It seems Randy Pitchford at Gearbox is taking any time he can to say something about Duke Nukem just to keep this game in the media. The latest attention grab focuses on how Duke himself isn’t a misogynist, he’s just ego-centric. While I understand what Randy is trying to say of the character, it just…y’know, it still sounds bad.

That’s not what interests me, though. What got my mental gears a’turnin’ was the concept of a female Duke Nukem character, whom Escapist writer Tom Goldman named Daisy Nukem. I say take the name a step further to Daisy Duke Nukem, or Daisy Dukem for short, as a play on words. According to pop music girls love them shorts and “bikinis on top”. Or something. So such a name should be appropriate for our over-the-top gag universe.

I’m not on board with Goldman’s concept of how it should play, though.

While the stereotypical male wants to get right into the action and kick some ass, the stereotypical female might have a stable of beefcakes do her fighting for her, until they all get wiped out and she has to step in to take care of business.

Oof. Man, Tom. In the middle of a game that is controversial over its sexist attitude and portrayal of women, you’re going to go ahead and make it seem as if she needs a man to do her job? Have you not spoken to the modern die-hard feminist?

You don’t really need to change the core gameplay in order to give it the spin of a different gender. Contrary to popular belief, the differences between men and women in terms of interest are minute. You don’t need to take a completely different approach to create the character. In this case, let’s start with why the character would exist. Just having Ms. Duke Nukem would be boring, after all.

Considering his… “free-loving” nature, the odds of Duke Nukem having an illegitimate child are pretty likely. So playing an eighteen year old daughter of Duke Nukem creates a more interesting character than “she’s like Duke, but a chick!”. It also gives an excuse for having a gratuitously young woman as the lead instead of someone around 30-some years old. Gotta pander to your lame fan-base, after all.

So what purpose would we have in our inevitably buxom beauty to traipse around the world, blasting up aliens and saving the world? What’s her goal? Well, let’s take her father and the circumstances into account. Duke Nukem is pretty much an egotistical asshole. He’s not likely to remember a woman he knocked up, leaving his lover to most likely raise his progeny all alone in a trailer (let’s face it, the most fitting origin story would be very white-trash). The impetus for adventure would be obvious, then. Daisy Dukem is looking to kick her father’s ass for never being there for her or her mother.

This antagonistic premise can easily help us establish a basis for humor. Daisy will clearly have a mistrust of men, making the transformation of males in the Duke Nukem universe to pigs all the more appropriate. As she trails Duke, however, there should be various moments where she runs into him and unintentionally helps him out. More to the point, he shouldn’t realize that Daisy is his daughter, and being the jerk that he is he should assume that she is a prime candidate for sex. He should objectify her, and all of his interactions ought to disgust and even horrify Daisy. This isn’t a story where she learns her Dad is a good guy after all, but only grows to hate him more.

What about Daisy’s own dialog? This is where things get a bit tough. It wouldn’t be enough for her to just repeat Duke’s lines in a female voice. She needs to have her own personality. She doesn’t have the ego of her father, but she’s certainly got rage. Her one-liners should be founded in fury, though she should also be a tease along the lines of the character Bayonetta. Instead of saying something along the lines of “I’ll cut off your head and shit down your neck” she should look at the size of her foe’s gun, smirk and say “that’s your gun? I’ve seen better”, or perhaps after beating someone down sighing and saying “Sorry buddy, but you just don’t satisfy me”. She should be emasculating, not intimidating.

A lot of Duke’s lines are also ripped off of Ash from Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. This is a great inspiration for some of Duke’s one-liners, but Daisy should have a role-model, or group of role-models, more fitting to her character. Problem is, there aren’t really many female bad asses known for their dialog. Even Angelina Jolie is lacking in witty comments and one-liners. It’s possible you could draw from some of the Bond girls, but that seems an unlikely source to leave an impression on a young woman growing up.

In truth, the best likely source would be popular Disney villains. Grab lines from Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty or that octopus witch from The Little Mermaid. It is unfortunate to have to stick to stereotypes, but such things exist for a reason. Disney is something women grow up with, and like all things it leaves a memorable impression. It makes a more suitable source to draw from than Army of Darkness.

Similarly, stereotypes can be effective in creating set-pieces for the different levels. The strip club and football field are places that the stereotypical chauvinistic male would go to. The obvious assumption for a female Duke Nukem would be to replace the strip club with something like a Chip’N’Dales, but this is, well, silly. Thinking back on my time at College and the women I met and knew, I think it would make more sense to replace the strip club with a gay bar. While women like going to clubs in general, there seems to be an appeal to the gay bars and clubs.

This also allows for a female alternative to men being transformed into pigs. The whole joke is that “men are sexist pigs, yatta yatta” turned literal. Well, a common term thrown around these clubs and College campuses is “fag hag”, women that love to surround themselves with gay men. While the general premise of Duke Nukem is that women are being stolen, there can be a possibility that the same process that transforms men into pigs will also transform women into monstrous hag creatures.

An alternative to the football field, though being more stereotypical and assuming, could be the Broadway theater or opera house. Any guy with a smattering of womenfolk in his life can easily find at least one that loves show tunes and musical soundtracks, just as all men are allegedly obsessed with football (hey, it’s better than baseball at least). Either possibility is as stereotypical as the other, so having a big boss fight that takes place on stage is just as good a location as the football stadium.

This just leaves us with gameplay to consider. In truth, we don’t need to change much. Just because Daisy Dukem is a female doesn’t mean we can’t run a first-person shooter. Still, it seems as if we should make something different. So let’s go with the stereotype that women are faster and more acrobatic. This gives us an excuse to rip-off Mirror’s Edge.

However, until we see how Brink works, I wouldn’t try and build the entire game around environmental interaction. I’d just use it to make certain parts of different levels interesting and to add some challenge or flavor to boss fights. The aforementioned Opera House could be made interesting if Daisy has to climb up a rope up to the scaffolding, from where she can jump to a chandelier onto the upper balcony, and from the upper balcony leap onto the giant monster’s back to shoot at its weak point. Or have a level where Daisy has to chase down Duke in a certain amount of time, or outrun a giant heat-seeking missile, or infiltrate an alien ship.

With these ideas you can create a game that takes the central elements of Duke Nukem, over-the-top action with a constantly talking protagonist, and give it enough of a spin that separates it from its father material. The character is, well, a character as opposed to a skin-change and new voice over, the settings carry a similar aesthetic with minor details to keep it unique and the gameplay is given an additional spin to keep it from being the same thing.

Now that I’ve sat around playing armchair game designer I’ve also managed to piss myself off. The worst part of dreaming up a game that you want to be worthwhile is that you just want to play it afterward.

Oh well. C’est la vie or some crap like that.

I found the above images here and here if you’re interested.