Wales Interactive have seemingly withdrawn the announcement of FMV Future’s Gamer Girl, after a disastrous reception to the game’s teaser trailer.
PC Gamer reports that on July 16th Wales Interactive announced Gamer Girl; an “FMV thriller” where players play as a moderator for a female streamer, banning trolls, helping “Abicake99” thrive in her new career, and helping her deal with new friends and what appears to be a stalker.
You can find the teaser trailer (via a third party) below.
As seen by the comments to the video (and the removed Like/Dislike ratio), the game was poorly received. Twitch has been criticized in recent years for not enforcing their rules against female streamers who dress or act provocatively, and make the main focus of their streams that content instead of video games.
These “Twitch Thots” are also accused of taking advantage of desperate and isolated single men, by allowing them to keep a delusion that donating money to them will eventually lead to a real life relationship with them (a man such as this is also called a “Simp”).
Twitch announced in early April an update to their policies, specifically those related to “Nudity and Attire” and “Sexually Suggestive Content” policies. It is likely these policies were introduced to counteract the negative stereotype of the platform, and female streamers.
There is also the negative stereotype of male gamers being unwelcoming to women with a genuine interest in the hobby, and “Gamer Girl” being an insult used by them (a woman pretending to like a predominantly male hobby for attention, who falsely claims she is being harassed when others question her motives).
This is further fueled by media such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit‘s infamous episode Intimidation Game. One male character even shouts “go home gamer girl!” in an aggressive tone.
The trailer for Gamer Girl sometimes shows the female streamer in a low-cut top (and at one time bending over, further exposing her cleavage). However, it appears most negativity towards the game come from other elements.
These include its branching narrative largely being two major paths (as shown by what is representative of a graph of events in the trailer), the acting of the actors and actresses in the trailer, and the game appearing to having out of place darker narrative elements of stalking or abusive partners.
Others may also have found the streamer’s moderators helping make major life decisions as farcical, even if they became her friend. The overall production quality and perceived budget may also have worked against the game’s favor. Even those who praised the trailer reportedly compared it to a low-budget slasher horror film.
Publisher Wales Interactive explained the motivations behind creating the game in a series of tweets. The game was designed to address toxic behavior that female streamers can encounter online.
“Gamer Girl is about the impact user comments and actions have on a streamer’s mental health and wellbeing. The reason why FMV Future created the game was to raise the issue of the toxic environment which can often appear online behind the anonymity of a username…
Without giving away too much, Gamer Girl is an empowering story of a female streamer who, with the help of her moderator friend, battles the trolls and — overcomes— the toxic characters in her stream…
Gamer Girl was co-written by Alexandra Burton, the lead actress who improvised the entire script. The research into the streaming content of Gamer Girl took 4 years and the dev team at FMV Future interviewed dozens of female streamers…
most of whom have experienced abuse of various kinds online — some have even shared their experiences during interviews within the game…
Players start the game as one of Abi’s friends whom she trusts, and it is their job to make the channel a success but also to guide the stream to keep Abi in a positive frame of mind….
Online abuse is real and is still happening every day — Gamer Girl seeks to raise awareness of this issue.”
Many of the comments to the tweets show another reason the game could have gotten so much mockery and scorn. Some may have felt the game was encouraging the stereotype that gaming as a hobby was unwelcoming to women.
Others who even agreed with the game’s message felt the game was exploitative from something many were already very aware of. The game was also criticized for its unnerving subject matter, that players could (presumably) make choices that would result in the streamer coming to harm, or how the development team was predominantly male.
Returning to PC Gamer’s article; they report that all presence of the game was removed from the Wales Interactive website, including the press kit for the game from a private Google Drive. There is also no trace on Wales Interactive’s YouTube channel, or FMV Future’s website. Neither have made any statement at this time of writing [1, 2].
