Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars

By: Derek Yu

On: May 24th, 2011

Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars, by Anna Anthropy

Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars is the latest game from Anna Anthropy (although it was released a couple of months ago). Based on the classic arcade game Wizard of Wor, it puts you in the role of one of the titular Spider-Queens as she attempts to put down a slave revolt and find the source of the rebellion. Instead of a gun, your character has a crystal staff that automatically ensnares and draws in slaves from the direction you’re facing. Zapping someone releases a collectible crystal in the opposite direction, forcing you to move around the map if you want a high score. It’s a well-designed game with fair challenge and plenty of fun touches.

TIGdb: Entry for Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars

Posted in Action, Browser Games | Tags: AuntiePixelante

http://twitter.com/ortoslon Alexey Zubkov

playthrough http://youtu.be/5aGxaepMYKU
Mitch Weaver

No one cares. The constant lesbian theme is getting very, very tired.
http://varms.net Gillman

Still think Lesbian Spider-Queen of Mars is one of the greatest titles yet
Guest

I feel kind of dirty looking at this after seeing the Ponycorn post above.
anthonyflack

The twist is that the lesbians are actually dudes…

Anthropy's re-envisioning of early 80s games with lesbian bondage themes is getting pretty tired for sure, but the upside is that the games usually make up for their lack of originality with some quite nicely streamlined and well-balanced gameplay. Unlike most remakes, they do often succeed in being subtly better – mechanically speaking – than the original.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NVA7D6X67A56Q2HDBN2JRKQ5PA Dead

Yeah, re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes are totally unoriginal! I just wish people would stop making re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes! If the world today has too much of something then re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes is surely one of those things.
You'd think with all the re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes over crowding the indie game market these days, Anthropy would do somehing different!
Don't get me wrong – the games are very good, it's just that re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes is extremely cliche and getting very very boring due to the vast amount of re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes already out there.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NVA7D6X67A56Q2HDBN2JRKQ5PA Dead

Yeah, re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes are totally unoriginal! I just wish people would stop making re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes! If the world today has too much of something then re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes is surely one of those things.
You'd think with all the re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes over crowding the indie game market these days, Anthropy would do somehing different!
Don't get me wrong – the games are very good, it's just that re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes is extremely cliche and getting very very boring due to the vast amount of re-envisionings of early 80's games with lesbian bondage themes already out there.
anthonyflack

Yeah I guess not many people can claim to have run a genre into the ground all on their own.
The_Daftmouse

Why is everyone talking about this game now when its been on adult swim for a month?
Guest

anna's made how many re-envisionings of 80s games with lesbian bondage themes? you're counting mighty jill off and lesbian spider-queens of mars? so, two.

how many games about THINGS MADE OF CLAY have you made?
auntie

actually, let's get nonanonymous.

complaining about the huge amount of games with lesbian protagonists in the field is pretty absurd because: there aren't very many. there are hundreds of games about heterosexual love stories (or some variation thereof) with male leads. even among indie games: super meat boy, braid, cave story all have a heterosexual relationship at their centers. that's fine; they were made by heterosexual men. as a queer woman, though, i'm going to make games about characters i identify with. that's one of the things that made me start making games, in fact: that there are so few queer voices in videogames. my making a handful of games about dykes isn't limiting your access to the hundreds of games about swaggering straight dudes.

as for the perviness of my games, well, that's part of my identity too. and i feel as though nerd erotophobia is holding back the expressive potential of the videogame form. sex and desire are an important part of our identities, of the way we present ourselves to and interact with others, of how we negotiate and experience our lives. if we keep games sterile and sexless, that's a vast sphere of the human experience that we're ignoring, a profoundly social one. and if digital games are having a hard time with anything, it's helping people connect in a social and socially meaningful way.

so you think two games about queer D/s dynamics is two too many. i disagree.
Jasper

Here's to many more in the future!
anthonyflack

(while continuing to use a pseudonym? Ok, I quibble)

There's nothing wrong with calling out a game for being thematically lame. Super Meat Boy's story and characters were (IMO) super-lame. Indie hipster monocle meme is super-lame. Do I think that one indie game about a sentient cube of meat is one too many? I do, actually. And yet – for all that, I still think it's a good, fun, well-made game despite this.

Similarly, trying to present a Wizard of Wor variant as having something meaningful to say about sex, gender identity, or helping people connect in a social and socially meaningful way is overstating the case more than a little. It says about as much as the Super Mario Bros mod that turns the Mario sprite brown says about race relations: ie about as much as the essay you go off and write about it afterwards says.

And trying to deflect any dissenting opinions as being an example of straight male hegenomy is just irritating. I don't want to play endless games with swaggering straight dudes. I hate those guys. I'm much happier playing a duck, or a mushroom, a little girl or a jeep or a frog or virtually anything else.

And a game that really did tackle issues of sex and sexuality, gender issues, social interaction or even an honest expression of the experience of being a male lesbian; that could be something very interesting. But this is not that game and it's a disingenuous argument to fall back on.

And yet – for all that, I still think it's a good, fun, well-made game. Although perhaps too close to the source material to really be considered a classic, it takes real talent to reimagine a game in a way that is both simpler and better than the original, and it's something I have an enormous respect for.

As for the clay thing – I've always viewed it simply as a method of art production. Other people always put more significance on it than I do. I feel the same way about it as I do when people criticise indie games for using too much chunky pixel art: so what, it's a method of art production that the person making the game is comfortable using; no big deal. It works, it looks nice, it does the job. If you're suggesting that people have (in the past at least) paid me more attention than my work might otherwise deserve, simply because I've used an unconventional style, then I would be inclined to agree.
auntie

“And a game that really did tackle issues of sex and sexuality, gender
issues, social interaction or even an honest expression of the
experience of being a male lesbian; that could be something very
interesting. But this is not that game.”

maybe you could find someone who identifies as a “male lesbian” to make that game for you?
anthonyflack

If you're going to bang the drum of sexual politics then a less evasive discussion would be more fruitful.

And if the most outspoken proponent of dyke games in the indie scene is genetically male, then of course it adds additional complexity to the discourse, irrespective of whether you wish to present yourself as making games from the perspective of a queer woman. If you are transgender, then that is another perspective, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.
Guest

Even if you don't identify as a male, you are one, in the sense most people use the word, i.e. descriptory and not political (as in, using it in an effort to change how people view gender roles). Instead of answering any of the points Anthony brings up, you just go off on a tangent to make his criticism look sexist/prejudiced. Never being able to discuss a topic without falling back onto this techniques is just trolling.
auntie

well let me ask you something, anthony flack: are these games NOT from the perspective of someone who is a transgendered lesbian? if they aren't then whose perspective are they from? i made them, they're from my perspective. my values and experiences shaped them. does the protagonist need to say “by the way, i have a dick” before it becomes a game about the experience of a transgendered woman? isn't that super tokenizing?

i dunno, you seem to be suggesting that my perverted games have, mechanically, nothing to do with the sexual themes i've dressed them up in? is that accurate? i disagree: to me, mighty jill off is all about the player's masochism and desire to prove herself, the designer's nurturing sadism, the escalation of a scene. spider-queens is about a really imbalanced power relationship. these games are both power dynamics, and i've used the sprites and sounds to characterize the rules in such a way that i hope that comes across to the player.

but yeah, you opened your commentary with an “anna is a man” joke, so i don't feel particularly obliged to show you any kind of respect. this might be hard to fathom, but there's only so much of that kind of thing i can willingly subject myself to.
Guest

Wow. So stating your identity is trolling. You must be real weak-minded.
arno

For everyone that thinks athonyflack is bringing up great criticisms:

1) If you think that one game about sentient meat is too many then we have pretty much no reason to listen to your argument about there being too many lesbian games. You clearly have unreasonably strong criteria for what a game should have as a theme. You then go on to say that you're fine playing games in which the theme is that you are a duck or mushroom or whatever. Those are presumably themes that are just as lame, unless somehow ducks and mushrooms are mysteriously drastically different than meat or lesbians. You are contradicting yourself.

2) If the game was designed with the purpose of saying something about sex and gender identity, then they aren't overstating the case. That's what the game was MADE about. Whether or not it succeeds at that is another matter, but whether you like it or not that's what the game is trying to accomplish. That is its purpose.

3) They never once said that your dissenting opinion was a form of male hegemony or even implied anything like that. The closest they said was “super meat boy, braid, cave story all have a heterosexual relationship
at their centers. that's fine; they were made by heterosexual men.” No one ever accused anyone of being wrong because they were straight or male. It's bizarre that some of you seem to have interpreted anything that was said as accusing anyone of being sexist.
AGuy

TIGSource is the Kotaku of independent games
Haberdasher

wait what

so if you do something it's original

but if someone else does something it's “tired”?

why should anyone care about your shit opinion anyway?
anthony hack

anthony flack, when is your claymation platformer role playing game making fun hillbillies going to come out and blow everyone away with how relevant and worthwhile your contribution to the form is?
anthonyflack

It has been out of production for over a year, and won't be back until we raise more funds. Sadly, not much we can do about that as we have to make a living. The financial crisis threw a massive spanner in our works. We are pitching and working on other (smaller) projects in the meantime and should be releasing some other stuff soon while we try to get some funds together.

But I should stress: even if I don't and never do contribute anything, that isn't really relevant at all. I could just as well be posting as “guest”. When I release something, I'll take any criticism that comes its way (and believe me I've had plenty).
anthonyflack

wait what

When did I claim to be doing something original? If anything, I said the opposite: that in the past my work had probably gotten more attention than it deserved due to something that I consider to be a fairly inconsequential stylistic choice. i never sought to make a big deal about it.

And I certainly didn't intend to criticise every time “someone does something”. I've said all kinds of nice things about times that someone did something. I fully approve of someone doing something.

It's totally up to you whether you care about my shit opinion or not. You don't have to.
anthonyflack

You are quite correct, it is not about what a game “should” have as a theme; you can only judge on the end result. I picked on Super Meat Boy not because I have an aversion to meat, but because I thought the characters in that game were really alienating and stupid. And because I could also say that I genuinely like the game for lots of other reasons, and the game is successful enough that it can easily take a bit of criticism for poor character design.

So yeah, it's not a simple question of subject matter, it's all about whether it succeeds or not. Which is, of course, a matter of opinion. So sue me.
anthonyflack

The games don't have to say anything. The protagonist doesn't have to express your values, or they can, or whatever. Of course.

But you've made it your platform that you are a queer woman and that is the perspective you are trying to put across in your games. You speak at length about it – and you asserted it again just now. You don't talk about being transgendered, you talk about being a lesbian. Of course people are going to find it surprising – and more than that, a misrepresentation of your stated position – to learn that you are a man. That's the only reason you'd be subjected to any of those sorts of jokes. That's the only reason it's even relevant.

It's not because you're transgendered. That is, in itself, not funny, and no cause for disrespect. Dani Bunten, to pick the most obvious example, is, I think, universally respected in this industry, and not a person I would ever make a joke about.

The specific mechanics of the games are, to be honest, a topic of discussion I find much more interesting, although I don't necessarily agree with your theses about how they relate to theme. Like, I don't agree that such intensely difficult games are masochistic in nature – if anything, it's the players of mindless easy games that are willfully subjecting themselves to torture. Like playing Farmville. But I digress.

Thematic issues aside, I would like to add that replacing the gun with a lasoo-type mechanic has improved on Wizard of Wor immensely.
anthony hack

i actually don't care; it's not a surprise, what with all the time you spend trolling tigsource.
seriously, what an embarassing hack.
John

I love the game. Thanks for all the great work, Anna, keep it up!
anthonyflack

Yeah, several dozen comments in the last couple of years: takes forever.

Who are you, anyway?
Yourmum

anthony it's your mum
stop pressing f5 and do your laundry
Amon26

Woohoo!! LSQM! Fun-Fact: I wrote some of the music to this while slightly delusional with a fever of 103. Then with my bleary logic I got on my shitty-ass webcam mic and record a version where I sang along with my tore up bloody throat. I sent the vocal version to Anna just for laughs, then later on she told me she would use it in the actual game. If you stick with it to the end you get to hear me do my worst at my worst. I think I wrote more lyrics to this song but I've never made another recording.
auntie

when i express my gender i don't need to QUALIFY it by tagging an asterisk and saying i'm not a “real” woman. lots of trans women who have to suffer nerds stay in stealth mode online because of dicks like you. and because, of course, being transgendered doesn't change, invalidate or dominate the fact that they're women. i used that strategy once, i'm frank about it now. but here's the crazy part, and pay attention: my gender identity doesn't need your prior approval. i don't need to RUN IT BY you first to make sure it's okay for me to call myself a woman. i'm not deceiving anyone!

i'm sorry you were jerking off to me for months before you learned you'd been fapping to a fat shemale, but you'll forgive me if i'm not too torn up about it!
PandaPops

Not going to go into it but just wanted to say that anyone who has disagreed with AnthonyFlack's points really is a special kind of idiot.
anthony flack

oh thanks, checque's in the mail
anthonyflack

^ Not me, by the way
anthonyflack

Well, that was predictable descent into ad hominem. Don't flatter yourself.

If you didn't make such a big deal about being a gay woman, saying that it's key to your work, then it wouldn't matter in the slightest that you can't justifiably claim to know what it *actually* feels like to be a gay woman. Because like it or not, being transgendered doesn't make you a gay woman, it makes you transgendered.

Yet here you go again:

“as a queer woman, though, i'm going to make games about characters i
identify with. that's one of the things that made me start making games,
in fact: that there are so few queer voices in videogames.”
auntie

i could try to explain the difference between GENDER and SEXUALITY to you but i don't think it will do anything to help you be NOT A TERRIBLE PRICK.
uvTwitch

Anna's cool, she's just doing her thing. Nintendo have pretty much run 'fat plumber who jumps' and 'green elf who opens boxes' into the ground all on their own too, but they're still making fantastic games for it.

It seems like you're just doing your thing too, which is apparently being an insensitive, antagonistic douchebag. You should probably quit while you're ahead and have a good, long think about what you're really saying, instead of continuing to pedantically demand that people choose to present themselves in a manner you agree with.
anthonyflack

I could try to explain the difference between LESBIAN and NOT A LESBIAN to you, but I don't think it would do anything to help you NOT BE A TERRIBLE HYPOCRITE.
anthonyflack

I don't think it's so contentious, really though. I mean, I know plenty of dykes and I would be very surprised if any of them tried to claim they represented the point of view of a transgendered man. How could they? They don't have access to that experience.

So Anna makes these games with these lesbian sex cut-scenes, which, if they were made by a self-identified heterosexual man, then they would likely be called tacky and sexist, but Anna says “it's my perspective as a queer woman” and instantly it becomes a political statement and seemingly above all criticism. And if anyone is foolish enough to call her out on (not that most people would willingly walk into that minefield*), she goes into full-blown persecuted victim argument deflection, ie “lots of trans women who have to suffer nerds stay in stealth mode online because of dicks like you”.

But I have no issues with transgendered people. It's sad if people feel the need to “stay in stealth mode” and I would be the first to defend somebody who was being hassled for coming out (and indeed I have done on occasion).

But I do have an issue with Anna (constantly) claiming to represent the perspective of a queer woman in her games, both as a political platform and a way of deflecting criticism, simply because she isn't one, and can't legitimately claim to know what it feels like. There's no way she can say with any certainty that her fetishistic depictions of lesbians aren't characteristic of her male physiology, for example. You only have your own experiences to go by, and she doesn't have a gay woman's perspective and can't claim to be a voice for gay women in game development. She has a transgendered male perspective.

*and I'm only here because I kind of blundered in semi-unwillingly, but fuck it, I'm comfortable around LGBT people and I'm not scared of talking about gender politics and I don't accept the “we can discuss it but you can't because we'll call you a bigot” exclusionary bollocks. Also, as a registered user, posting non-anonymously, the responses keep turning up in my inbox…
anthonyflack

(I can spell)
Zecks

i miss the times when games were about game

i really do
Zecks

It's really tempting to post some fucking sense™ in here but luckily I know that nowadays people refuse to get anything. Nothing inherently bad in doing it though, just don't do it all the time.
anthonyflack

Actually, I'd like to take that back, as it's going further than I intended to call you a terrible hypocrite. I've raised my objection, you've delivered your invective, now I can't see this discussion going any further than an endless cycle of name-calling and a misappropriation of everybody's energies.

I still don't think you can honestly claim to be bringing a female perspective to game development, and you are going to continue to insist that your identity *does* give you a female perspective, and that's about as far as we're ever likely to get.
DustySpur

you mean the special kind of idiot that actually understands gender identity & sexuality and isn't a total fucking horse's ass? because if so, i agree
Zecks

@dustyspur's reply: here's my theory in action again. god i love being right.
anthonyflack

(and chuckle at the uneducated)
anthonyflack

you tell 'em, champ!!!
anthony's mum again

keep digging, sonny!
Imperius Q. Lovejoy

Hi Anthony, I wanted to send you an email and congratulate you for making such an embarrassment of yourself on the internet. As all good men know, using the internet as a vehicle for self-embarrassment is truly the best method of attack when forced to face your truest fears, like 'fake lesbians' who are successful at a job you only pretend to do yourself.