I played Monument Valley 2 which fits the category of games that positively affirms identity and familiar roles (such as emotional labor) and genre tropes, but with a fresh spin. Overall, specific elements in Monument Valley 2 did a great job intertwining several feminist theories mentioned in Shira Chess’s book “Play Like a Feminist”.
The “casual game” nature of the game ties back to the feminist theory of “disrupting the good old boys playground”. In the book, Chess mentioned that there is a shift in game audience to non-male players when there are games that are more “causal” in a sense that is cheap/free or is easy to play with various amounts of time. Monument Valley has short episodes of chapters, and it is easy to pause in the middle of the gameplay while returning back without particular costs, and each chapter ending gives players a time to pause or take a break.
The art style + mechanics of the game also reinforces the theory of “disrupting the good old boys playground”. In the book, Chess talked about how the game industry has “no shortage of examples demonstrating the sexist portrayals of female characters in games that are designed for a presumed masculine audience”. The design of Ro and her daughter is not sexualized (see image below). There are no specific features that fit women stereotypes except for a simple dress and a little bun on Ro, and her daughter doesn’t even have any particular features that reinforces physical women stereotypes since she just has a hooded cape on. Moreover, the mechanics of the game is solving puzzles and building monuments, which, even though building monuments can be seen as a more “male-centered” activity, but Monument Valley 2 cleverly fits this mechanic in its game with the two female characters in a nature way that the audience won’t feel that the game is designed for a presumed masculine audience since the core is still solving puzzles rather than the traditional and real-life way of stacking blocks to build. A counterexample is Princess Peach in Super Smash Bros. The core of the game is more or less meant for a presumed masculine audience since the core gameplay is to smash each other – masculine and aggressive actions – and the female characters are sexualized in a sense that they are in lavish dresses and relatively weaker/non-aggressive powers.
The narrative of this story strengthens all aforementioned points and further ties to another feminist theory mentioned in the book, “telling feminist stories in games”. I didn’t finish the entire gameplay, but from the first few chapters + some additional research online, the complete narrative of Monument Valley 2 is about Ro teaching her daughter how to build the geometry monuments and how Ro has to eventually send her daughter away, just like how Ro’s mom has sent Ro away. However, Ro and her daughter reunited in the end. The narrative brilliantly reinforces feminism through the “mother” role (see image below). The traditional mother role is to nurture and teach their children, however, this game not only ties to that feminism concept, but brings it further to let Ro teach her daughter outdoors whereas a lot of stereotypical motherly nurture roles are more meant for indoors while the fatherly roles is more associated with real world/outdoors hands-on activities.
