Criticism and controversies

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The Phantasmagoria series (like many other Sierra series) contains material which some have found controversial, and it has had its own share of controversies over the years.^[1]

This page discusses a number of the controversial aspects of the series as defined by reviewers and players over the years. Note: the 'controversies' are just opinions by different individuals, commentators and writers (some maybe fallacy-ridden interpretation or biased projection, and therefore the accuracy of opinions cannot be vouched for).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the cited authors, writers, commentators and other individuals, and do not reflect the official policies or positions of this wiki.

Violence[]

Both games show extreme graphic examples of violent death and murders.

Female Representation[]

Sexism, Misogyny, Feminism, etc
- Thank god this one wasn't hit for racism claims like Freddy was though!
The rape scene in Phantasmagoria was controversial when the first game came out. It has continued to be controversial point for the game (and has been targeted by both conservative right and liberal left).
- ""And, oh yeah, did I mention that there is also a full on rape in the game as well (I will spare you the video for that one)? Needless to say, Phantasmagoria is one of the more incredibly violent and adult games ever released. Does that make it bad? Not at all. But do you really think a game like this could make it past the Jack Thompsons and extreme Conservatives of today? Probably not."^[2]
- "Although the game is filled with weird moments like this, by far the worst is the much vaunted rape scene, which seems to have been inserted solely to prove how “adult” Phantasmagoria was. It worked – it garnered tremendous PR, it was mentioned in every preview in every magazine, computer gaming or otherwise, and it even got into a bit of trouble with retailers, especially considering there was no ESRB back in 1995. But it’s still really badly done. It’s actually not too graphic and starts off relatively tastefully – as tasteful as a rape scene can be, anyway – as Don seduces Adrienne gently but quickly grows violent. As Adrienne falls to the floor, weeping, Don looks off into the distance, furrows his brow in befuddlement, wipes the hair out of his face, and then sorta just wanders off the set. The gravity of the scene is totally ruined."^[3]
- "The rape scene, probably the game's most controversial moment, is still ugly, though a little improbable: both the parties involved are clothed at the time, leaving you wondering how sex, consensual or otherwise, could have occurred."^[4]
- ^[5]
- "The rape sequence had this game banned in some places, but as depicted it is a crime of violence and not sex (just like in the real world) and a key reason why "Phantsmagoria" works as a horror story. The heroine is really in danger of horrible things happening to her."^[6]
- ^[7]
- "And although the player is not invited to sexualize Adrienne, Ray’s analysis fails to acknowledge that many of the most significant moments of the game involve Adrienne’s sexualization by other entities in the game. The player is introduced to Adrienne in a voyeuristic opening video with her naked and engaging in sex with her husband Don; the most controversial and pivotal scene in the game is one in which Adrienne is raped by her husband in the bathroom.11 Furthermore, her image becomes the explicit target of the male gaze—not from the player, but from Don—as seen in Don’s “art,” which consists of numerous beheaded photographs of Adrienne’s body arranged obsessively in the dark room, of which Don says “a woman’s body is a beautiful thing, but the head is useless!” (Phantasmagoria, disc 7).^[8]^[9]

Censorship[]

"When the game came out, it occupied a whopping seven CD-ROMs. It was rated “M” for mature, and was quickly banned from CompUSA and other retailers, condemned by religious groups and politicians, and in some countries it was refused classification altogether—which only made people want to play it more. In its first week, “Phantasmagoria” made $12 million, making it the best-selling game in the U.S., and Sierra’s top-seller to this day.^[10]^[11]
Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, caused a storm of controversy when it was banned in Singapore and Australia for violent and sexual content. Sears stores throughout the U.S. refused to carry the game.

References[]

↑ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/history-of-graphic-adventures/5/
↑ https://www.destructoid.com/why-phantasmagoria-is-awesome-and-why-it-could-never-be-released-today/
↑ http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/phantasmagoria/
↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131537/reviews
↑ https://www.engadget.com/2013-02-11-reliving-the-controversy-of-phantasmagoria.html
↑ https://www.amazon.com/Roberta-Williams-Phantasmagoria-Pray-Nightmare-DOS/dp/B000W8JFS8
↑ https://www.giantbomb.com/videos/random-pc-game-phantasmagoria-part-02/2300-5410/?page=331&comment_sort=m.dateCreated&comment_direction=DESC So several things (1) boy this was great you really need to do the second of these as I hear it is even more crazy. (2) I am very far from a SJW and yes that was most assuredly a rape now that is a big thing for an American game especially at the time (and what the fuck is she doing staying in that house after that) but if you step behind this curtain here let me show you what Japan has been doing the last few years .... a little thing I like to call RAPELAY!!! After the relatively murder-free Part 1, the murder and rape really ramp up in Part 2. The rape is really, really uncomfortable, even with the bad acting. Also, a lot of heads were split apart. And that was Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria. If hearing people complain about a random rape scene in a videogame makes you uncomfortable enough to scream about it in a comment section, perhaps it's time to re-examine who's ACTUALLY over-sensitive.
↑ Roberta Williams’s Phantasmagoria: A Feminist Allegory The best evidence, however, of increased power and access to female colleagues changing a game designer’s work to be more feminist is probably Phantasmagoria, a game in which Roberta Williams was allowed an unprecedented budget and artistic control, and which plays out as a feminist allegory concerned with the nature of domestic abuse and its impact on women. Released in 1995, Phantasmagoria falls between King’s Quest VI and King’s Quest VII, apparently pioneering the one-button interface used in King’s Quest VII, and utilizes an advanced version of the video-capture technology used in Jane Jensen’s Gabriel Knight. By Ray’s definition of gender-inclusive design, Phantasmagoria meets most of the requirements: a female playable character, female designers, focus on plot and relationships, generally nonviolent play; this does not, however, mean that the game is nonviolent—indeed, it was censored in many areas because of its violent content, but very little of the violence is perpetrated by the player, who generally plays a witness role in events. However, Ray (2004) praises Phantasmagoria, writing “Adrienne [the playable character] is an attractive, average woman—someone you might expect to see in the grocery store. Her clothing is simple and unprovocative. And, in a theme Roberta Williams does well, we are presented with a princess who is out to save her prince and her home.” Ray’s analysis is oversimplistic, though, and her final description of Adrienne would better fit Rosella from King’s Quest than Adrienne, who ultimately is unable to save either her “prince” (husband) or her home. Although Ray is correct about Adrienne’s basic representation, which reduces her potential as an object of the male gaze from the player, the motivation for her black and orange outfit seems to have been primarily a result of technological limitations of the blue-screen technology used to create the game. And although the player is not invited to sexualize Adrienne, Ray’s analysis fails to acknowledge that many of the most significant moments of the game involve Adrienne’s sexualization by other entities in the game. The player is introduced to Adrienne in a voyeuristic opening video with her naked and engaging in sex with her husband Don; the most controversial and pivotal scene in the game is one in which Adrienne is raped by her husband in the bathroom.11 Furthermore, her image becomes the explicit target of the male gaze—not from the player, but from Don—as seen in Don’s “art,” which consists of numerous beheaded photographs of Adrienne’s body arranged obsessively in the dark room, of which Don says “a woman’s body is a beautiful thing, but the head is useless!” (Phantasmagoria, disc 7). Additionally, Adrienne’s agency is severely limited by the mechanics of the game—the primary way the game advances is through Adrienne witnessing horrific events over which she has no power, generally through psychometric episodes, and she makes very few real choices throughout the game. There is no way to win the game without killing Don, nor can Adrienne do anything but save herself by leaving her home, alone and silent, more indicative of her trauma than of any other trait. None of this is to say that Phantasmagoria fails as a feminist game because it fails to imagine a space in which women have complete agency; quite the opposite, in fact. Instead, Phantasmagoria functions as a fantastical representation of the female experience of mundane misogyny and domestic abuse, in which the demon that possesses the key men in the game (Don in the present, Carno in the past) is a supernatural, literal manifestation of misogyny, causing men to become controlling and to react violently to any perceived threat to their authority over the women in their lives. Read this way, Adrienne’s helplessness as she witnesses Carno’s past violence against his wives and her own husband’s transformation is not weakness on her part, though many players have seen it as such,12 but rather debilitating fear that accompanies domestic abuse and misogyny. All this is to say that Phantasmagoria treads a territory that was unexpected in video games in 1995, when the androcentric tropes were accepted without criticism from even the female designers who had been complicit with them: Phantasmagoria is an allegorical, procedural experience of the mundane misogyny all women experience, and the extremes to which many women are subjected. It is said that Phantasmagoria’s production caused significant marital tension between Roberta and Ken Williams, since Roberta wanted ever more resources for its production, and Ken was in charge of Sierra’s business interests; however, Phantasmagoria is the sort of feminist statement that seems to be possible when women are given authority, resources, and female colleagues that embolden them to consider and express issues particular to the female experience that have been otherwise erased in mainstream culture.
↑ This chapter examines representations of female experience in several Sierra games designed by women in the 1980s and 1990s, specifically Roberta Williams’s King’s Quest series and Phantasmagoria, Jane Jensen’s Gabriel Knight: The Sins of the Fathers, and Lori Cole’s Quest for Glory I. This chapter concludes that female designers have not necessarily produced more female-centered games, but also that these designers have used their games as a platform to express and comment on the experience of living as a woman in gendered spaces characterized by gender disparity and sexual violence. This study finds that women in these games typically have more limited options than the men in the same games, and these women often experience or perpetrate more violence than men in these games. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_2
↑ https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/roberta-williams-is-the-worlds-first-graphic-computer-game-designer-but-shes-famous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons/?fbclid=IwAR39Ee_-f5c2HJAX5Rrdt1c6aGKX1fhJrrVjg1m7qp-jYMNJpvfqrLc31rA
↑ https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950917&slug=2142084

[1] ttps://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/history-of-graphic-adventures/5/

[2] ttps://www.destructoid.com/why-phantasmagoria-is-awesome-and-why-it-could-never-be-released-today/

[3] ttp://www.hardcoregaming101.net/phantasmagoria/

[4] ttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131537/reviews

[5] ttps://www.engadget.com/2013-02-11-reliving-the-controversy-of-phantasmagoria.html

[6] ttps://www.amazon.com/Roberta-Williams-Phantasmagoria-Pray-Nightmare-DOS/dp/B000W8JFS8

[7] ttps://www.giantbomb.com/videos/random-pc-game-phantasmagoria-part-02/2300-5410/?page=331&comment_sort=m.dateCreated&comment_direction=DESC So several things (1) boy this was great you really need to do the second of these as I hear it is even more crazy. (2) I am very far from a SJW and yes that was most assuredly a rape now that is a big thing for an American game especially at the time (and what the fuck is she doing staying in that house after that) but if you step behind this curtain here let me show you what Japan has been doing the last few years .... a little thing I like to call RAPELAY!!! After the relatively murder-free Part 1, the murder and rape really ramp up in Part 2. The rape is really, really uncomfortable, even with the bad acting. Also, a lot of heads were split apart. And that was Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria. If hearing people complain about a random rape scene in a videogame makes you uncomfortable enough to scream about it in a comment section, perhaps it's time to re-examine who's ACTUALLY over-sensitive.

[8] Roberta Williams’s Phantasmagoria: A Feminist Allegory The best evidence, however, of increased power and access to female colleagues changing a game designer’s work to be more feminist is probably Phantasmagoria, a game in which Roberta Williams was allowed an unprecedented budget and artistic control, and which plays out as a feminist allegory concerned with the nature of domestic abuse and its impact on women. Released in 1995, Phantasmagoria falls between King’s Quest VI and King’s Quest VII, apparently pioneering the one-button interface used in King’s Quest VII, and utilizes an advanced version of the video-capture technology used in Jane Jensen’s Gabriel Knight. By Ray’s definition of gender-inclusive design, Phantasmagoria meets most of the requirements: a female playable character, female designers, focus on plot and relationships, generally nonviolent play; this does not, however, mean that the game is nonviolent—indeed, it was censored in many areas because of its violent content, but very little of the violence is perpetrated by the player, who generally plays a witness role in events. However, Ray (2004) praises Phantasmagoria, writing “Adrienne [the playable character] is an attractive, average woman—someone you might expect to see in the grocery store. Her clothing is simple and unprovocative. And, in a theme Roberta Williams does well, we are presented with a princess who is out to save her prince and her home.” Ray’s analysis is oversimplistic, though, and her final description of Adrienne would better fit Rosella from King’s Quest than Adrienne, who ultimately is unable to save either her “prince” (husband) or her home. Although Ray is correct about Adrienne’s basic representation, which reduces her potential as an object of the male gaze from the player, the motivation for her black and orange outfit seems to have been primarily a result of technological limitations of the blue-screen technology used to create the game. And although the player is not invited to sexualize Adrienne, Ray’s analysis fails to acknowledge that many of the most significant moments of the game involve Adrienne’s sexualization by other entities in the game. The player is introduced to Adrienne in a voyeuristic opening video with her naked and engaging in sex with her husband Don; the most controversial and pivotal scene in the game is one in which Adrienne is raped by her husband in the bathroom.11 Furthermore, her image becomes the explicit target of the male gaze—not from the player, but from Don—as seen in Don’s “art,” which consists of numerous beheaded photographs of Adrienne’s body arranged obsessively in the dark room, of which Don says “a woman’s body is a beautiful thing, but the head is useless!” (Phantasmagoria, disc 7). Additionally, Adrienne’s agency is severely limited by the mechanics of the game—the primary way the game advances is through Adrienne witnessing horrific events over which she has no power, generally through psychometric episodes, and she makes very few real choices throughout the game. There is no way to win the game without killing Don, nor can Adrienne do anything but save herself by leaving her home, alone and silent, more indicative of her trauma than of any other trait. None of this is to say that Phantasmagoria fails as a feminist game because it fails to imagine a space in which women have complete agency; quite the opposite, in fact. Instead, Phantasmagoria functions as a fantastical representation of the female experience of mundane misogyny and domestic abuse, in which the demon that possesses the key men in the game (Don in the present, Carno in the past) is a supernatural, literal manifestation of misogyny, causing men to become controlling and to react violently to any perceived threat to their authority over the women in their lives. Read this way, Adrienne’s helplessness as she witnesses Carno’s past violence against his wives and her own husband’s transformation is not weakness on her part, though many players have seen it as such,12 but rather debilitating fear that accompanies domestic abuse and misogyny. All this is to say that Phantasmagoria treads a territory that was unexpected in video games in 1995, when the androcentric tropes were accepted without criticism from even the female designers who had been complicit with them: Phantasmagoria is an allegorical, procedural experience of the mundane misogyny all women experience, and the extremes to which many women are subjected. It is said that Phantasmagoria’s production caused significant marital tension between Roberta and Ken Williams, since Roberta wanted ever more resources for its production, and Ken was in charge of Sierra’s business interests; however, Phantasmagoria is the sort of feminist statement that seems to be possible when women are given authority, resources, and female colleagues that embolden them to consider and express issues particular to the female experience that have been otherwise erased in mainstream culture.

[9] This chapter examines representations of female experience in several Sierra games designed by women in the 1980s and 1990s, specifically Roberta Williams’s King’s Quest series and Phantasmagoria, Jane Jensen’s Gabriel Knight: The Sins of the Fathers, and Lori Cole’s Quest for Glory I. This chapter concludes that female designers have not necessarily produced more female-centered games, but also that these designers have used their games as a platform to express and comment on the experience of living as a woman in gendered spaces characterized by gender disparity and sexual violence. This study finds that women in these games typically have more limited options than the men in the same games, and these women often experience or perpetrate more violence than men in these games. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_2

[10] ttps://eyeondesign.aiga.org/roberta-williams-is-the-worlds-first-graphic-computer-game-designer-but-shes-famous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons/?fbclid=IwAR39Ee_-f5c2HJAX5Rrdt1c6aGKX1fhJrrVjg1m7qp-jYMNJpvfqrLc31rA

[11] ttps://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950917&slug=2142084

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