
Portal is the most subversive game ever - jsmcgd
http://www.gamesradar.com/gb/pc/game/news/article.jsp?articleId=20071207115329881080&releaseId=2006071916229527001&sectionId=1006&pageId=20071207115724980042
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jorgeortiz85
I'm surprised at some of the hasty comments here. Sure, the article is
wrapped-up in obscure academic language, but the main points are valid.

Portal is not like any other FPS. (This is obviously true, if you know
anything about Portal.) The main claim is that FPSs tend to be "masculine", in
many ways, and that Portal is unlike FPSs in those ways.

1\. In FPSs you have a gun that's meant for killing. In Portal you have a gun
that doesn't inherently kill (but can be very powerful if used cunningly).

2\. FPSs typically have military or monster themes. Not so Portal.

3\. In FPSs you typically play a male character. When the lead is a female
character she's super-hot and sexy and is meant for teenage guys to drool
over. (Think Lara Croft.) Not so Portal, with a not-particularly-sexy female
character, and she's not even on screen enough to drool over much.

4\. In FPSs you typically shoot bullets. In Portal you shoot portals. (And
here the author makes an admittedly lame joke: "Heehee the bullets are penises
and the portals/holes are vaginas".)

5\. In FPSs, the enemy typically wants to kill you. In Portal, the AI wants to
emotionally manipulate you.

6\. In FPSs, you kill the enemy. In Portal, you outsmart the AI.

7\. In FPSs, you typically kill monsters/Nazis/terrorists. In Portal, you
disable these cute little turrets by kicking them and knocking them over.

8\. In FPSs, your sidekick is some guy who's your best buddy. In Portal it's
an inanimate block.

What the author is trying to get across is that Portal is unlike any other
FPS, which is indisputable. The author's take is that Portal takes the
quintessential "masculine" videogame, the FPS, and makes it a little less
"masculine". I don't think that's too controversial.

~~~
Retric
I assumed the article was a joke. Yea it sounds about right but it draws no
meaningful conclusions. Anyway, if you look at something like Metroid Prime
you can see most of the assumptions don't really hold up across the FPS
spectrum.

PS: Be careful when using "tend to be X" because you often end up saying
thinks that are logically equivalent to "blue cars are blue."

------
omouse
_"Rather than skintight latex or a chainmail bikini, she wears a plain orange
jump suit that is eerily reminiscent of those worn by prisoners in Guantanamo
Bay."_

Way to read too much into the game. Half-life features a hero called Gordon
Freeman who wears an orange armor body suit thing. She is trying to escape the
lab, and Freeman was trying to escape the lab as well.

 _"The unobtrusive presentation of the female protagonist doesn't force a male
gender perspective on the player as is the norm in FPS games."_

What is the writer talking about?? In most other FPS games you can't tell if
the character is a male or not either. All you can see is a gun and hands. How
is that forcing the male gender perspective on the player?

 _"she comes to represent man's attempt to construct an idealized mother
figure through the cold logic of science"_

Ok, I'm done reading that clap-trap. Science always gets the shit end of the
stick when lay-people discuss it. It's either evil and responsible for very
bad things, or it's cold and it ignores people, or it's unnatural.

~~~
tjic
Agreed.

I'm not down on the humanities - I double majoried in CS and History. I _love_
the humanities - art, literature, history: these things are important.

Women studies are not among the "real" humanities - this is a made up,
politically correct, politically slanted body of "study" that, without
justification, denies the importance of most of the useful arts and sciences,
an simultaneously congratulates itself (and its practitioners) on being far
more clever-than-though.

Witness the very first sentence of the review:

> Warning: The text you are about to read contains heady intellectual
> discourse and is not recommended for anyone made queasy by the discussion of
> feminist film theory or psychoanalytical signifiers.

Oh, yeah, that review was chock full of "heady" intellectual discourse all
right!

In fact, it was filled with the four or five common tropes of feminist /
culture studies "deconstruction". I could write this crap in my sleep. Throw
around the word "symbol" and "signifier", the word "privelege" or "Other"
(must be capitalized) or "hierarchy" (or better yet "hegemony"), and talk
about how up "subverts" down, wet "subverts" dry, red "subverts" green, and
drop in one or two entirely irrelevant political references to the
conservative devil of the hour (in the 1980s, this meant Reagan, in the early
21st century, it meant Rumsfeld or Bush, now it means Cheney or Bush, etc.),
mix in a half cup of cheap Freudianism, and away you go.

Utter, utter, lazy, useless garbage.

~~~
tel
It's clearly a very forced analysis, and, like you said, just drips with
cliched, volumeless argument. That being said, I'm pretty sure it was posted
with some degree of self-referential humor.

The idea of analyzing Valve games critically _is_ pretty good, though. They're
one of the few studios which makes games worth analyzing! I'd like to see
articles like those.

~~~
qaexl
I can make a forced analysis of System Shock 2. Starting also with the broken
pseudo-maternal AI that guide you through the first half of the game before
_spoiler_ spoiler _spoiler_.

Within my limited experience with talking to artists and poets, I don't think
artists deliberately set out to include specific symbols inside a work. Too
much left-brained stuff. Which I find funny as a deconstruction essay requires
you to spell out exactly what it is you are talking about. Kills the mood.

Yet most artists that are any good at their craft easily tap into something
that hits you in the gut. I think Portals is one of those games. I have not
played it, but I bet it does mess around in your head in ways beyond just
messing with your sense of space-time. I wasn't too hot on playing it,
however, after reading the article, I want get a copy now.

------
ivankirigin
This article is hilarious.

For those who don't plan on playing Portal:

First let me say that you should reconsider. The game will break your brain.

Second, you should listen to the final song. It's so rewarding.
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI>

Sung by a passive aggressive AI who you kill in the end. The AI and a weighted
companion (an inanimate cube) are the only other characters in the game.

~~~
Fountainhead
Thanks for the link, that's the best "demo" for i game I've ever heard/seen.

~~~
ivankirigin
If you really want to start "thinking with portal", search for the challenge
maps

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=MHC7Ld1oXaU>

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Goladus
Excellent observations, however I think it's particularly cumbersome to
attempt to explain its novelty in terms of masculine and feminine. It confuses
both the game itself and the meanings of the term "masculine" and "feminine."

------
gills
Dear author,

The Cake is a Lie.

Portal is revolutionary but not for it's gender roles. It's revolutionary for
turning FPS into a puzzle game on crack. Go back and play with the developer
commentary.

Look at me still talking when there's science to do...

:)

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nailer
If you've got better things to do (like working on your startup), but want a
satisfying 'pick up put down' diversion, Portal's the best thing you could
probably pick.

------
dreish
Also fun, but 2D: Flash Portal.

<http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/>

