So I played Prince Of Persia back in the day. I sucked at it though. I was awful at the game. It sort of got to the point were I only liked doing four things. One. I liked drinking water. If you drink water in the game then it makes this cool sound, and if I remember correctly it replenishes his life gauge. Two. I liked dying. This is obviously the opposite of actually wining the game. However every time he dies he says in this British-ish accent [maybe Persian I've never heard a Persian Accent before so...] "no no that's not how it goes." Which totally made me laugh. My favorite way to kill him was for him to fall off of a cliff or bridge or something. In my mind he's telling people this heroic tale about the sands of time and then get randomly goes: 'and then i feel off of a cliff and died...no no that's not how it goes'...haha. Three. I liked killing stuff. That's my reason for all of my video game playing but here I liked how the people/monsters turned to dust when you stabbed them. Four. I liked walking on walls.
Needless to say I never actually finished the game. But I was surprised when I heard that there was going to be a movie. There has been some pretty mixed feelings about Jake Gylenhaal being the lead. Some people love it some hate it. I personally think that it was a good move money wise. Jake's a good choice because the general female audience loves and they have the money. However the female character in the film...ugh.. Princess Tamina. The character in the video game was called Farah [pictured above] and I think that by changing the name for the screen They have alienated their main audience ... the people who played the game. The people who know what the names of most of the characters are. I personally think that the name change was for the American audience. The name Farah is an Arabic one that means joy and Farah's skin tone is darker than the main character. I think the movie producers just didn't want to deal with that. I did a quick search of the name Tamina it has no meaning [i feel like there is a joke here] and it's origin ranges from German, to Australian to Afgan I saw on some sites. My point here is that it's a pretty nationality-ambivalent name. And I assume that they thought the name Farah would cause problems. From what I remember about the game Farah was an interesting character. I always have problems with any game where there is another character who shows up randomly to fight with you because what happens is they become an extra challenge and you basically have to kill all of the monsters and protect them to. She was so skinny that she would sneak though cracks in the walls. She had a bow and arrow which I feel like If Freud was alive he would say something obnoxious like 'she compensates for her lack of penis by stabbing men.' I would like to mention that Farah/Tamina...if you have seen the trailer is always with the main character. Never scene idk fighting she seems very weak which is the opposite of many female video game characters.
Speaking of Females in video games. [how about that segway huh?]
There are so many sites about which female video game characters are the best. I really don't quite know what "best" means. Does that mean which characters are the best representations of women? Are they just the most interesting? Also there are many sites saying that all female video game characters are poor representations of women and I just disagree. Don't get me wrong there are some negative ones. [Feminist Frequency which I just blogged about talked about one.]
No one seems to talk about why. Video games are largely consumed by children and by men . [However the margin between men and women in video game consumption isn't that large.] Therefore all females are told that if they play video games there is something wrong with them[us] and that they are masculine. If you want to show a masculine girl on television[and therefore because of the way people think call them a lesbian] put a video game in there hands.
EX. An episode of Grey's Anatomy had a girl who actually was intersexed and she had testicle but no one knew. She drew comics, wore baggy clothes and played videogames She ended up deciding to become or rather allow herself and her body to become what she already was ... a he.
I think that people need to try to get video games to be targeted toward a female audience and then the portrayals will change. However I don't think that we want portrayals of women where they don't fight. I think that we want women who can defend themselves not the just new video games targeted toward women where you just play puzzles or learn how to cook. Now I think Yuna from Final Fantasy X is cool and Lulu she's hardcore. ell I don't think that can be all. I mean I think people need not to say women like this men like this and put these boxes up. Because even if your heart is in the right place you are actually perpetuating these things.
What i find interesting is that games with female leads do well on the presumably male dominated video game market. Men are willing to play a game in which they step into the mind of a woman. And you can't really win a game if you just look at her the whole time, right? Technically you could say the players are using her as a puppet but video games require the player to say 'I'm going to do this.' rather than 'I'm going to make her do this.' See the difference?
Now Children and Video Games.
Now there are tons of things talking about how children are being destroyed by video games. First, parents need to step in if they have a problem. They buy things things. Second, Talk to your children. Problems with children are so often blamed solely on things like video games, texting..er sexting [oh my god!!!..haha], music, television. Typically parents can change that and monitor that. Don't give your kid a tv in their rooms. After a certain age that can be difficult but people who have time to write articles about this can probably work on this somewhat. I know it's not that easy all of the time but I feel like [although i'm not a parent] that people blame all of these things on making there children neglect them even though they haven't really formed bonds of communication. It's not just the device its the person using it.
That being said violence shouldn't just randomly be shown to children. And neither should nudity. I read an amazing article on IGN about the history of nudity in [American] video games. What I like about it is that it shows that nudity isn't a new thing it's not something you can just blame on your children. What I do like about nudity whether on television or video games etc. is that when used correctly it can show a lot about the story. When used incorrectly it's just a waste of time.
So,
I apologize for being all on my soap box about video games. However it pisses me off how people get sooooo focused on video games or anything else as a scape goat for trouble. In third grade some police officer that came to our class was talking about how it troubled her that children played grand theft auto. I was actually playing GTA: Vice City [with my brother who's older] at that time and I really liked it. But it wasn't so i could just be violent in real life it's because things in my real life annoyed me. It was a de-stressor which I think is better than alcohol drugs etc.
Here's some other links:
[Prince of Persia video game to movie]
http://www.louisvillemojo.com/blogs/Louisville_Blogs/86454/Is__Prince_of_Persia__Better_than_its_Game_sake_
http://www.starpulse.com/news/Dee_Doyle/2010/05/27/prince_of_persia_and_video_game_movies
[Prince of Persia Video game movies]
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Prince-of-Persia-The-Sands-of-Time-PS2-PlayStation-2/2355836?wmlspartner=GPA&sourceid=44444444440331009246
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