Call of Patriarchy

Call of Duty, a game about nondescript gruff everymen, skulking around in combat fatigues, wielding all manner of sundry ballistics and firearms, invariably fighting against some predictable iteration of the other; be it Muslims, Communists, non-descript Arabs, non-descript Eastern Europeans, and so on.

Now, I don't hate the Call of Duty games. Games are games as films are films as books are books. Even the most hateful book or film still has the right to exist. I mean, I played a lot of Call of Duty when I was younger, as a game, as a space in which decisions and actions are governed by rules and mechanics to produce an entertaining and/or competitive environment, Call of Duty is fine.

But for all the obvious western militaristic bias, by far the most obvious thing to me about Call of Duty is that it's not for women, which is to say it is not targeted at women. It's targeted at men. The most lucrative and widespread game ever made, and by extension one of the most lucrative and widespread online gaming communities in the world, is made by and for men.

Now, I don't think it's deliberate. I don't think Activision necessarily wants to marginalise or exclude women. I imagine they're probably just after money; knowing your target market and what they respond to is part of making money. So what about the target market? The mostly male, mostly straight, white, and mostly between the ages of 12-30 target market, what share of responsibility do they carry?

I just so happen to be a straight white man. I am, in nearly every sense, the target demographic. I remember going to my local gaming shop every day after school, and late on Fridays, to play Magic the Gathering. It was amazing, it was a cavalcade of geek outcasts, all shapes and sizes, the only real barrier of entry was how much of a Magic player you were.

I remember playing Word of Warcraft for three years and feeling incredibly fulfilled playing in an organised group of my peers, having a laugh and downing some dragons, it was excellent. I remember playing League of Legends for three years, getting reasonably good, following the professional scene like my Dad follows football. I've always taken the gaming community as my own.

But all those aforementioned spaces were male dominated too. I didn't know any girls who played Magic the Gathering. I quested and raided almost exclusively with men during WoW, the few women I knew were either very shy or very thick-skinned. The League of Legends pro scene has no female players outside a few subs in some of the Asian teams.

What I'm getting at is that Call of Duty, for all its nondescript-ness is still definitively masculine. The military angle is in a sense just a front: an excuse to use an empowering and realistic setting which is traditionally not for women. Not all straight white male gamers are traditionally masculine, but very few of them ever gain any self awareness of this inadequacy and go on to challenge it, because there are always spaces where they will be accepted just for being what they are. So long as they're men.

You see, it's all so obvious to me now, but that's only because I've been made to see it, through my interactions and experiences with people who were also made to be self aware about their gender, sexuality or whatever else. And now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it. Patriarchy is everywhere. Even in the spaces I grew up with and believed in.