Harvest Moon Forever: Gender in Games

Showing posts with label Gender in Games. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Guys who play Princess Debut...

A visitor to this site asked if it were strange that a guy would play 'Princess Debut'. I have seen comments on the internet in the past on various sites intended to discourage any 'right-minded' guy from playing a female character in any game. I personally think that is utter rubbish.

It really is similar to a statement that a boy or man shouldn't read any books that feature female protagonists as though his real character would be effected or his manhood diluted by the experience.

Video games such as Harvest Moon and Princess Debut are interactive novels. We explore other worlds and other characters in these games, and one need not BE anything like the protagonist in order to play the game successfully and enjoy it thoroughly.

It could be perceived as even more challenging intellectually for a guy to play a game where he must assume a female persona, as it might require more thought and more inventive reasoning. I certainly enjoy playing games that feature male protagonists.

Often, one of the greatest gifts a game offers is the ability to free oneself of all the restrictions that real life imposes. At the same time, games that involve romance allow us to explore our own emotional responses to various situations and characters and sometimes even to learn from the experience.

The difference, when one plays the opposite gender, may be that you are a little less involved personally, especially where a game has a strong romantic component to it. Your character is involved and you want him or her to succeed but you don't go away and daydream about it as much as you may when you are playing your own gender in a game that involves romance. That having been said, one may hesitate to admit that one sometimes daydreams about fictional characters in Harvest Moon or Princess Debut, but the truth is that any truly powerful work of fiction creates its own reality in your psychic landscape.

In Rune Factory 2, your character in the 1st Generation is male and you have no choice in the matter. What happened to me was that I developed a very profound admiration and liking for my own character. I caught myself wishing that I knew more guys like him... Being female myself, I could not BE him in my own life, but I could respond to all of his sterling qualities. I enjoyed his Events immensely, and although he was the protagonist, I watched the unfolding of his life both as a participant and as a spectator.

In Princess Debut, because the protagonist is female, I find that I sometimes am in danger of losing my objectivity. I want to experience all possible results and events and yet, there are times when my own personal emotional reactions almost make that impossible. Witness the Event in Foxtrot Forest where I was able to betray Klaus with Kiefer. I couldn't stand it! (Even so, there was the guide-writer aspect of my character who was delighted to have discovered another twist in the game.)

As far as guys who play games that feature female protagonists are concerned, I admire their creativity and their ability to enter into the spirit of another role. I think it requires courage in a way, not least because there are elements in society that would sneer or view it in an absurdly negative fashion. If you are given a chance to experience a very different sort of existence in a game, why on earth would you not take advantage of that possibility? A game does not commit you ultimately to ANYTHING.

Male and female humans are two halves of a single species. If you are a guy, you probably have a mother, grandmother, aunts, female cousins, even sisters... Why should you not be able to see what it is like to play a female role in an adventure? I sometimes have found American culture to be particularly negative in terms of its expectations of what is allowed to a 'normal' male. In England, for example, it is quite common for guys to dress as girls or women strictly 'for laughs'. No one ever would extrapolate anything serious or significant from that.

Actually, many perceived differences between genders often are cultural rather than real. Every one has the right to create boundaries in his/her own personal life, based on his/her social or cultural traditions or preferences, but games should be free from those considerations. Enough said.

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For all Harvest Moon fans and players

As Freyashawk, I have written about 150 guides for games, most of which have been guides for Harvest Moon games. These are published on IGN. IGN has given me the title of 'Mistress of Harvest Moon' and I strive daily to earn the right to maintain that title. Although there is a link page on IGN that lists all the guides published there, they are not organised by game, but rather given in alphabetical order. I therefore created this page in order to provide links to the guides I have created for each Harvest Moon game. If you access the General Guide for any game, links should be included to all other guides for that game in a section at the end. I will try to add links to ALL guides as time permits, but until I do, you always can refer to my user page at IGN for the complete list.

I wrote the Official Strategy Guide for Tree of Tranquility for BradyGames as well.
Harvest Moon Forever!

How to Use my Guides

I write three different basic types of game guides. I usually write a General Guide for every game, which is fairly comprehensive and deals with all aspects of the game. It may or may not be in the form of a Walkthrough, dealing with game aspects as they occur. My Innocent Life General Guide is an example of a General Guide that is organised as a Walkthrough.

After writing a General Comprehensive Guide, I often write a Calendar Guide giving birthday and festival dates, with additional information that may be helpful, such as favourite gifts for each individual. For all Harvest Moon games, I usually write a number of 'mini-guides', such as Events Guides for each year of gameplay, or Recipe Guides that give all recipes one can make. Fishing, Mining, Shipping or Item Value Guides are other mini-guides that can be very useful when playing Harvest Moon. Character Guides give detailed information about every character in any specific game. My Courtship and Marriage Guide is devoted to all aspects of Courtship and Marriage, including schedules of Heart Events, Rival Heart Events and the likes and dislikes of every Eligible Girl and/or Bachelor.

Although this site is devoted to Harvest Moon, I have included links to game guides for other games. I created a separate link section for Animal Crossing Wild World as well, because I wrote more than one guide for that game.

N.B. All my game guides are published by IGN. This webpage has been created simply to allow players to find links to all my guides more easily.

Copyright Infringement Warning

It is really sad to discover that there are individuals who are willing to steal my guides and to attempt to publish them under their names. Fortunately, there are many players who recognise my guides when they see them anywhere on the internet and who are willing to alert me when some one tries to steal my material. I want to thank all those players for their help in these cases.

Some one stole one of my guides and tried to publish it on Gamefaqs under his/her name. The guide has been removed and the poster has been banned. I now have a contact in the Legal Department at CNet. I spend many months sometimes writing a guide. They are available for the private use of any individual without cost, but they are not available for theft!
If you want permission to include a link to one of my guides on your site, please contact me directly.

Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town

You will notice that I wrote far more guides for More Friends of Mineral Town than I did for the original 'Friends of Mineral Town'. At some point, I would like to publish more specific Events Guides for Friends of Mineral Town, but players should be aware of the fact that ALL Calendar Events Guides for MFoMT can be used when playing the original FoMT. The Events are the same in most cases in both games. If, therefore, you are playing FoMT and you wish to know the events that can be experienced in the third year of gameplay, refer to the 'Third Year Calendar Events Guide' for 'More Friends of Mineral Town'.