Firstly, on topic: yes, a "PC Booster Pack" of new image cards, available at retailers who sell Mage Wars at cost + distribution + retailer mark-up, would be a great idea. Although I doubt it will sell well enough to interest physical retailers so it will probably have to be sold at the online store for the US market. So well done, Trotsky, for putting this out there.
Now to the more interesting (for me) linked topic, the depiction of women in geek culture, which Kich hijacked this thread which then prompted me to write a polemic (it was dead at work) explaining why it happens (not excusing it), trying to diffuse the gravity of this "sin" (it's just another imaginary world with no bearing to reality, get a life!) but also sympathetic to the feminist view that these fantasy depictions objectify and subjugate women in real life.
Kich's reply deserves its own reply. And this is not it. There is alot I'd like to discuss with him, like conventions in depicting the female form in classical art (both clothed and nude), the deification of the female form (and not just the child-bearing hips Gaia sculpture I think he references) or the absurdity of the female breastplate (let alone the plate mail bras traditionally worn by Valkyrie in Wagnerian opera) because armour designed for women just did not exist (Joan of Arc was a flat-chested tomboy). These are all worthy intellectual discussions but frankly, I need to do some research before crossing swords with Kich's intimidating intellect and knowledge on this topic.
Although, as a fellow Marketing graduate, I am surprised he's applying Portfolio Marketing principles to a Niche Category like Mage Wars. I'm sorry, Rich, but the Irish Potato Famine just has no bearing on this topic. The main threat to Mage Wars is not some gestalt hatred towards it by their similarly-minded target market because of some future faux pas, a zeitgeist backlash resulting in a boycott. The main Marketing threats to Mage Wars are:
(a) becoming staid - you are spot on about neophilia - but combating this creates its own problems (see below)
(b) being supplanted by a more streamlined version with holistic vision (defined school traits, necrotic, sonic etc)
(c) being supplanted by an inferior version with better distribution and/or marketing (VHS vs. superior Betamax)
(d) the LCG issue of increasing barrier to entry with every expansion (especially if expansions are cross-school).
(e) technology, not creating a tablet-friendly interface that the competition already do better (I can name a few)
Those are the real Marketing Threats here (my SWOT analysis) so let's not muddy the water by alarmist what-if scenarios of geek culture suddenly expressing their feminist solidarity due to a plague-ridden potato/card. Geek culture, propagated by the media and merchandise that panders to it, is sadly (I'm not happy with it) a mirror of the prejudices of that peer group. If we are talking about clothing Planeswalkers in Magic, a far more prevalent game which may influence society (but who are we kidding?), then maybe this issue would be more important.
But this is a niche game within a niche segment of society! As a vocal critic of AW in many areas, I've grown to admire this small Dallas-based indie games company for staying true to the principle of Freedom Of Speech on their forum and the polite restraint (biting their tongues until they bleed) in their replies. If they were based in Mecca, the women will all be wearing a hijab! I always viewed Mage Wars art as just the local cultural norm thus my advice to them was to be more sophisticated in its depictions to appeal to broader markets. Feminists think female Islamic dress subjugates women as chattel yet scantily clad images exploit women. I guess that leaves just dungarees... (Oh dear, scientists have proved sense of humour and feminism exhibit an inverse correlation.)
No, this isn't a rebuttal of Kich's erudite well-reasoned arguments (even if the Potato Famine allegory was skilled sophistry). Rather, this post is aimed at Aylin and others who share her idealism (see, I added a positive tone).
Firstly, no Aylin, I didn't know you were a woman but forgive me if I say that it didn't surprise me (and I suspect I'm not alone). Does that make me guilty of stereotyping? Most definitely. We all are. Stereotypes exist because they are commonplace in that segment. Maybe it was the way that in 3 incensed sequential posts, you launched into attacking Laddin for defending the Forcemaster, Imaginator for asking for less heated debate and then me, who was actually sympathetic to your viewpoint (explicit in my preceding posts on page 1), attacking me purely because I dared to give reasons why sexism exists in geek culture and then instead of hitting AW over the head with a "it's wrong! it''s wrong! it's wrong!" rant, I gave them sound marketing reasons why they should change their female art depiction (a sales incentive, not a moral reason that has little commercial value considering their target segment is broadly in line with their art). Because I don't exhibit the tunnel vision of a militant but tried to diagnose why this happened before giving a prognosis then prescribing a course of action that appeals to their commercial acumen, this "work within the system" approach was obviously abhorrent to you, Aylin, and in your righteous wrath, you lashed out and turned a Sympathiser into an Enemy. And this is a common occurrence with militants, they do their cause harm with their alienating militancy. So, no I wasn't surprised that you're a woman.
I have unfair preconceptions you're young and precocious because of your former sobriquet, "AylinIsAwesome", so I'm mindful that I need to don kid gloves here. I think we all have preconceptions that some posters, even on this thread, are quite young (yet visibly talented in many ways), and that is why some of the sillier suggestions are not harshly put down. Well, sadly there is no need to don kid gloves with me, I give as good as I get and my only issue so far is that I was personally attacked to which I made a flip exasperated comment that is in no way insulting (and reflected my change of position from sympathetic to hostile), certainly not aimed at Kich who had not replied prior yet quoted it to support his rhetoric - and I was singled out for sanctioning by forum admin! This to me is symptomatic of the positive discrimination that is rife in society, the "we better go out of our way to side with the minority else we'll be accused of some ism/phobia/normative suffix". And so the silent majority (barring Wildhorn's satire) are just kowtowed into following a militant agenda. Self-censorship is seditious. Freedom of speech works both ways.
I did refer to you Aylin, as a "he" and I apologise if this offended you but I was simply playing probabilities there. I note many rulebooks these days have a disclaimer that the use of the male pronoun in their rules text (written like legal contracts for precision) is not in any way meant to denigrate or subjugate women etc. When did simple convenient conventions in our language become a political statement that we need to worry about "Hu-person" and "Person-kind" in case we offend a vocal feminist minority? I find it sad that games books have to add this disclaimer. Perhaps language will end up with a de-humanising "it" (which is pangender/transgender/agender or whatever it is) instead of the default "he". Be assured that now I know your gender, Aylin, I will not repeat the mistake.
Now I find myself at a quandary. I was brought up to be chivalrous towards women, to open doors for them, offer to carry their groceries and give up my seat on public transport for them. That's just the old-fashioned way that I was brought up. Yet living in London for most of my life except for the last 7 years, I've had so many bad experiences following those principles, angry women scolding me and in one case even hitting me ("never hit a woman" is one principle I will never break) because I dared to condescend them that now, due to those militant feminists, I don't follow those principles anymore. Yet I feel sad that the world has lost that sense of chivalry. So apologies if my reply here lacks chivalry, Aylin, but you can blame your sisters for that.
The reason I'm posting here is because of what happened last night. It has relevance, Aylin, so please bear with me.
I live in Brighton, UK, a smaller-scale San Francisco of England (replete with hills), a den of left wing hippies and liberal "weirdos" in a county/state that is mainly right wing (I believe Seattle and San Antonio are similar?). Yes, both me and my friends are liberals - but most of us are not militant liberals, we live in the real world built upon unsavoury compromises, where change is achieved in small increments (my anarchist friends will disagree here).
So there was I at a games-playing friend's Birthday Party (he also owns Mage Wars). Almost all the blokes there were hardcore games geeks plus girlfriends (Brighton modernists don't marry), some of whom play games. Some of us ended up in a room playing "Spartacus: A Game of Blood of Treachery", a game I can safely mention here as it is multi-player (so not a competitor for Mage Wars) and its arena duels (where players bet on and influence with intrigue cards) can be used as an entry for the far more sophisticated Mage Wars. Anyway, it's a fun game with simple clever mechanics but it's based on probably the most politically incorrect TV series ever, gloriously so that it achieves self-parody status. It's best played with bottles of JD and trying to insert pig-Latin into your roleplaying as one of the conniving Houses. Here's a link to it on BGG.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128671/spartacus-a-game-of-blood-treacheryThe winner was a good friend, a girl (she fluttered her eyelashes with the weaker-willed drunker players to win it) and at the end, she commented that it was great to play a game where there is so much hunky almost naked male flesh while all the mostly female Slave assets were clothed ((I had gone down the brothel strategy minting money like Littlefinger). Only then did it hit the rest of us just how homoerotic the game is with all its near-naked male flesh yet all the women are clothed (no doubt, to prevent uproar from feminists). But any such imbalance is perfectly fine in society these days.
Of course this was less than a day since my prior post so, the game having just finished, we got to discussing this double standards in society. How it's perfectly fine to have Diet Coke and similar ads that leer at hunky men but nobody dares the opposite. How HBO, with its excellent shows, insist on inserting unnecessary sex scenes which are not essential to the story (Littlefinger's brothel had little part in the story, HBO!) but are clever in that they include full frontal male nudity as well to deflect the ire of feminists. This led on to "Oz", one of HBO's early hits, based in a male prison with only male nudity and we all agreed they could never ever do that show based in a woman's prison. The homosexuality and rape depicted in Oz would have been deemed exploitative were it based in a woman's prison. Double standards.
There were areas where we were divided. Some of us thought Sin City was exploitative. These were those who had not read the comics I guess. Now I don't agree with Frank Miller's politics (I'm more an Alan Moore left wing hippy) but I was one of those who argued Sin City is not reality, it's a stylistic piece that harks back to a simpler world of brutal chivalry, and as such should not be taken seriously. It's art so can get away with it as it appeals to a more sophisticated palate like the plentiful female nudes in art. Also that the final act (The Big Fat Kill) even empowers women, who are depicted as far more dangerous than the bumbling men. But I have to confess that the room (we had moved to the living room so many there) was split over Sin City. Hey, Brighton is left wing and some of the hate was probably aimed at Miller.
I then got onto the recent Mage Wars debate and because not all of us played, we got out the host's the copy. There was consensus that the art style is retro therefore the viewer has to accept retro sensibilities in keeping with that style. Nobody was particularly offended but the common consensus was that AW should "play it safe" (a horrible admission of the bullying power of vocal militant feminists) by adding a few scantily clad men and few fully clothed women.
The animator among us explained that the reason women are often caricatured with ample bosoms, hourglass figures and naked thighs is so that classic femininity can be accentuated and they are immediately recognised as female. His theory is linked to my Fantasy Sees Things In Black And White theory. Unless the concept is meant to be deliberately asexual (say an Odo-like changeling), Fantasy does not do androgyny well. We only have to see the horrible snide comments made about Lucy Lawless as Xena to see it (as for an effeminate male...). Fantasy is exactly what it says on the tin: a fantasy where the men are muscled and the women are classically feminine.
Passing around some of the cards through the mixed gender audience, only the Priestess really drew negative comments, but this was because she was meant to be Holy, implied Lawful Good, and such immodest depiction is not in line with such religious beliefs, especially when contrasted to the Priest. Everybody liked the Red Sonja style armoured angels that are Guardian Angel, Samandriel, Selesius and Valshalla (as the latter's tiny depiction and elemental feel excused being the least clothed), even when I contrasted them to the toga-robed male Gray Angel (who one person felt gave him a martyr-like appearance, not even knowing the game mechanic). Being Brighton with its liberal attitudes to sexuality, everybody loved the Forcemaster as a "bad-ass" girl. The host did not have the Druid set and, worried I would kill the conversation dead, the last card I handed around was the Jokhtari Beastmaster...
Now I've stated (before Aylin attacked me) that, while coloured myself and I'm not in the least bit offended, I felt AW opened themselves up to criticism with the female black savage image facing the white colonialist. But what I hadn't considered is: "how else are you supposed to put a fantasy spin on something that actually happened in history?". The alternative would be to never accept that this happened and that atrocities were committed in the name of crusading Catholicism - and such denial is worse, not far from Holocaust denial. This was argued by a female games player who's quite an activist (Brighton voted the UK's only Green Party member in Parliament) though we joked that she only supported the card because most of her girlfriends are black. However, it does bring up a valid point: should Arcane Wonders be applauded for bravely transposing Fantasy to a milieu that doesn't flatter the white oppressors, armed with their "Holy" light that burns? Is the Holy of Etheria similar to the ultra Lawful edicts of the Vorgons in Babylon 5, so law-imposing that it becomes fascist? Having been exposed to this alternate view, I'm starting to see hidden depth between Malakai's Fire and Demonic Fire.
I still think Mage Wars should have played it safe on the race front. Maybe made Forcemaster oriental without being accused of being racist by promoting that racial stereotype (it's difficult to potray a race in a card without caricaturising it). Maybe made Sir Corazin or one of the Angels black. But actually, if you think about it, exploring the wrongness of crusading colonialism under the pretext of a fantasy, was actually quite brave. They could have played it safe and just stuck to European Temperate Zone Medieval creatures and structures. But instead they took a risk (just like with the Necromancer book) and provoked a debate on it
I can tell you that the night, fuelled by alcohol etc, meandered onto other weighty linked topics. But I ended the night with these thoughts.
1. There is a lot of double standards in current society, pushed upon us by a vocal militant minority agenda.
2. Art depiction, especially in a small card, needs to accentuate features and this caricature may cause offence.
3. It is better to provoke discussion than censor it and deny contrary opinions exist or the past never occurred.
As for what you wrote, Aylin, I've written too much already and can't be bothered to rebut it (I'd rather test my wits against Kich) because I doubt anyone can change your views so all you achieved by blindly attacking me is to alienate a blatant sympathiser (and probably others). I know I am in no way out of synch with my own liberal peers, it is you who is the extremist. I will however end with just one quote.
I was shocked that someone who claims to be in a minority group would give the go-ahead to discriminate against another minority group.
This is typical militant hyperbole which is self-defeating when revealed to be fraudulent. I have never advocated discriminating against women (I believe the UK's recent Paternity Rights Bill will help to remove the Glass Ceiling that exists for careerist women because it makes men just as much a liability with their new Paternity Rights as women, the reason for inequity in the workplace).
Not finding an image offensive is not discrimination, madam. And I also do not consider women to be a "minority group".
