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On The Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire Demo’s Quiet Misogyny

by Chalkey Horenstein | Monday, November 17th 2014 at 8:00 pm
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ORAS Demo Feminism 1
As a gamer, I know all about hype – and how, in retrospect, sometimes we overreact to small things. And one of the silliest overreactions I’ve seen recently was the sheer demand for the Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire demos. That’s right: not the game, the demo. It’s easy to forget considering the game comes out in just a few days, but back when they were first released it, the demand was so high that those trying to get a download code from Pokémon.com’s monthly newsletter sometimes got emails stating it could take up to a week for them to generate all the codes for everyone. Of course, if you’ve ever played the original Ruby and Sapphire versions, it would be easy to sympathize with the hype.
But at the end of the day, it’s still just a demo, and much of the game was left out. You basically pick a starter Pokémon one level away from evolving to its final form, and learn about how the new Mega Evolutions work. You can keep replaying for additional small missions, but each one is no more than a few easy battles here or there. The majority of the joy gained from the experience derives from the revamped music that is now iconic of the Pokémon series, as well as experiencing a few new aesthetic and small mechanic upgrades.
It initially seems greedy to expect too much more of what isn’t even the full game, and is explicitly advertised as such; but several of my friends and I couldn’t help but notice that the demo gives a lot more exposure to the male protagonist, Orlando, than the female protagonist, Anna. For those who don’t know, Pokémon games have allowed you to pick your gender since 2000, when Japan released Pokémon Crystal, and while this is the very first demo they’ve ever released before a full game, this is also the first time since Crystal that this feature was left out in the main handheld series. Not only are you forced to play as the male protagonist, but the female protagonist is depicted as weak and in need of the male protagonist’s help. Anna is first introduced when Team Aqua is going to attack; and rather than using double battles to take them on together (a feature made common by the very games they are remaking with ORAS), Orlando takes them on single-handedly, one at a time.
ORAS Demo Feminism 4
Anna clearly wants to take them on collaboratively, and Orlando waits for his moment to shine. Alone.
Anna’s primary purpose in that scene is to heal your Pokémon. She then sits by while higher-ups from Team Magma and Aqua attack Orlando at once – and at this point, the player might think, “Oh, I guess they didn’t program double battles into the demo. I guess it makes sense that Anna would sit on the sidelines so the player could win single-handedly and experience more.” But then Steven, a famous character from the original version of Ruby and Sapphire and the functional tour guide of the demo, comes out of nowhere and agrees to take on the battle together. So that theory is shot down pretty quickly.
Part of the reason this small detail is such a big deal is that Pokémon prides itself on customization, allowing it to be very much the personal player’s experience. Between getting to choose between what is now over 700 Pokémon for your team, and most recently (in X and Y) being able to choose your race and attire as well, representation in the game has met a steadily-increasing standard throughout the series. The demo lets you choose your starter, nickname the Mega Pokémon that you capture and send to your full game, and even customize the order of your action icons (despite the demo only having two of them), all of which point to the customization being a priority even here. So when gender representation just happens to be left out, and when one gender is obviously doing the harder battles, it feels very much like a step back.
ORAS Demo Feminism 5
Feel free to let the other protagonist tag in any time now…
When discussing this with less feminist-inclined friends, I hear all sorts of defenses. These include:
It’s just a demo. They couldn’t possibly put every little thing in.
Hackers have proven this to be false. Within a week or so of the demo’s release, those far better at coding than I am were able to crack open the game and check what data was there. They found that the demo contained all sorts of unnecessary data, including the names, levels, and Pokémon of various trainers one may encounter in ORAS.
The ORAS demo also contains a saving feature that allows you to continue where you left off and transfer some Pokémon and items obtained to the real ORAS game when it comes out, further implying spatial adequacy.
It’s more complex to have a full sprite character swap though. That’s something that would be harder to do.
Admittedly my knowledge of coding can’t argue too strongly here, but I can’t help but notice that Steven will interchangably switch between riding on the back of Latios or Latias when taking you places, and when the game randomly generates repeats of missions the trainers you face will still be swapped out for other ones. If Steven’s Pokémon can change genders, why can’t we?
It’s really not that big of a deal. They’ll have the female protagonist as playable in the real game. They were probably just rushing to get the demo out, and didn’t think people would care. Don’t take it personally.
Okay, now we’re getting to something worth discussing.
In some ways, this kind of statement is absurd. It took me years to finally understand this, but the mere phrase “don’t take it personally” can be one of the most useless phrases in the English language. For one thing, it is seldom that anyone will ever hear that phrase and instantly feel better, thinking “You’re right, I’m making this all about me. I should just relax. Okay, everything’s great now.” Most of the time when someone is at the point where something is being taken personally, it’s because on a personal level there’s something that’s bothering them – and to tell someone that it is wrong to feel that way doesn’t make either party all that happy.
Admittedly, there’s likely a kernel of truth to this statement: that The Pokémon Company International probably wasn’t making a malicious statement that women are weak or not worth putting in the demo in the same light as the male hero, but rather just flat out didn’t think about how that omission would represent – and consequently affect – the women who play this game. Sure, ignorance isn’t an excuse, and this kind of institutionalized misogyny does real harm, especially in the gaming community; but ignorance and malicious behavior are often resolved in different ways.
And one thing that is true of all people – man or woman, adult or child, – is that the moment something becomes personal is the moment people stop wanting to cooperate or compromise. Many interpret my critique of the demo as one of a few things: they either see me attacking a demo that the whole world is hyped about, or they interpret claims that people can be sexist as a claim that they personally are sexist, and that something is inherently wrong with them. And naturally, they’ll get defensive about that – because, much like the programmers who made this mistake – they are not necessarily intentionally being malicious or misogynist, but they probably don’t see things the way a feminist would. Someone from their perspective doesn’t want to have to face the fact that that way society has taught them to behave is sometimes not okay, because it is far too easy to assume that if a person is doing something sexist then he or she has failed as a compassionate human being. One almost wants to tell them to not take it so personally.
An issue like the ORAS demo’s failure to adequately represent women is not one that will be solved with fire and pitchforks; it will be solved with education. The same mind that didn’t think it was that big of a deal is the same mind that will defend their logic with statements like the ones above. Because, at the end of the day, no one who is genuinely trying to be a good person wants to feel like they missed something so obvious. Don’t get me wrong, there are no doubt some maliciously sexist people who genuinely believe these things are the way they should be, but most of the time I find resistance to feminism to be just a combination of fragile ego and preconceived notions that are flawed.
ORAS Demo Feminism 3
You can only assume it was accidental for so long in scenes like this.
Pokémon as a series has improved in so many ways over the years; each generation brings smoother processing, more balances to the metagame, and all sorts of new and neat Pokémon. These improvements came about because developers were willing to consider that the way they were doing things wasn’t the best it could be. Without that open mind to change, and the willingness to look for places where things aren’t quite right, the games we get so hyped about wouldn’t be worth playing, even in a demo. We don’t want to settle for that in our video games, so why settle for it in the way we look at society?
I said at the beginning of this article that I felt the hype for the ORAS demo was probably an overreaction given how little there was to it. But when it comes to getting hyped for others – or myself – better understanding feminism, I don’t quite feel the same way. So if you’re someone who doesn’t identify as a feminist, or someone who gets moderately uncomfortable when you read about the urgency expressed in this or other feminist articles, don’t get defensive – get hyped. We feminist gamers are not monsters when we’re angry at sexism, and we’re not nit-picky when we find little details and call them sexist.
We’re just a generation who has experienced feminism in its demo version, and can’t possibly be more psyched for the full release.
Chalkey Horenstein is a contributor for The Mary Sue. You can also view his writing at Retroware TV, where he has two columns: “The Cultural Gamer,” using games as discussion starters, and “Late To The Game,” where he visits overlooked retro games for the first time and shares his experiences. He does part-time work for Team Magma, has previously been on staff of Artful Dodge and Spare Change News, has previously also been published by pop culture publications such as Overthinking It, Day Old Stubble, and The Good Men Project. When not writing, he enjoys cross country running, hamburgers, and copious amounts of Pokémon and Ace Attorney
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  • E S M 7 hours ago
    It's still possible that Orlando is equally useless when you play as Anna, though I guess we'll see when the full game comes out
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      • Delta > E S M 6 hours ago
        OH MY GOD, SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS HOW POKEMON GAMES WORK.
        Yeah, in the latest Pokemon games where your character and the opposite sex are both 'in' the game, you basically just flip the sprite and some pronouns and off you go. There personalities may be slightly different and they may say slightly different things, but they are very nearly carbon copies of each other that stand in as a rival/friend/whatever.
        In all the games where the other character is in the game (the original RSE, Black and White, X and Y) Nintendo has done this. For them to change the precedent now, ESPECIALLY since this is a remake of a game and not a new entry, would be absurd.
        It's also absurd, and I don't care how many ~~extra Pokemon names~~ are found by ~~hackers~~, but it's a DEMO. Is it unfortunate that it was very obvious that Nintendo would of course go with Brendan/Orlando as the PC instead of May/Anna because 1) 'Male' is 'default' and 2) boys are seen as the largest part of the audience (probably true) and they wouldn't want to play as a girl (not necessarily true at all)? Yes, that's shitty. But if Nintendo didn't have time to put the customization option in (i.e. have a ton of the parts of the demo with the double option of having sprite, dialogue, pronouns, etc look different), then it's not entirely their fault they went with the boy. Numbers are number, and if the marketing team tells them something stupid, they'll go with it.
        People have been clamouring for RSE reboots ever since they rebooted the originals, essentially. It's beloved, so a) I doubt Nintendo is stupid enough to change a whole lot, and b) They wanted to shove this demo out ASAP to generate publicity ahead of the launch. Should "it will take longer than we have" an acceptable answer for not having a female character in a FULL video game? NO, because you can kick marketing in the head sometimes and get them to push a release date back a bit. But is it ok in a DEMO for a game that WILL HAVE A FEMALE CHARACTER? No, of course it doesn't matter. You are not looking at a whole game. It's a tiny piece Nintendo is giving us to get people excited. Hell, they probably wanted the Demo file to be as small as possible so it wouldn't be a pain for people to download, and adding it a double modifier to a bunch of stuff would make it thick. Acceptable for a full game? NOPE. Acceptable for a demo? Yes.
          see more
        • Lapis > E S M 4 hours ago
          I totally agree with you. In every single pokemon game, whatever gender you play as is always the strongest trainer in the game. This is how pokemon has always been.
            see more
            • Lauren Detherage > E S M 3 hours ago
              I'm 90% sure that's how it'll work, but I don't know if that really makes it better. Either way, your opposite-sex partner is an idiot, and boys playing as a boy see a really weak female sidekick. I've heard a lot of people who played Pokemon X/Y as a male say they liked Serena as their partner, because she was more knowledgeable capable than the usual sidekick, and didn't feel like she was holding them back. I realize these are remakes as opposed to the new story and characters in X and Y, but even little dialogue tweaks could make this so much less damsel in distress.
                see more
              • Mikel Crawford 6 hours ago
                Everything is Misogyny
                #Sarcasm
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                  • locuas 6 hours ago
                    for what i recall, usually the rival has around the same dialogue regardless of gender. That "weak and in need of the protagonist" is usually how things go, no matter the gender. It's more like "everyone who is not the protagonist is useless". In that regard, i do think it is A LITTLE of an overreaction to call this misogyny. I say a little because they should allow you to play female EVEN if it was a demo.
                      see more
                    • Sophinara 6 hours ago
                      The writer of this article has clearly not played the original Ruby and Sapphire, or even the new releases, X and Y. When you pick the female trainer, the male trainer has the EXACT SAME dialogue. The game is literally always the same with the exception of the character model and a few pronouns. It gets me pretty irritated when feminists start ripping on Pokémon, a series that pretty much has the most realistic and fair representation of women out of many mainstream video game franchises.
                      As for the demo? It's just that, a demo. It's designed to throw you into the game play as fast as possible without you having to faff about choosing and naming your trainer.
                        see more
                      • lmd84 6 hours ago
                        I wonder whether those demo bonuses will apply only if a male character is chosen in the main game. Because you can't "continue where you left off" if you can't play as your preferred character to begin with.
                        That would add a practical difficulty (however minor, I haven't played the demo) to the already inappproriate carelessness of not thinking about the consequences of excluding the female player character
                        Really...the 'you can win where I/we cannot' may be standard NPC talk in Pokemon (or RPGs, period), but there is no excuse for applying this to *one of the protagonists*.
                        Whether intentionally or not, doing so immediately diminishes *that* one for not being the *other* one. I'm just going to sit here and think of the awesome female characters (players included...I have head-canon) in the Pokemon games I've played.
                          see more
                        • Tony Velez 6 hours ago
                          As an avid, and I do mean AVID, Pokemon fan, I can tell you that there is indeed a level of internalized misogyny in the games and there has always been, but it tends to be so subtle that it's hard to argue without being called a nitpicker.
                          -For instance, Anna's design is considerably more waify than May's (the original female PC for ORAS) and while there is nothing wrong with wearing a frilly pink dress during your adventure, I have seen many women who are upset that the Pokemon Company assumes that that's what they identify with.
                          -In the second Generation, Pokemon were finally divided by genders. Because of the way the mechanics worked, female Pokemon could never maximize their Attack stat, which was a stark contrast to their male counterparts.
                          -Did you know that Game Freak actually designed a female PC for the original Red/Green games? You can see her in some of the promotional material here:
                          http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-...
                          -She was unfortunately cut from the final product because of the lack of space in the cartridge. Although she would later come back as the female PC in FireRed and LeafGreen, and was introduced as a character in the Pokemon Special manga, one has to wonder why they didn't remove something else. It's not as though the games didn't have enough fat to trim.
                          -In addition, her lack of presence in the original games meant that their sequels, Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal, would use the canon PC, Red, as the final 'secret boss.' In the remakes of Generation II, this resulted in the Female PC (dubbed Leaf by the fans) to be retconned out of existence. HeartGold and SoulSilver were direct remakes of a game that didn't include her. Never mind the fact that FireRed and LeafGreen had made her canon.
                          -Another subtle case of sexism is that the original mascot of the franchise was to be Clefairy, but was changed to Pikachu when the latter proved more popular with test audiences (presumably because it was more gender-neutral, though it should be noted that most of the 'main' Pikachu in media, such as Ash's in the anime and Red's in both the manga and the games, have been male.)
                          -Equally subtle is the gym leader and Elite Four roster. It not only took four generations before we got a female champion (forcing us to sit through personality-lacking drones like Steven and Wallace) but there has never been a single region in the game where the female Gym Leaders/Elites outnumber the men. Either there are more men than women, or they are equal in number.
                          -Jumping off from that point, there has never been an evil team spearheaded by a woman. If there is a high ranking official, she is always subordinate to a male character, even in Generation II, where we got Rocket Admin Arianna, who claimed to be the head of Team Rocket. In the end, the final battle ends up being a male Admin called Archer who hadn't even been hinted at existing until that point.
                          -Also, there's only one female regional professor, and she's the only professor to have a father on-screen. And he is...another regional professor. What. And while we're at it, the only canonical female rivals the player has (Serena and May don't count as they are interchangeable with their male counterparts) both pick the Starter that is 'weak' to yours (cementing them as a pseudo rival.) In Bianca's case, her whole storyline revolves around coming to terms with the fact that she's weak. In Shauna's case, she kind of just exists to be...there, and doesn't really do much of anything.
                          So yeah, super long post, but what I'm basically trying to say is that, although Pokemon is arguably one of the more progressive video game franchises we currently have, there are still many things that are problematic about the franchise and it certainly has a lot of room to grow when it comes to equal representation.
                            see more
                          • Scarlet Sasquatch 6 hours ago
                            Yeah, bit of an overreaction. The story will be the exact same way with the female protagonist, useless rival and all. Probably. I actually have zero interest in ORAS. I'm just assuming because every single fucking game follows the same basic story and the different protagonists really only effect pronouns and that's it.
                            Call me when they bring back trainer customization.
                              see more
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