is that it risks framing any objection to her as “sex negative.” So let me clearly state here that I love depictions of female sexuality and sexual desire that I think ring true, that aren’t just a product of male sexual fantasy but that seem like actual expressions of sexuality rooted in the characters’ own personal desires. In fact, I’m practically starving for such depictions. I think we need way, way more of them, not just in games but across all media.
Movies often fuck this up, too. Blue is the Warmest Color is one of my favorite films of the past few years. In fact, I feel much the same about it as a movie as I do about Bayonetta 2 as a game. I think Blue bristles with an energy that far surpasses that contained in most films. I find its unconventional structure exhilarating. But damn if it doesn’t frame its characters through a patriarchal lens and give us sex scenes that feel staged for the benefit of the audience rather than seeming to organically emerge from the characters’ desires. (New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis wrote the definitive piece on this, “The Trouble With Blue is the Warmest Color.”)
Bayonetta as a character has an air of sexiness about her. She winks and she flirtatiously cajoles and she blows kisses and she struts around with an arrogance that might seem erotic. But for all of her sexiness, Bayonetta is a weirdly sexless character. She doesn’t actually seem to want sex or emotional intimacy with anyone. And that’s unfortunate, because if Bayonetta were a character who possessed and expressed her own sexual desires, that might be somewhat challenging to patriarchal norms. Asking male players to control a female sex object is one thing; asking them to identify as a human being with a woman who expresses her own female sexual desire is something else. Recall, for instance, how the creative director of the game Remember Me was quoted as saying, "We wanted to be able to tease on (player character) Nilin’s private life, and that means for instance, at one point, we wanted a scene where she was kissing a guy. We had people tell us, ‘You can’t make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that’s going to feel awkward.’“
There’s absolutely nothing challenging or threatening to the player about Bayonetta’s sexiness. There are no serious rivals for Bayonetta’s attentions or affections. The player can enjoy the feeling that her performance of sexiness is for him or her alone, because it is.
It’s also worth asking: If Bayonetta’s air of sexiness isn’t actually about sexuality or sex or love or intimacy at all, what is it really about? It’s about power. The only thing that seems to turn Bayonetta on is her own power to dominate and destroy her enemies. And there is nothing more patriarchal, or at more direct odds with love, than the celebration of domination through violence.
Of course, as an action game in which you punch and kick and slash and shoot and obliterate enemies constantly, Bayonetta 2 is inherently about violence and power, and it’s very difficult for any such game to not celebrate and glorify those things. But where it becomes clear that Bayonetta’s sexiness is truly about the fetishization of power is in her torture attacks.
Bayonetta’s attire and attitude suggest the dominatrix, but she is not really a figure of pleasure and pain–she is a figure of power and pain. Her torture attacks conjure horrifying devices that turn her victims into a bloody mess. Her domination over them is absolute. This is not an exploration or expression of kink that challenges patriarchal values. Domination through violence is the ultimate patriarchal value.
For all her power, Bayonetta is not what I would call confident. To me, she is arrogant, narcissistic, and seemingly afraid of ever letting her guard down and being real with someone.
Recently in a conversation with bell hooks, Cornel West said that “Try a Little Tenderness” is not the same as “Say My Name.” Bayonetta is a “Say My Name” kind of character. I think we may be living in a “Say My Name” kind of world.
Sometimes I worry that we are moving toward a kind of feminism that believes that anything that feels good and empowering to an individual is inherently in line with feminist values. Feminism as feel-good marketing rather than feminism as radical political movement. I think that feminism must call upon all of us, women and men alike (since women can absolutely internalize and replicate patriarchy), to consider the values in the things we do and to acknowledge that sometimes, even if something feels good or empowering, it can feel good or empowering because patriarchy has placed value on the kind of power we’re exercising.
Of course, Bayonetta is a fictional character. Yes, she seems to enjoy her own sexiness and her own power. And yes, I want images of women in games, in films, on television, who embrace and enjoy their own sexiness and their own power, but in order for those images to truly be empowering and challenging to the patriarchal status quo, they need to involve characters who have value on their own terms as people and whose sexuality is grounded in their own desires and their own agency, not characters whose power is secondary, granted to them because they are deemed worthy of an objectifying patriarchal gaze, and whose sexiness exists only for the benefit of the player or viewer.
Sadly, Bayonetta seems to lack any real sexual desire or sexual agency of her own. From the opening shot in which the camera caresses her body to the pole dance set to “Moon River” while the credits roll at the end, Bayonetta 2 joins the mountain of other games that only serve to reinforce for the uncritical straight male player the idea that women’s bodies and women’s sexuality exist not for women, but are the property of men.
![atelier-aria:
“~Selfie!~ [Fullbody commission] for @all-hail-trudos of Haley from Stardew Valley. Thank you for the support! >w](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e8cc9e5f4deec1348b2f88e0a252cbdb/tumblr_p7uvslM7en1uxwulgo1_500.jpg)
