Kotaku has published today an interesting opinion piece by Katie Williams. Katie attended this year’s E3 and faced a sexist attitude towards her from various PR representatives. Although Katie did not reveal which studios were the ones that had that attitude towards her, she described a game in which she encountered – perhaps for the first time during E3 – that sexist attitude and it seems that this game is no other than Bohemia’s Interactive military FPS, ArmA III.
Let’s take everything from the start now, shall we? According to Katie, a PR rep took her keyboard from her hands in order to showcase their game to her. Here is the first clue, keyboard. We do know that most multi-platform shooters were showcased in this year’s E3 with a gamepad. Crysis 3, MOH, Battlefield 3 and Far Cry 3 are prime examples of it, as there weren’t keyboards available for them. Katie has also described the game as a ‘simulation-grade shooter’. A military sim game? That’s definitely not your COD title and hints towards ArmA III. Not only that, but Katie described a bit the first scene from the game.
As Katie wrote:
“Before me, yellow grass swayed in the wind, and leaning on the W, I began to move slowly through its blades, watching the brush give way to glimpses of crumbling buildings and battered vehicles.”
So we have yellow-ish grass, open environments and buildings with vehicles. This information guides us towards only two titles that featured such things in this year’s E3; Far Cry 3 and ArmA III. However, Far Cry 3 was demoed with a gamepad and its grass is not exactly yellow-ish. On the other hand, ArmA III’s E3 demo featured building and yellow-ish grass. Katie also talked about some rabbits and we also know that ArmA 2 featured rabbits.
By now, it’s pretty obvious that the game Katie described in her article was Bohemia’s military sim, ArmA III. In Bohemia’s defense though, we’ve seen countless of E3 interviews and gameplay footages where the developers themselves showcase the game in order to help the journalists. ArmA III is a complex game and we sure as hell believe that this particular PR rep wanted to help Katie.
Was it Katie’s fault for not telling the PR rep that she wanted to play the game herself? Or would it be wiser for the PR rep to not help Katie? That’s up to you to decide. After all, we wanted to shed some light on the game that was described and not about whether or not Katie was right.
Be sure to read Katie’s story on Kotaku!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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