Gearbox Wants Female Duke Nukem Game

[Carlston]

Do it right and it would be epic...

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Wouldn't that just be like the female team mate in Bulletstorm?

As for Dante being the Japanese Nukem, a crossover would rock, especially if Duke beats the emo out of new Dante.

He's my favourite robot pal! Ishi was ok, but he wasn't fifty feet tall! Its a pretty cool party, come and see! You can get a robot and come killing with me!

 

[Gaelen Leroe]

Nanananananah you guys are all missing it... It's RUBY from WET!! She drinks, smokes, and kicks ass; and has guns, a sword, and a foul-mouth!!

 

[BrionJames]

So if Duke Nukem is an overy masculine person, will the female constrast, be extremly feminine?

That's exactly what I was thinking.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

i expect some pretentious indie developer is developing a sidescrolling 2D, 8-bit shooter as we speak...

 

[Xman490]

I was just talking yesterday about how a Duchess Nukem who did the exact same things as Duke Nukem does(except obviously with men instead of how Duke handles women) would be received entirely differently, and how that was more or less proof that it wasn't misogynistic.

Crazy.

You know, that's just crazy enough to work. The aliens could have their Duchess Nukem fem-pimp who appears at the end for a clash of morals and an epic fight with Duke.

 

[caviar1]

"daisy" would have men fight her battles for her because she's a woman? good job guys, helping the cause

 

[jawakiller]

So if Duke Nukem is an overy masculine person, will the female constrast, be extremly feminine?

That sounds extremely unappealing. I barf at the thought of a female version of Duke'em. Sorry ladies but that would suck.

 

[Ryujisama]

Female Duke Nukem...?
































Challenge accepted.

 

[Nieroshai]

Easy; Bayonetta crossover anyone?

 

[Nieroshai]

Nanananananah you guys are all missing it... It's RUBY from WET!! She drinks, smokes, and kicks ass; and has guns, a sword, and a foul-mouth!!

Yes, but is she an over-the-top overexaggeration of all things feminine? As far as I remember her sexuality was never a factor and she was basically a video game version of Kill Bill's Beatrix. Duke Nukem is, however, the epitome of all things that have ever been considered masculine.

 

[Sterlingdragon]

A girl form of Duke?
The answer is quite simple;
A blonde Lara Croft.

This was a haiku
By one Sterlingdragon.
So what did you think?

 

[Terminal Blue]

Yeah.. I call this missing the point. Or rather deflecting criticism by throwing the media a stick and running away.

Egoism would not necessitate putting women in positions where they have to be rescued and/or smacked, masculinity does that. Saying 'Duke is an egotistical man, there could be a game about an egotistical woman!' is like saying 'I have spray painted a swastika on this wall, but you could spray paint a maltese cross!'

Yes, so? We weren't talking about some fictional game which doesn't exist, Randy. We were talking about your game which does exist and which does contain content which some people quite justifiably find objectionable. As you've said yourself, male egotism is different. We live in a world where women get physically and sexually abused by 'egotistical men' to a staggeringly high degree and the reverse is not true.

There's one very simple way out of this and the complete reluctance to take it is mind boggling and a little disturbing. Just say 'it's a parody'. How the fuck do you think GTA got away with it? Of course, if the game isn't a parody and it's been played dead serious then don't be surprised if that shit doesn't fly in the 21st century. It's a tradeoff.

 

[bader0]

im pretty sure that this would be awesome. gearbox... DO EEEEET

 

[AngloDoom]

"He is ego-centric and everything in his world revolves around him," he continued. "And women can offer him something different than men can. So if, to Duke, women are less than him, it's not because they're women, it's just because they're not him."

Pitchford points out how Duke actually puts himself "at great risk" to make sure women are safe, which is the premise of Duke Nukem Forever.

...So it's not sexist because, in the end, he whisks the women off their feet from horseback and rides into the sunset?

If Duke was shown being an ass, and the other characters treating him like he was an ass, I'd be all for that. If he saved a woman's life, hinted he wanted her to give him 'something' because he saved her, and she turned around and call called him an ass and stormed off, then I'd happily say the game is mocking Duke and that's all fine.

However, I'm pretty sure the formula will go: Woman in danger, Duke saves women, woman thanks Duke by getting on her knees, Duke finds another women in danger, Duke saves women, etc, etc.

Yeah, I'm getting that impression too, that the game won't be an adventure featuring a sexist hero but a sexist fantasy for blinkered guys. Half of this forum has been about how awesome their sexy girl Nukem would be, and the other half about how the awful feminists would never appreciate their good intentions.

Meh. I think it boils down to the fact that Duke IS a joke, and as far as I have seen, it's easy to be ok with a man being a joke, and nigh impossible to be ok with a woman being a joke. Make of that what you will.

EDIT: I think the game is more told from the point of view of Duke, and whatever fantasy world his perverted little mind lives in. Yeah, what AngloDoom said would be very applicable if this were "reality" in the game world, where people aren't cardboard cut-outs and nondescript cannon-fodder, but as it stands, what I get from it is you're playing as a mildly deranged man witnessing the world as that mildly deranged man might.

Yeah, I understand. That is also how I view the Grand Theft Auto games. But nobody from Rockstar appeared to defend the amoral criminality of their protagonists, so I've become concerned that Gearbox and the game's fans appear to want to identify with Duke, in fact. Pitchfork has actually said that Duke is not misogynist, which is being deliberately obtuse, IMHO.

That depends on your definition of misogynist, I suppose. Is one a misogynist if one simply has little or no respect for women, or if one has little or no respect for women IN PARTICULAR. I think this Gearbox guy has a good point. Duke has little or no respect for ANYONE that isn't him, and about half of the people that are not him also happen to be women. I might characterize Duke as simply a douche, as opposed to strictly a misogynist.

EDIT: Going by the "someone is prejudiced because they simply have little or no respect for x group of people," Duke is also almost every flavor of racist, agist, and sexuality-ist (is there a better word for this?) under the sun, as well as possessing countless other prejudices which would bar him from EVER getting federal funding were he an institution.

See, that I'm totally fine with. If Duke is just shown as an A-grade ass toward everyone and everything then all is well. It'd be nice to see a game about someone who is essentially Johnny Bravo where the game mocks and laughs at the days of old through the character.

Problem is, I can't imagine it doing that. I can imagine it waving that banner above a crusade of slaughtering aliens to get women to do whatever Duke wants and laughing at it all and saying "woah there, this is only a game!"

I'm all for being proven wrong and I'd love to play a game where the person I control is intentionally dislikeable and a huge satire on games of old and the new genre of muscle-men space-marines. I'll sit on my fence now until the game is released, give it a go, and then form my opinion.

 

[Sol_HSA]

Zillion posts and nobody mentions Bombshell:

http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/game_art/duke_nukem_forever/bombshell

Apparently you kids don't know your history.

 

[Keirgo]

Yeah.. I call this missing the point. Or rather deflecting criticism by throwing the media a stick and running away.

Egoism would not necessitate putting women in positions where they have to be rescued and/or smacked, masculinity does that. Saying 'Duke is an egotistical man, there could be a game about an egotistical woman!' is like saying 'I have spray painted a swastika on this wall, but you could spray paint a maltese cross!'

Yes, so? We weren't talking about some fictional game which doesn't exist, Randy. We were talking about your game which does exist and which does contain content which some people quite justifiably find objectionable. As you've said yourself, male egotism is different. We live in a world where women get physically and sexually abused by 'egotistical men' to a staggeringly high degree and the reverse is not true.

There's one very simple way out of this and the complete reluctance to take it is mind boggling and a little disturbing. Just say 'it's a parody'. How the fuck do you think GTA got away with it? Of course, if the game isn't a parody and it's been played dead serious then don't be surprised if that shit doesn't fly in the 21st century. It's a tradeoff.

GTA has never been a parody from what I can tell. Given it's the one to copy of the 'rampant criminal' genre.

The issue here isn't hypotheticals, Gearbox said they watned a female duke and this thread kind of shows overwhelming support for the idea. I've often been confronted in debates over the portrayl of women (sexualised) with 'how would you feel it it were a man?' My response, I didn't really care. I saw people trying to act like the shirtless guys in the Twilight posters were a big deal and didn't get it. Women are fully entitled to their eye-candy and crazy-ass fantasies just as we men are. Duke is an exageration of many traits and isn't meant to be taken seriously as a way to live (except maybe for how to use a jetpack) and the support for a brash, equally out of her mind, dominant female is pretty strong here it seems. The outpouring of comparisons to other characters (even if we don't need people acting like they are the first to mention Ruby or Bayonetta at least once each page) shows that the dominant, taunting female is popular. Hell, I know that alot of people like to play as rough and tumble Female Shepard for Mass Effect.

I wonder if this is an indication of Duke being a slight dose of what the world needs. People that players want to be instead of being guilted into thinking they should be. Do I think Zeveran of Dragon Age is a good role model? No. Would I have happily played a game about him and wooed my way through some very handsom men. Totally.

I think my point may have gotten garbeled.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Duke is an exageration of many traits and isn't meant to be taken seriously as a way to live (except maybe for how to use a jetpack) and the support for a brash, equally out of her mind, dominant female is pretty strong here it seems.

Shouldn't that in itself tell you something..

Duke is a character designed to appeal to men. It's yet another play on the endless 'fucking and fighting' alpha male fantasies which us guys seem to love. Women, in my experience, tend not to be into that shit and for very good reason. Attraction to such people generally entails having been beaten into line or emotionally dominated so hard that you can't tell the difference between affection and abuse.

So why are a bunch of men sitting here having a collective wank over the possibility of femduke. Well, there's a very obvious answer.. femduke is not the same. Let's imagine a dominant taunting female.. Heck, let's go the whole way and call her a dominatrix because that's the fantasy we're talking about. Is such a character designed, like Duke Nukem, as someone women are meant to fantasize about being? Not really, they're still just another female character men want to fantasize about fucking. The subject positions are fundamentally quite different.. men, essentially, don't get fucked very often. Generally, they can choose to see themselves as doing the fucking. The same liberty isn't open to women.

Social judgement in this area is pretty crude. A woman who puts out is still a woman who puts out. A man who gets his way is still a man who gets his way. You don't get to change that that just because the woman wears leather and sneers a lot.

Do I think Zeveran of Dragon Age is a good role model? No. Would I have happily played a game about him and wooed my way through some very handsom men. Totally.

What gave away his lack of role model potential, was it the fact that he's an emotionally dead and borderline suicidal wreck who covers it up with humour, innuendo and hedonism?

Zevran isn't just a one dimensional fantasy. There's more to his character than shooting dudes in the face and fucking girls.

I mean, as you said, he fucks men. That's an automatic red card of exclusion from the realms of traditional masculine fantasy. I can only assume that straight men are very self-hating creatures who feel that people who might want to touch their cocks are automatically humiliated by doing so. It would certainly explain homophobia and misogyny in one fell swoop.

 

[NLS]

Ain't Bayonetta the female Duke Nukem?

I guess so, and people pointed out that she was oversexualised.

*looks at picture of Duke*

Um... why is it that no one's complained about Duke being oversexualised?

Because you know, Duke, Marcus and Kratos is what every real man is supposed to look like. >__<

But nobody complaints. There's no huge protests from male rights organizations going all "he is a disgrace for our self-image blablabla". Just recently there was all this rage in the media about some advertising campaign for a shoe brand, featuring a hot woman dressed in a pair of shoes and nothing more. Things like "giving a false portrayal of the female body" and "making the female body a product for sale".

Yet nobody cared about the similarly dressed and muscular man also featured in the ad campaign.

 

[chinangel]

I'd like to see a female duke actually...that would be very interesting.