Girls, guns, and games

So there is a new video game out (which is apparently pretty bad in terms of gameplay) where the whole idea is that you’re a woman who is tired of those nasty ol’ men making lewd comments at you, so you’re going to finally get some revenge in the form of tasty, tasty murder.  Think Grand Theft Auto but reverse it so the whole goal is killing hookers, except instead of hookers it’s men on the subway/street/whatever.

I have talked in the past about the Call of Duty effect – the ability of video games to attract the interest of potential shooters.  A kid playing Call of Duty or Red Dead Redemption might think “hey, guns are cool, maybe I could try shooting a real gun”.  I believe that we should still embrace those kids and try to fold them in to the shooting culture.  Believe me, if you like Call of Duty, you’ll like IDPA.

But this game, the “Hey Baby Game” is kind of the opposite of that.  Now I’m not outraged about a game where the central premise is “to murder men”, in fact I’m not even outraged at all.  I’m more disappointed than anything.  Not as a shooter, because this really doesn’t have an impact on the shooting culture, but rather as a former hardcore and now casual gamer.  I’m disappointed that someone spent time and money creating this game, because exactly to whom are they going to market this?  If I was a female gamer, I’d be pissed – this game is basically pandering to you, saying “oh you must be sooooo tired of all those nasty, nasty men out there, let’s go kill them.”  It never occurs that maybe female gamers are perfectly happy with Halo or Mario Kart or whatever kids are playing these days.

As a male gamer, I’m just kind of rolling my eyes in exasperation.  Every couple of years, some idiot gets an idea like this.  They make a controversial game about murdering hookers/men/priests/deer/etc and the media gets all bent out of whack for a couple of weeks and you see stories about how video games make people violent (which are sometimes repeated by gun owners, but that’s another article) and then the furor dies down and the crappy game doesn’t sell, because it was a crappy game.

Maybe someday people will realize that gamers don’t want to buy cheesy games with lame graphics and no challenge, but then again I highly doubt that.  Until then, I’ll continue to bear the double stigma of a gamer and a gun owner!

5 Comments

  1. I’m not convinced this isn’t a publicity stunt, or a fake product as part of a guerrilla marketing plan for some other game. There’s no information about the developer other than the name (“LadyKillas, Inc.” really?), and the order page for the “deluxe” version claims that it’s “Sold out due to popular international demand”. But hey, if you give them your email address, they’ll be happy to keep you up to date.

    The two game covers shown on the site are blatently photoshopped, with their cover art superimposed onto stock shots of what appear to be an Xbox and PS2 game case. Unfortunately, a quick Google search shows that whomever these guys really are, they’ve successfully gotten coverage everywhere from the NY Times and local TV stations, to every corner of the blogosphere, so even assuming it’s a cheap publicity stunt for some other game that’ll be announced later, marketing has definitely accomplished their mission.

    About the only thing that gamers can do is put whatever game this is actually promoting in a permanent spot on the shun bench when it eventually releases.

  2. I’m a gamer and a gun owner. I’ll admit that video games have sometimes made me want to buy a particular gun because it’s in a game. I usually refrain.

    I think Magnum Research should be thanking the movie Snatch and the video game Counter Strike because I’m willing to bet that the appearances of the “Deagle” in both of them accounts for a certain percentage of their sales

  3. Jesse,

    You don’t think that firearm makers occasionally pay for product placement just like cola bottlers?

  4. You can tell when gun companies pay for product placement – it’s the movies/tv shows where their gun(s) are referenced CORRECTLY, and not as a “Glock 7”.

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