I love Felicia Day.  I loved her as Vi during season seven of Buffy.  I loved her as Penny in Dr. Horrible.  I loved her as Mag during the postapocolyptic Epitaph episodes of Dollhouse.  And I love her as the star and creator of The Guild.

The Guild is an awesome internet series focusing on the in-game and real-life exploits of the members of The Knights of Good, a guild in an online RPG only referred to as The Game (it’s essentially World of Warcraft).  The series focuses on Day’s character, Cyd Sherman aka Codex.  The series pokes fun at stereotypes regarding online gamers, but is filled with enough in-jokes that gamers are the core audience and not just the butt of the joke (ahem, not that I’d know).

However, that’s not to say that it’s perfect (after all, nothing regarding MMORPGs is).  So allow me to express one (of many) of my concerns:

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Yesterday I stumbled upon this short over at Sociological Images:

Girls suck at video games / Les filles sont nulles aux jeux vidéo from Stéphanie Mercier on Vimeo.

What do you think?

Or: Things that I considered writing about but never got around to and now other fantastic bloggers have said it better than I could, including:

• An important question regarding women rockers in video games
• Janelle Monae: sweet dancing in sweet suits
• Beyonce as a 50s housewife, and
• M.I.A.’s latest political statement on ________ (careful on that one – NSFW w/ graphic violence)

Will we ever get Rock Band: The Donnas, or Guitar Hero(ine): Heart? [jukebox heroines]

Will we get a popular video game that focuses exclusively on women as artists? As it is now, we have rock games that do nothing but focus on male artists, with a few token women tossed into the mix, complete with busty cleavage and skimpy clothing.

Janelle Monae is an Avant-Garde Film Geek (“Tightrope” Video) [cultural voiceover]

Janelle Monae was already promising to be a distinguishable kind of talent with her 2007 EP and her 60s soul sound with a touch of outer space. And the music video for her new song “Tightrope” (to be released on her upcoming album in May) has given us even more to look forward to.

Beyoncé An (Un)Happy Homemaker In New Video [jezebel]

More than anything, the song — and the video — gets better when BB sings “there’s nothing not to love about me,” as more of a statement, instead of a plea.

Tuning In: M.I.A.’s “Born Free” [bitch]

[F]ew seemed prepared for the incendiary clip, which was met with heated debate and taken off YouTube within hours. Directed by Romain Gavras, the nine-minute epic documents a militia breaking into civilians’ homes, terrorizing the inhabitants, rounding up redheads in hiding, and executing them at gun point. It’s grisly stuff, to be sure. Frankly, I’m not sure if I like the video. I certainly haven’t enjoyed watching it, though I’m not sure how one could.

What have you been reading, writing, watching, or listening to this week?

We’ve been over this, people. Girls (and women) play too. We don’t just watch our boyfriends play in amazement.

Even if it weren’t for this commercial, this isn’t the type of game I’d typically choose, but I have certainly known my share of bad@$$ gamer women who destroy male gamers on Halo and other shooter and action games.

Marketers would do well to realize that women are a viable video-game market, and they should try catering to us without the pink and romance and stop insulting our intelligence in male-targeted games.

Although its not a new release by any means, I recently played Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, from start to finish for the first time.  I love sitting down with a video game after a long day and zoning out into fantasyland.  However, I never was able to really turn my brain off while playing Paper Mario, and was kind of astonished by the level of misogyny incorporated into such a silly kids’ game.

Of course, as usual, Princess Peach is in need of rescuing. She found some treasure map and then got herself kidnapped by trying to explore on her own (silly princess, adventures are for boys!).  This we are used to and prepared for when we play any of the Mario games.  However, what is troubling is that this time Peach is being sexually harassed by the computerized security system, TEC, which has “fallen in love” with her after watching her take a shower.  Yes, a cartoon video game character takes a steamy shower, which is observed by security cameras.  TEC goes on to blackmail Peach into “teaching” it about love in exchange for sending Mario messages.

Sexual harassment isn’t in short supply in the game.  By the time you reach chapter three and enter the Paper Mario equivalent of professional wrestling, the dialogue regarding female characters is ridiculous.  The wrestlers disrespect their manager’s primary assistant, Jolene, regularly, and phrases like “that tart” and “cute blonde,” as well as “don’t worry your pretty little head” and “I need a shorty” are tossed around casually and frequently.

Additionally, the female playable characters are an embarrassment.  The first character to join your party is a college-aged goomba named Goombella whose special talent is to reveal secrets about characters in the world (essentially through gossip) and “tattle” on enemies weaknesses in battle.  Although she is a researcher, Goombella comes across as a sorority girl and is more annoying than helpful most of the time.

The second playable female character is a purple cloud named Flurrie.  When we meet Flurrie, she is in hysterics over losing her pearl necklace and won’t come out of her dressing room until Mario retrieves it for her from some thieves.  She’s big and busty (yes, a cloud with breasts which jiggle hypnotically when she chuckles, which she does often) with Pamela Anderson style pink fish-lips.  Flurrie’s special ability is literally blowing her enemies away, although she later learns the ability to suck the life out of them with kisses.

One of the primary sets of minions in the game is the Shadow Siren Sisters: one old, withered and wicked; one fat, shy and stupid; and one young, sexy and ditzy.  The little withered one is the brains of the operation, and verbally assaults her other sisters into doing her bidding.  The large stupid one is the only one with any common sense, but no one ever listens to hear since she is essentially the big dumb oaf.  The sexy pink one, Vivian, eventually bails on her sisters after being belittled for so long and joins your party.

The last female character to join the party is a special, unlockable party member that you have to earn by completing a special side quest.  Ms. Mowz (points for being a Ms., by the way) is a constant flirt, and is very greedy and materialistic – prior to joining your party, Ms. Mowz is often run into in the game as she thieves around the world.  She’s constantly coming on to Mario, and Goombella calls her a “floozy.”  One of her special moves is called “Kiss Theif,” in which she steals items from enemy characters with a kiss.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I love video games.  I earned my first Super Nintendo in the fourth grade for getting straight E’s (apparently the A-F scale wasn’t appropriate for elementary school, so we got E’s for “excellent” instead of A’s and NI’s for “needs improvement” instead of F’s), and immediately traded in the Mortal Combat cartridge it came with for Donkey Kong and Zombies Ate My Neighbors.  Family holidays consisted of my cousin and I in his basement playing the newest hot game, which he always had.  Sleepovers consisted of DK and Crash Bandicoot all-nighters.  My Gameboy and I were inseparable for awhile there, and when I was older I asked for a PS2 instead of a DVD player for double the fun.  And a couple of years ago, when I rocked the GRE’s, I treated myself to Guitar Hero and wailed away all night.

But the video game world is changing.  Now we have sparkly pink bejeweld consoles and soft “lilac” handhelds for “girlz,” along with a vast array of girl-targeted games.  The tv-console systems are still primarily boy-oriented (Xbox, PlayStation), although the Wii may be changing things ever so slightly.  However, if Nintendo’s DS gaming options are any indication, their Wii selection is probably not breaking the molds too quickly.  What is changing more rapidly is the handheld market: the Nintendo DS (at least it’s not called GameBoy anymore) and PSP, and the marketers for these products have no shame in targeting girls using all the stereotypes they can come up with.

Click here for the evidence