The Secret World was love at first sight for me when I bought it in 2013. This buy-once-and-play MMORPG draws heavily on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and folklore from different cultures, has teamwork across factions and a welcoming, helpful gaming community. Storytelling and puzzle solving in The Secret World is fascinating, engaging and feels surprisingly fresh while still being a game based around combat. But the thing that made me fall in love with the game at the title screen was representation. Not just at the title screen, but directly when you launch the patcher.

Here’s a woman in front, fully clothed, looking ready to kick butt. And the other face that can be seen is Korean! Squee! In other promo material there’s also a black and East Asian woman to be found. The first time I launched the game, I choose to play Templar. That meant that the first person I met was a woman, so my first contact with this game was just me and another woman talking. I remember I was close to screaming from excitement back then. Gladly, the game industry have evolved some in the two years since, but for me in 2013 it felt revolutionary.

If I had chosen Illuminati I would have been greeted by a dark skinned man whose dialect I can’t pinpoint, but who sounds like he’s the same actor as Varric in Dragon Age. He points the way to my Illuminati boss, a woman who’s character is unintentionally hilarious, on the top five of the most colorful characters in the game. I’ve taken to screenshotting her best lines. You know how easily they could have given all those jokes to a male character, as is the custom? But they didn’t. They gave them to my boss lady Kirsten Geary. Thank you, Funcom!

The Dragon intro earns a ton of coolness points in that it is spoken in subtitled Korean. The first people you meet are naturally Korean, and I always laugh when they call my cell and tell me I’m promoted – in Korean. I have no idea what she’s saying, and I get no subtitles for the calls. Probably fumbled with a setting somewhere, but love it. Now, the Dragon intro is problematic, I’ll get back to that. First, my point.

The Secret World, released in 2012 by the Norwegian company Funcom, does representation really, really well. There’s no way of listening all the fantastic characters of different races, genders, ages and sexual orientations here, because they are freaking everywhere. Is it flawless? No. But where you in other games have to go look for things that has been done right, in The Secret World it’s the other way around. Good representation is the norm. I’ll show you.

Age means Awesome

Among your first missions after the tutorial is to go find sheriff Bannerman. Imagine my surprise to arrive at my end destination and find a woman. A woman older than 28! With clothes! And wrinkles! And competent things to say! And she didn’t try to flirt with me once. Did I say I love you, Funcom? Women like Bannerman are everywhere. Let the screenshot parade begin!

Looks doesn’t say who you are

Fathers, uncles and mothers talk to their kids

Families are a part of The Secret World, because life has them. Interestingly, men are also a part of these families. Also like life!

In Transylvania, this Romani family is super interesting. Single father Milosh has lots of screen time with his kids. He’s a patriarch with old fashioned ideas, and since these aren’t present in this extent in the rest of the game, I think it’s a part of Milosh’ character and not unconscious bias from the writers. Milosh has an argument with his daughter that she spends too much time with an old man she has befriended. He hints that the man may have dark intentions. Emilia goes on a rant on why can’t it be that he likes to be with her because she’s smart, courteous, friendly or interesting, not just because she’s a young woman to lust after? Her father refuses to listen to her, but after she’s left he admits to me that she’s smarter than him and if there was any justice she should be chief after him, stupid tradition that says only men can be kings. The dialogue is quite engaging and ends with a small twist, you can watch it here. The younger kids are orphans raised by Milosh, and we see a lot of him parenting. He’s not a perfect parent, and I like that flaw.

The big deal is that sexuality isn’t a big deal

If you hang around in the Romani camp you can hear idle chatter from the kids Tibor and Luminita now and then:

– Just saying “it’s magic” isn’t the easiest answer, it’s the laziest answer is what Mihas says. I think he must like Zaha, because he’s always disagreeing with her.

– Then he’s out of luck, because Zaha doesn’t like boys.

– What do you mean, she doesn’t like boys?

– She likes girls.

– Oh. Aw.

Just like in the real world, people in The Secret World don’t tell their coming out stories to random strangers, nor do straight people explain to you that homosexuality is ok if you’re an alien (I’m looking at you, Guild Wars 2). Sexuality just is, and sometimes you catch somebody saying a line that reminds you that not every person on the planet is heterosexual. In Moose’s case it tugs on your heart strings when he says, “I’d go to the ends of the world and back for Andy…I don’t think I’ll ever win him over though.”

Then again you see Moose testing the waters with Andy, telling him, “Any woman would be lucky to have you.” Judging by the awkward reaction he gets, maybe all hope isn’t gone for Moose. Daahw.

Arun Singh and Montgomery de la Roche banters like an old married couple by their dig site in Egypt. These two are more open about their relationship, even openly touching each other. The old man and academic youngster-couple thing happened at my institution at University while I was studying there. Cliché, right!? I’m sure that couple would be happy to see themselves reflected in such a loving and caring way in a video game. Just watch the the meaningful look on young Singh when he says,

– Not that we’re strangers to scandalizing the academic community.

– Oh, you.

It’s not all great

The Secret World is a huge game, and it stumbles occasionally. To me, the most blatant crash-and-burn is the Dragon intro. If I had logged into the game and created a Dragon for my first character, I might have rage quit before I came to the tutorial. The intro scene makes me uncomfortable. I mentioned how cool it is at start, but about ten minutes in things goes downhill fast for me. A Korean woman with a sultry voice and clad in a sexy dress pulls you into a hotel room, and touches her body while talking to you. She then proceeds to pushing you onto a bed and (cover your eyes kids) starts pleasuring you. Here’s my personal reaction to the Dragon intro: I feel like my character is being sexually assaulted. I know it’s just a video game, but first time I saw the scene it made me sick to my stomach and I quit playing after seeing it. I was very upset. My problem was not as much in that it happened, as in the part where as a player I did not give consent, but the game acted as if I did. The game tells me I enjoy being a part of this scene. My character makes sounds of pleasure. But I do not like watching this at all, and I have no control over it, no way to even protest. My character gets assaulted, and some game developers tells me my proper reaction is to enjoy watching it. Now this reaction of mine is extreme, but you can see how precarious it is in a game to put in a sex scene that isn’t initiated by the player. Then I haven’t even mentioned how the sexy Korean woman in a hotel room plays on the stereotype of Asian sex worker. Not good.

Speaking of that, I get the vibes that the representations of Wabanaki and Romani tries to break stereotypes by showing an array of personalities, but I’m not sure the attempt is successful. I’m not part of a minority, so frankly it’s hard for me to judge. On one hand, there are a lot of different people in game who are colored by their culture, but aren’t acting solely as symbols for the culture. On the other hand, there’s the Old Wabanaki medicine man, the Romani circus wrestler brothers, and the Japanese walking around in old samurai armor waving swords about. I honestly can’t tell if Funcom handled this right or not. Maybe circus brothers are a source of fond recognition for Romani playing this game. I’m doubtful, but I don’t really know. When push comes to shove, if you had three zones with countless of quests drawing heavily on Romanian folk lore in Transylvania, and didn’t make the Romani a center hub for the story, that would have been an outrage. Given the in depth portrayal of a Romani father and his children, and glimpses of the daily life of a modern day Wabanaki family, I vote thumbs up.

On women and sexuality, as far as I’ve seen, seeing a woman display herself as a sexual being is a dead sure way to know beforehand that she’ll have an evil agenda. Mini skirts, low cut dresses and sensual body language is Funcom’s way of telling us that a woman is evil. Please don’t do that. Also, there’s only one body type in the game, and that’s thin. Goes for both men and women, so at least that’s equal. I guess having different body types in this kind of game demands a lot of resources in development, since all the different clothes has to look good on different bodies. Still, Guild Wars 2 gives it a shot, so it’s not impossible. This one is understandable in regards to player avatars, but it would have been nice to see more body variety in the cinematics and on NPC’s.

Edit: I’m clarifying my views on clothes in a new post: There’s Nothing Wrong With Sexy Costumes.

Speaking about clothes, it frustrates me to no end that a majority of t-shirts and tops for women characters show the belly button. Furthermore, some of the “uniforms” (pre made sets of clothes) suffer from the sexy Halloween costume syndrome. Meaning the male version covers them up, while the female version does not. This is however not always the case. There are a lot of uniforms to chose from which look the same on men and women, a vast majority in fact. So while it irks me that I have a hard time finding a tee that goes all the way down to the pants, there are some there for me to buy. I have a choice. That is awesome, and outweighs my frustration. On a side note, there are a gazillion different models of bikinis, bras, sports bras, short tops and swimsuits to buy. Which is fine, when you watch people go by you see a lot of bras, and people make many creative, cool looks with a bra, a coat and a flame thrower. People of all genders like sexy costumes, and I’m glad they’re in the game. And though it’s hard for me to admit, I do think it’s ok that the female version sometimes is a sexy Halloween costume. I’m a bit sorry though for the men that they don’t have many corresponding sexy, skin revealing uniforms. (I think there might be one, maybe two).

Finally, looking at the deck cards depicted here and the painted images for clothes in the shop, representation is down right awful. It’s all white, white, white. And if they aren’t white, it’s because they’re in stereotypical clothing, like baggy hip hop clothes on a brown woman. There’s a handful of East Asian characters in there, going with the Dragon theme. I would have loved to see the Asians in some other costumes too, but glad they made it to the game at all. In game, when you put the clothing on a black character, sometimes it’s glitchy, like the tattoos on one of the uniforms showing white outlines, or just obviously designed to go best with white skin.

For the most time, The Secret World rocks

If you take all this representation away, all these women, homosexuals, different races, ages and cultures, The Secret World is still a great game. The coolest thing about game play for me are the investigator puzzles: quests where you’ve got to go out on the internet to do research, either on Wikipedia, image searches, or sites Funcom has created especially for TSW. Sometimes the solution to a puzzle is call a number you saw in game and reach a voice mail. I google these recordings up, but you could call if you want to! Solving puzzles require all sorts of knowledge, from history, recognizing art, reading music notes to recognize a famous composition, or playing music, doing maths, knowing medicine, recognizing ancient languages… One of my most exhilarating solutions was when I came across a text, recognized it as ancient Greek, called a friend of mine who is a teacher in ancient Greek, and got an exact translation that other investigators online had struggled with. I was all “I know a person who could translate this for me!” (With lots of squee noises.)

That also means that Funcom went through the effort to make the ancient Greek correct. Authenticity seems to have been a goal for them. Sometimes I hear correct Norwegian or Swedish, voiced by people having those languages as their native tongue, making me believe that when I hear Korean, Japanese, Romanian or Arabic, Funcom took the time to find voice actors that actually knew what they were saying in different languages. They freaking hired Peter Stormare for an entire series of quests! He’s like Sweden’s national actor hero, counting those in the business right now.

The world is a magical world, with an unique yet familiar feel. Quest introduction videos are engaging (I use that word a lot for TSW), and I always read the texts after finishing a quest because they so often make me laugh out loud. That is Illuminati-specific though, Dragon quest finishers are just plain weird. But I’m sure some people love that.

Game play and graphical interface is pretty hard to get into, and there are mechanics popping up at max “level” I haven’t even begun to understand. A couple of my friends dropped out of the game immediately because of the steep learning curve. But once you get a hang of it, it’s smooth and not so many buttons to keep track of. Be sure to remap the keys to something comfortable around awsd. Decks are your friend, so if you’re a new player you should look up what it is as soon as you come out from the tutorial. There is no leveling system in a traditional sense, though you still get the satisfying feeling of leveling up. Old zones don’t get outdated, and I go back to them sometimes for myself, sometimes to play with newbie friends, which is seamless despite the difference in amount of character “levels”.

The monetization-part is brilliantly solved. If I don’t want to, I don’t have to spend a dime, but oooh do I want to spend! I love shopping in TSW. Their online store is full of goodies for my character, for example clothes, pets, vehicles, different ways to run or dance, and boosts (which doesn’t ruin the game since it’s not an ordinary level system). It’s monetization done right. I don’t feel like I have to spend real money, but I want to. True, you have to pay for new content (issues), but that’s how DLCs always works. Now a days I even pay a non mandatory subscription fee to support further development of the game.

Finally, the main story line is killing it. My first contact with… yeah, I’m not telling, was chilling. And with the Norwegian voice over echoing in the background! *shivers* Then when arriving in Tokyo… Oh my. The meeting in the subway had a real impact on me. I felt so horrible, that I had been part of something… like that. This game is special. It’s fresh, funny, scary, philosophical, clever, dark and lighthearted, adrenaline pumping, relatable, down-to-earth high fantasy. It should have had greater success, and I really have no idea what’s keeping it back. Though I don’t base the sentiment that it’s held back on numbers and statistics, but on how close to never I’ve heard it mentioned on the game news sites I read, on my Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, chats in other games, or from people I meet in my life. In the pool I swim in on the Internet, The Secret World has passed under the radar.

When you’re hanging around in the main hub, one thing stands out: that everyone stands out. Every player looks different. Especially noticeable is how many women you see, and brown and black people, East Asians, old, young, pantsless. People buy many of their clothes with their real money, so it seems to me they are much enjoying the ways they can represent themselves with their Secret World avatars. I certainly am.

The Secret World deserves more attention. Few games out there handles representation this well, while at the same time providing an excellent overall story, fun game play and sporting a friendly community. If any of this sounds good to you and you haven’t already, you should give it a try. If you’re not comfortable with MMO’s in general, I’d say give it a shot anyway, because TSW plays well as a single player game. I myself play exclusively on my own or over Skype with a friend, so no need to interact with other players unless you want to. I am prone to game addiction, but this game does not rely on Skinner boxes, and so I have not lost my mind over it so far. When I turn it off I return to the world, I don’t spend time in the meat world thinking about logging in to grind. Extra plus for that. I really want people to pick this game up so Funcom can keep it alive for a long time.

Actually, if you drop your e-mail in the comments or at geekgirlspwn@hotmail.com I think I can mail you a game pass to try TSW for 72 hours (It’s free to play but you have to pay a one time fee for the game). I’m not sure if I can invite an infinite amount of people, but it looks like. I can then be of assistance during the first “What button do I press?” phase.

See you in game! Lots of fascinating characters and stories are waiting.

What do you make of all this? Have you played The Secret World, and did you take notice of its approach to representation? Do you have any favorite scenes or characters? Do you have pics of your cool costume? Does your avatar look like you? Let me know in the comments!

See also my follow-up on this post, called There’s Nothing Wrong With Sexy Costumes.

Notes and Links

People spotting

I took some screenshots of people last night to show how differently they dress. The majority of player avatars are white, but this night the interesting costumes were mostly worn by other skin tones. So racially this is not an accurate display of what you see in game. I also put all three of my own characters in there. Sneaky!

This post has been edited because I used the phrase “free to play”, but there’s an obligatory one time fee.