Hey, Baby

Hey Baby

Hey Baby is a first person shooter game, and as such I spent most of the game oscillating wildly between looking up and looking down. I only managed to score one kill.

The gameplay is simple. You are wandering around the streets with a gun. Men come up to you and harass you--from the "Hey, baby, smile" right up to the "I WANT TO RAPE YOU BITCH". You kill them. Or, in my case, end up looking down. Which is usually what happens when I experience street harassment, unfortunately.

It's caused quite a bit of buzz among the feminist bloggers, naturally. Some are uncomfortable with the violence. Others suggest it might be a good way of educating men about street harassment.

So what do you think, WGW? Is this game a good idea? Is there a point to it existing? And, finally, is the rather poor gameplay a problem?

What, like, they don't even shoot back or anything? What's the fun in that? Might as well have a Columbine FPS game. I hear Harris and Klebold got picked on a lot and enjoyed taking it out on unarmed strangers.

Also.

Quote :

And then you remember, you’re packing a 3' long .80 caliber machine gun that’s locked and loaded.

Fail.

EDIT: And objectively bad from a gamer perspective. Just going by what I've managed to load from the trailer so far, we have:

1.) "A 3' long .80 caliber machine gun" that looks... nothing like a gun, and nowhere near large enough to fit that description. Might pass for an AK knocked together in an outdoor factory in Vietnam if you squint, but that would be insulting to the VC.
2.) PC FOV is apparently located between the knees.
3.) Graphics so bad that they don't even belong in the last decade. Extremely stilted animations.
4.) Inability to remove the mouse cursor from the screen.
5.) Everyone is apparently just milling around, minding their own business, waiting to get shot.

Penguin wrote:

What, like, they don't even shoot back or anything? What's the fun in that? Might as well have a Columbine FPS game. I hear Harris and Klebold got picked on a lot and enjoyed taking it out on unarmed strangers.

I think the point of it is that they shoot first, so to speak. Their behaviour is threatening, and therefore you end it with your big fuckoff gun. Or something. Some of the feminist blogs are a little uncomfortable with the power difference there.

Quote :

Also.

Quote :

And then you remember, you’re packing a 3' long .80 caliber machine gun that’s locked and loaded.

Fail.

I just read that as "big fuckoff gun". Maybe they should have used those words instead.

ZoZo wrote:

I think the point of it is that they shoot first, so to speak. Their behaviour is threatening, and therefore you end it with your big fuckoff gun. Or something. Some of the feminist blogs are a little uncomfortable with the power difference there.

So far, going from the trailer, you have to bump into them before they even say anything.

EDIT: So, IOW, it seems that the only challenge in the game is overcoming the bugs to actually shoot someone.

Quote :

I just read that as "big fuckoff gun". Maybe they should have used those words instead.

Yeah. No such gun exists and it would be ridiculous if it did.

Penguin wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

I just read that as "big fuckoff gun". Maybe they should have used those words instead.

Yeah. No such gun exists and it would be ridiculous if it did.

A lack of realism? In a video game? Great Scott this is unheard of!

Somath Cegem wrote:

Penguin wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

I just read that as "big fuckoff gun". Maybe they should have used those words instead.

Yeah. No such gun exists and it would be ridiculous if it did.

A lack of realism? In a video game? Great Scott this is unheard of!

Inorite? Next time he'll be telling us that fat Italian plumbers can't jump to several times their height, and eating mushrooms isn't particularly effective either.

Okay but in a game that's described as an "FPS," maybe a little less gun sloppiness wouldn't be amiss. Plus, if they're going to take the time to describe it, why that garbled not-gun mess? Why not pick a real gun? Would it be that hard?

InkWeaver wrote:

Okay but in a game that's described as an "FPS," maybe a little less gun sloppiness wouldn't be amiss. Plus, if they're going to take the time to describe it, why that garbled not-gun mess? Why not pick a real gun? Would it be that hard?

The South Park Video Game was an FPS and was about as real as you would expect. Being labelled a certain genre doesn't mean you have to play by all the rules that most other games of the same type do.
What you are claiming would be like me saying that games like Mario Kart and Mod Nation Racers are not racing games because they don't have real cars and give you power ups which isn't very realistic.

Yes, but the whole game seems sloppy. It's not just "oh the gun isn't really a gun," but also the fact that it seems the camera is completely wonky, the graphics are godawful. With games like Mario Kart, actual work has gone into all aspects of the game - there's a whole setting constructed, etc, so those weird "not real cars" have a place along with the power ups.

Then again, I guess the whole point of this game isn't to be awesome, but rather to make a point about sexism.

InkWeaver wrote:

Then again, I guess the whole point of this game isn't to be awesome, but rather to make a point about sexism.

I haven't played the game yet, but I think that if it has a point to make, presenting the point well is a very valid issue.

Regarding gaming violence, I really don't care about violence to either sex in a normal gameplay setting. If the whole game was structured around something misogynistic, then I'd have a problem with it, but in your average game, I'll kill anything, especially if I'm playing an evil character -- men, women, children, animals -- without a second thought.

Besides, most game villains/bosses are men. Now if you're talking about killable NPCs, that might be different.

This game doesn't make any point about anything and is more about relief of impotent rage to stave off a real shooting rampage the creator wants to go on.

The 'gameplay' isn't a problem because the enemies don't do anything besides walk towards you. It is, however, very shitty.

A stress-relief "power reversal", never a good idea, if you care about quality. Also, why are people harassing someone on a shooting spree? And how is saying "I love you" offensive enough to get you shot in the face?

Also, LadyKillas Inc. Almost as subtle as ICanHasPhallus Ltd.

So, this character is just walking down the street with an automatic weapon. Where is she walking, Baghdad?

"Presents a valid point" my ass. It's like a child who hates his teacher drawing a crayon doodle of that teacher being hanged.

I'd like to know how a game like Rapelay gets the banhammer, but this is apparently allowed? Are we truly living in a patriarchy?

Sup, obvious sockpuppet troll.

Really?

*Plays game*

Yeah, that game is awful. I don't know what was going on with y'all's cameras (mouse sensitivity, maybe?) but I was able to score about a dozen kills before I got trapped in a geometry glitch and lost interest.

One of the main problems with the game is that there isn't any kind of challenge attached from what I can tell. There's no health bar, no indicator that anything will happen to your character if you don't mow down everything with a penis, no puzzles to solve even. A lot of FPSes can have the challenge marginalized by abuse of bonus and character-building systems, but by the same token they generally take a lot of work to break that way.

As far as the "3' long .80 caliber machine gun" goes, it has to do with suspension of disbelief. I'm totally fine with wildly unrealistic shooters (let's start with the part where Agent Blazkowicz can carry 500 rounds of 12.7 mm and go from there) but you need a consistent level of unreality. If you attach a real-world figure like ".80 caliber" to a weapon, players are going to expect it to function something like a .80 caliber weapon actually would- turning your targets into hilarious showers of body parts and gore (the part where it doesn't rip your arms off when you fire it would be part of that suspension of disbelief.) As it is, the gun has the range of a switchblade and about as much killing power. It takes multiple hits to bring down a target, and when they die they just sort of slump over.

So this game is poorly designed and not fun. Given that I've quit well-designed, quite fun games because of shitty controls, I don't see a reason to say that this one doesn't completely suck.

Yeah, valid point my ass. This game has every bit as much relevance as a theoretical one in which the love-shy idiots get revenge on all the girls who reject them.

Somath Cegem wrote:

robble robble I play WoW robble robble

ZoZo wrote:

Inorite? Next time he'll be telling us that fat Italian plumbers can't jump to several times their height, and eating mushrooms isn't particularly effective either.

The comparison would be valid if the promotional material for Mario games claimed that Mario was a 6'4"'-tall Waffen SS officer who grows to gigantic size when eating strudel.

Penguin wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Inorite? Next time he'll be telling us that fat Italian plumbers can't jump to several times their height, and eating mushrooms isn't particularly effective either.

The comparison would be valid if the promotional material for Mario games claimed that Mario was a 6'4"'-tall Waffen SS officer who grows to gigantic size when eating strudel.

That would make a fucking brilliant game. I'd play it.

As long as it wasn't FPS. I CAN'T FUCKING DO FPS!

All I'm saying is that with everything else wrong with this game, a lack of realism is rather low on the list considering that until recently and much to my personal chagrin realism has never been the point of any game.

Penguin wrote:

Yeah, valid point my ass. This game has every bit as much relevance as a theoretical one in which the love-shy idiots get revenge on all the girls who reject them.

Women being harassed on the street = some basement-dweller not getting all the pussy he thinks he's entitled to

EDIT: lol the game won't even load for me

EDIT x2: Got it to load. Yeah, it's pretty broken.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Women being harassed on the street = some basement-dweller not getting all the pussy he thinks he's entitled to

A game based on either will be unironically played only by those who whisper "I'll show them, I'll show them all".

Cyberwulf wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Yeah, valid point my ass. This game has every bit as much relevance as a theoretical one in which the love-shy idiots get revenge on all the girls who reject them.

Women being harassed on the street = some basement-dweller not getting all the pussy he thinks he's entitled to

Yeah, a bit of hyperbole on my part, but still. We know those people think that they're being persecuted by women who won't throw themselves at them, and a disturbing number of them wish violence on women outright. I don't think it's too big of a stretch to go from that to women thinking that anything a man says to her on the street (seriously, that game includes "God bless you!" as harrassment) deserves death.

Psy-4 wrote:

A game based on either will be unironically played only
by those who whisper "I'll show them, I'll show them all".

Basically, yeah.

I'm not surprised that neither of you grasp what street harassment is actually like, or how fucking scary it is for a woman, especially after dark.

Cyberwulf wrote:

I'm not surprised that neither of you grasp what street harassment is actually like, or how fucking scary it is for a woman, especially after dark.

Scary enough that you'll want to kill any man who greets you in the street I take it?

Penguin wrote:

Cyberwulf wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Yeah, valid point my ass. This game has every bit as much relevance as a theoretical one in which the love-shy idiots get revenge on all the girls who reject them.

Women being harassed on the street = some basement-dweller not getting all the pussy he thinks he's entitled to

Yeah, a bit of hyperbole on my part, but still. We know those people think that they're being persecuted by women who won't throw themselves at them, and a disturbing number of them wish violence on women outright. I don't think it's too big of a stretch to go from that to women thinking that anything a man says to her on the street (seriously, that game includes "God bless you!" as harrassment) deserves death.

The primary difference here is that it isn't martyrdom to be pissed at people yelling shit out of their car at you or following you down the street solely because you happen to have a vagina. If the women Loveshy were mad at were literally following them around and taunting them for being virgins or something you might have a point, but they don't.

Granted, the premise of this game makes me uncomfortable, but not any more or less so than some of the things you can do in GTA.

. . . if I wanted to blow up creepy, hypermasculine weirdos without fear of reprisal, I'd load up Doom 2 and hit IDDQD. The gameplay would be smoother, the levels are more interesting, and you get to use a rocket launcher. And hey, maybe I'd turn god mode off and actually play an interesting game.

I'm definitely for self-defense, but this is a crap way to promote it.