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Posted By Austin Yorski about 9 months, 2 weeks ago
The 6 Ways Women are Written in Video Games (For Better and Worse), 
There has been a lot of talk about sexism in video games recently. From the harassment of BioWare writer Jennifer Hepler, to the bullying of fighting game player Super_Yan, and the threats leveled at blogger Anita Sarkeesian, the industry and its culture have come under more fire in the last year than they have since the days when the shadow of Jack Thompson loomed large. Personally, I have extensively covered such controversial games as Skullgirls, Lollipop Chainsaw, Bayonetta, Dead or Alive, Record of Agarest War, Hitman: Absolution, and the Tomb Raider reboot, earning myself somewhat of a reputation as a “hand-wringing psuedo-feminist.” All of that is merely context to the larger questions about women in gaming. Where are all the strong female characters? Why are game writers so sexist? To what extent are critics exaggerating this specter of misogyny?
As someone who writes a bi-weekly column examining some of the touchier and more subjective aspects of the medium, there are a lot of ways to approach an issue such as this. I considered a standard editorial piece. I planned on going game-by-game to analyze male gaze and gender inequality as it occurred. I even started a list of my favorite “strong” female characters, but abandoned it as it ballooned towards triple digits. In the end, I decided that the best way to both get my thoughts across and to entertain our readers would be to take you along on a journey through what I see as the 6 female archetypes of interactive electronics, explaining how each can be utilized effectively or employed to embarrassing ignorance.
Warning: Some spoilers may follow.
*Tired old joke about mario being rewarded with sex*
1. Women as Goals
Easily one of the oldest tropes in all of fiction, the “damsel in distress” is a character archetype so entrenched in the collective consciousness that we’ve developed Stockholm Syndrome for it. The earliest games with actual plots–Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong–all revolve around saving the princess, and to some extent are justified in their simplicity. Nobody expected early video games to have complex characters or progressive explorations of gender roles, so it’s almost pointless to harp on the helplessness of Peach and Daisy. However, we should expect more from modern games, and sadly we still seem to see a disproportionate amount of female characters who are simply used as incentive for the male protagonist to save the world and stop the bad guys.
This is an easy sexist convention to lampoon. It doesn’t take a scholar to point out how useless Ashley is in Resident Evil 4 or how flat of a character Kyrie from Devil May Cry 4 ends up. On the other hand, there is a way to employ this trope in a justifiable way. As I’ve discussed previously, Mono from Shadow of the Colossus is purely motivation for The Wanderer as far as the plot goes, but sub-textually represents a rather interesting religious metaphor. Another great example is “The Princess” from Braid, who is employed to subvert audience expectations of her role. The game seemingly follows Tim on his quest to save the princess, but turns around at the end with the twist that she has actually been running from him the whole time.
It may be controversial to say that female characters being used as plot devices can be a good thing, but I think we can at least agree that there are “better” ways to go about it than the old clichés.
This is a real magazine cover. This is not a parody.
2. Women as Sex Objects
This is the thing most everyone thinks of when they consider sexism in gaming. BloodRayne, Bullet Witch, Wet, and many other titles have sold their intellectual property entirely on the sex appeal of their female leads, banking on the old adage that “sex sells.” What could be more sexist than that?
Unfortunately, quality artistic criticism is never so simple. Just because a woman is scantily-clad in a video game doesn’t make it sexist. Just because a game is clearly targeted at men doesn’t make it sexist. Just because a Tomb Raider developer made a sexist comment about Lara Croft doesn’t make the game sexist. It doesn’t matter what the designers, writers, artists, producers, or even the PR team meant for consumers to take away from their product. All that matters is the content of the software itself.
I’ve gone into this before, but it bears repeating: Authorial intent should have no effect on the merit of a work of art. I could write an entire other article about New Criticism and the intentional fallacy, but it seems far more expedient for those interested to simply seek out “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes. After reading, ask yourself: Is Lollipop Chainsaw sexist because Suda51 wanted Juliet to be sexy, or is it problematic for its combination of a powerful female protagonist and questionable usage of male gaze?
On one hand, there are clearly indefensible instances of the sexual exploitation of women in gaming. RapeLay is probably the most infamous example, but even SoulCalibur‘s Ivy is difficult to justify from any reasonable point of view. On the other hand, saying that women shouldn’t expose their bodies or express sexuality in a video game is both limiting to the medium and dangerously close to slut-shaming. There is a lot to be said for sex-positive portrayals of women in media, and there’s no reason why gaming can’t be a part of that. The question is always going to be about differentiating between the agency of the character and the presumed voyeuristic gratification of the consumer.
A good example of this occurs in the recent PS Vita title Gravity Rush. Some feminist critics have taken issue with Kat, the heroine, and her wardrobe choices. However, in the game Kat clearly states that she enjoys dressing the way she does. This is a classic feminism Catch 22: Is it internalized misogyny if you genuinely subscribe to patriarchal beauty standards? Muddying the waters even further is the divergent ideologies even within the field of women’s studies–there are three unique “waves” of feminist thought, in addition to separate schools like conservative feminism and radical feminism.
In the end, the preponderance of male game writers and conventional marketing wisdom is going to result in an infinite amount of female characters who are envisioned as little more than sex objects. Our job as consumers is to distinguish between these shallow offerings and works which happen to feature women who are conventionally attractive, sexually aggressive, or otherwise confident in their bodies. We can’t let the narrow-minded output of some creators forever close off an avenue of expression and creativity.
Always go to Megami Tensei for positive depictions of women and LGBT characters.
3. Women as Men
Some writers try to be progressive by making “strong female characters.” Unfortunately, they usually try to accomplish this by simply making their female characters physically stronger. This not only wholly misses the point, but also has unsettling implications for the way we as a culture view the relationship between strength and a person’s worth. A woman’s value is not proportional to her similarity to a man.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this is Anya Stroud from Gears of War. While the gender diversity she brings to the series was sorely needed, everything about her seems as token as possible. It’s as if they simply copied and pasted her head onto the body of a generic COG soldier–a tragic missed opportunity for a franchise so often accused of machismo. A slightly better example (sharing some staff, coincidentally) is People Can Fly’s BulletStorm, which features the tough-as-nails Trishka Novak. Pretty much everything that can be said about her is encapsulated in one of her first lines: “I will kill your dicks!”
Like every other archetype on this list though, there are profound and intelligent ways to utilize this technique. Naoto Shirogane (pictured above), from Persona 4, is a girl who dresses in men’s clothing because of her desire to be taken seriously as a detective. At one point in the game you even delve quite literally into her subconsciousness, only to discover that she is tormented by the symbolic representation of a sex-change operation. The game paints Naoto’s characterization not as a woman who is strong because of her resemblance to a man, but as a person who becomes strong when she no longer internalizes society’s prejudices against her chromosomal arrangement. Similarly, Kumatora from Mother 3 is a girl who cross-dresses to escape her prescribed gender role, which is juxtaposed with some of the most powerful beings in the game’s universe: transvestites.
Ultimately, there is an appeal to women who kick ass. There’s no reason why female video game characters can’t be as physically strong as their male counterparts, but it is important to remember that there is more to writing such a character than just changing a few pronouns around.
As a matter of fact, these games that have oversexualized female characters in them, if you don’t strap ‘em to a grenade, and chuck them back at whatever misogynistic store you got them from, you FAIL as a feminist, and you ESPECIALLY fail as a human being! FUCK this shit, SERIOUSLY! It won’t stop until YOU make it stop!
Don’t just COMPLAIN about this shit! DO something about it!
And don’t forget female dragons! They’re powerful and not sexualized!
P.S. Any man who would consider himself a feminist – but still solicits heterosexual porn – ought to rape himself with the hypocrisy stick.
Why? You think feminists of both genders aren’t into porn?
Because porn objectifies women. Feminism is AGAINST the objectification of women. You can’t have one and still say you’re the other. It’s hypocrisy. So any man who solicits pornography can turn in their feminism card.
Not all porn- especially not gay male porn.
There is feminism IN some porn. There are companies that do porn by women, for women. Also, you just have amateur, homemade stuff some couple put up, non-profit.
Yes, porn can be horrific to women, but not completely ant totally.
Ah, I get it. You’re not a real feminist. You’re only concerned with feminism when you think/know that it’ll help you get laid. Trying to convince women that you’re actually considerate of them…such deception!
Oh, you want a decent, progressive female character?
Remember Secret of Mana?
The girl character is a strong and independent female who NEVER has to be rescued (actually, she rescues you – the incompetent and incapable male) – from a hoard of goblins who want to have you as part of their feast!
Ah, but the girl is also still straight, too, and SHE is the one who has to rescue her boyfriend – Dyluck, a soldier no less – and rejects the man her father had hand-selected to marry her.
Not only that, but she still retains looks that are obviously feminine, the point being, she can still be perfectly feminine-looking, but also be strong and independent.
Oh yeah, and she knows kung-fu. Whoa. She knows kung-fu.
Just another reason why Secret of Mana KICKS ASS.
You’re making up assumptions based on nothing. I don’t even know that you meant to make that comment towards me. I am a feminist because I have and always respect women as people rather than objects or individuals less than men. I don’t even wave the flag of feminism, so it doesn’t play into my dating life like that.
I don’t broadcast being pro women’s rights to anyone, because I see it as a natural thing, not an idea I had to struggle with. I grew up knowing women have awesome potential through real examples.
You should play the Phantasy Star games. A lot of the games have female characters that are acting more realistically, and all have their own little quirks and appearances… The first PS game even had a female main character wearing armor, instead of being dressed as a sex object…
You should’ve at least mentioned one character from those series in your list…
Sexual and sexist have nothing to do with each other. Sexual is about the practice of intercourse, while sexist has to do with men and women.
As such “conventional patriarchal attractiveness” has got nothing to with sexism, in fact, it doesn’t even exist. Look around the world and in the past, and you’ll find all manner of cultural norms for sexuality. From fat, to small, to big, to thin, and according to fashion designers a walking skeleton, not that any man except fetishists agree, and then some. And even vastly different ideas on body parts, from small, big, fat, to curvy and straight lips and other body parts. (You though I was going to mention one of those other body parts didn’t you?) In fact, what is considered to be “conventional patriarchal attractiveness” would be laughed off the pageant stages barely a century ago. In other words: it doesn’t exist; hell, patriarchy as envisioned by all flavors of feminism, doesn’t exist to begin with.
There’s only one thing that all those different standards of attractiveness (except for the fashion designers, which is the reason why men don’t think models are attractive) have in common: 9-7-10 shoulders-waist-hips, the hour glass figure; because it turns out they are the most fertile women. It’s genetically ingrained instinct, and has absolutely nothing to do with any culture, patriarchal or otherwise.
Also, you have to appreciate the sheer blatant contradiction in this article, even following points: “Women as men.” BAD! “Women as women.” BAD!
Wha!? I should present them as sexless, oh no wait, that’s the next point!
So how, are they supposed to be portrayed? Oh, as human beings… which are women and men, which would make them wither one… wtf?
You wanna know what developers don’t take this crap seriously? Because by this, there is no way to portray a female characters that is not bad. Any arbitrary characteristic in a portrayal can immediately be used to show how misogynist you are.
Wait a minute, what is wrong with women as men anyway? There are plenty of women who dress and act like men, some to the point they feel they need to physically be changed into a man. Are you telling me that these women aren’t worthy of your attention, aren’t worthy of having a character in a game? MISOGYNIST!
You want to know the real reason feminists don’t want women getting portrayed as men in video games? Because it takes away their victim card. Because the woman has become a man, she has power, nothing ever stopped her, patriarchy never held her back, she’s more powerful than any complaining feminist, they are both jealous of her, and she’s BECOME a man, and actor, an agent, a HYPERAGENT.
A hyperagent is a person, or group of persons, who is considered to have far more power agency, that he… he actually has; and as a result he must always be at fault, even when he isn’t, and thus society, people don’t assign any value to him.
The woman as a man, becomes the same, it’s the thing feminists don’t want, because they can no longer play victim card.
In fact, why hasn’t this “sexist” examination ever been done on men, in video games eh? Because men are hyper agents, they don’t need such things, they have power you see, they’re fault, thus they don’t, thus they’re (sexist) portrayals don’t matter.
Why don’t we do one right, now. No, non, this has gone on long enough; I’ll do just one:
1. Men as cannon fodder: Answer me this? How many female goons have you slaughtered in games recently? I know: none. Now how many faceless men have you killed? How many mere obstacles to slaughter have you come across? Men who’s lives didn’t matter, who had no characterization at all, who may have had a wife and children, who may be called neighbor of the year recently? Men who don’t matter, because they’re a goon, a “bad man”. A thousand? A million? A billion? Collectively we reached that, certainly.
Until the day comes, that 50% of all the goons I slaughter in the latest games are female, I don’t give a rat’s ass about all the “How the women are portrayed in video games” pieces by all the reporters and feminists; because they are portrayed about a billion times better than men are.
BTW, it’s “their” not “they’re”
The industry, overall, has been pretty lazy concerning female characters. The problem with presenting women as men is that 1) again, lazy and 2) we already have enough men! Why do we need our women to just be guys with female genitalia.
The games industry makes BILLIONS of dollars a year. It wouldn’t hurt to spend some of that money on writers who can give human depth to female characters. Hell, depth to characters of both genders, because some games don’t do well for anyone.
Heh, you’re trying to make some statement that men are also being treated unfairly because they are villains? Yeah, they’re villains because it seems that even in ficticious war, men are the only people fighting! Again, there are some good examples of enemies and allies who are unisex, but in most games involving war, basically everyone is male, and I dont think that for one second a kid playing games is feeling sad that he’s killing men. He’s just happy that he’s a boy and his character is a boy. Adults aren’t too worried about their gender representation in games, either.
Do you even understand WHY men have been MADE to fight in humanity’s wars throughout history, and nobody cared they’ve thrown on the pyre willy nilly?
Because men are considered to be WORTHLESS.
Women have value merely walking around, because they have a womb.
Men have no value, the only value they bring, is the value they create by their doings. That is, their sacrifices to women and society, how well they function as a beast of burden, meat shield and dispenser of violence. How many body parts, they’re willing to leave behind in the fields, whether plantation fields or battlefields.
And men are being taught this from the day can walk. Every single time a mother or father says, “Go back, big boys don’t cry.” The boy is conditioned to ignore is own pain, to consider it not important, to devalue his own pain and harm.
The first game, that will have faceless, and thus worthless female goons for you to shoot, will have the whole world in uproar, greater than Mortal Kombat, and greater than any violent game to date; even while you shoot men down like that by the busloads and nobody cares.
To illustrate the complete lack of value society places on men: 91% of all homeless are men – nobody cares.
4/5s of all victims of violence are men – people only care about the female victims.
93% of all workplace deaths are men; actually, with the crisis a lots of men losing their jobs, becoming the majority of the unemployed, and being at home, they couldn’t die, so the number decreased to 92%… of course, even though the actual number of deaths among women remained the same, their relative numbers went up from 7% to a shocking 8% percent.
Now guess what the program was about when it came to these numbers. If you guessed the horrible number of men dying, you’d be wrong. If you guessed the horrible misogyny in the workplace because women’s death went from 7% to horrible 8%, remaining less than a tenth of all the deaths in the workplace.
And indeed, kids or not feeling sad they are killing men; which is of course because of the systematic misandry in our society. We are taught from the earliest on, then men’s pain and death don’t matter.
They should, obviously. Here’s a radical thought: men are human beings too, and they deserve the same respect, and given the same value that women have, merely walking around, as human beings. Slaughtering a hundred men without care, should get you no less pathos and slaughtering a hundred women. And slaughtering a hundred men should get you just as much horror as slaughtering a hundred women.
WOW. You live on this planet? I don’t know if you’re asexual or what, but your warped view of the world is hilarious, delusional, and disgusting all at once.
Saints Row 3. Female goons, buss-loads of them, all dead after you gun ‘em down. No hubbub raised because of it. Your point = negated.
Dear 3D Master,
Your entire logical argument is discredited simply upon the virtue (or lack thereof) of you being you.
Also, 3D technology in monitors and other viewing devices is a complete crock, so that makes your username stupid as well.
[/facetious]
Recently I’ve been playing the first Baldur’s Gate and the first thing that they ask to you is what gender do you want your charachter to be, but they also say that the choice you make just won’t change the attributes or stats, so it means that it’s quite a pointless thing except for aesthetics.
I want to know your thoughts about this. I think the initial idea was to make male stronger and women more intelligent, and while I like this feature, I think it wouldn’t have been totally correct. I mean, I don’t think every woman is more intelligent than me and also, I’m not so sure that I’m stronger than every woman.
For me, a good choice woul have been selecting the gender and a background story (like “you spent most of your years studying or similar) giving bonusse on specifics attribute, but that is probably a bit complex lol
I like your idea about choosing a background for your character, and having that determine the protagonist’s personality–Nature vs. Nurture, and all that. I think the issue with Baldur’s Gate specifically is that it is based on Dungeons and Dragons, and is therefore stuck with certain mechanics.
This type of thing is always a tricky decision for a developer. If you give genders innate bonuses than you imply that there is an inherent difference between the two, which is essentialist. On the other hand, having a pointless decision does the player no favors.
The best option is the most expensive: Differentiate the genders through player interaction. Persona 3 Portable is a great examples of this, as playing as a woman COMPLETELY changes the experience, while not implying anything weaker or less competent about the hero being a girl. Mass Effect is another good example.
That’s not quite how it works, since all characters’ stats aren’t equal except for modifiers. All that would mean is that ON AVERAGE female characters would have higher int and males higher str, the later of which I’m gonna go ahead and say is accurate to life. You can still switch around the stats you’ve rolled and put the highest one to strength on your female character or to intelligence with your male. Sure, it’s not a particularly good system, but these base stat modifiers do not mean what you imply.
Good to see Terra in that list, but honestly i think Celes deserves to be in it too, maybe even more than Terra. Celes is a very complex character, (SPOILER ALER) so complex that she can even try to commit suicide because she feels so alone. We don’t often see this in video games, especially in the SNES era!
Celes is amazing, so it was a hard choice. Ultimately, I think I picked Terra because of that sequence in Mobliz in the World of Ruin. It just emotionally resonated with me more than the Celes’ suicide attempt (which I didn’t see the first time I played the game, since I saved Cid).
I love Jade from Beyond Good and Evil.
I highly doubt Shion was planned to have her character arc follow the classic tragedies, as the sequels had massive shifts in development in many areas including writers, I’d say its more of an accident that it ended up that way.
[semi-spoilerish] Lenneth is one of my favorites, cause her story, her arc, never really involved whether she was a man or women, just that she is a person, whose true self is locked away and slowly breaks away from the seal to become herself again. She could have been a guy and it would have changed practically nothing story wise. But its not like she is a “Woman as a man” she still acts like a women and still has destinctions, but it just proves that her gender came second to her story.
Though that isn’t the only way to make a good female character, having her gender and the societies views of it play a role can be done well too. Characters that have a reason to be female can be even better then ones where there gender was irrelevant to their story.
Having the gender stereotypes like in RPG’s and fighters I feel aren’t really bad, because they make sense, as they are just more suited to it, but having the occasional one who subverts it makes it actually really good to have the stereotypical roles, because it shows they can be more then what there told they should be. Like, going back to Xenosaga, Kosmos, granted she is an android, learns no healing or supportive magics normally and is a complete powerhouse unlike the other 2 females which fall into the more common roles.
I’m glad to see you put Violette Summer on your list, for whatever reason I really liked that character, she was cold and strong, and yet due to the morphine effects in that game felt very vulnerable not to mention her melodic voice. And [SPOILER] goes through some real hell at the end of that game. [/SPOILER]
Also, a female character I really loved was Fall-From-Grace from Planescape: Torment, a very elegant and well spoken succubus, who is very much unlike her own people, this really challanged prejudices, and you meet other succubi in the game who seem to be the polar opposite of her.
[Spoiler] And at the very end, her words sweetend the bitter ending[/Spoiler]
For those of you who have not played Torment yet, pick it up on GoG.com, it’s one hell of an experience.
Celes should be somewhere on that list.
I’m a man, I love me some women…so I can’t be sexist.
Very interesting article, and interesting list.
Thanks to my ex-girlfriend, my head now has many feminist ideas floating inside it, but even before that I knew how to appreciate well made female characters in gaming. Naoto Shirogane is my favorite Persona 4 character, although I didn’t really use her that much in the game (That might change in Persona 4 Arena thought).
Agree or disagree, I always enjoy these pieces. It’s nice to read video game articles that not only deal with them as a serious subject worthy of literary-style criticism, but actually do it well. Thanks for doing these, and keep up the good work.
I was just talking to a friend about how well-written the characters in the SMT series are. I talked mainly about Kanji from Persona 4 (one of my favorite characters in recent memory) but also talked about Naoto. I just love the way the Persona games take a stereotype (macho punk) and twist it into a different, but believable direction (doll-making, sexuality-questioning macho punk).
On the subject of the article, while I don’t consider myself to be a feminist by any means, I’ve recently found myself growing more and more irritated with thoughtlessly sexual depictions of women in games. If you want to make a woman sexy, I’m fine with that, I get it, but you have to ask “Why is this character sexy?” If the only response to that question is about selling more games, then something is wrong. For example, I like the Dead or Alive series, my friends and I have had lots of fun playing those games over the years. But why is one of the pre-order bonuses for DOA5 swimsuit costumes for the girls? Does fighting in them give them an advantage? Were they sunbathing just before being challenged? Or is it just a shameless attempt to bring in male gamers? I’d say it’s the latter, and that makes me want to buy the game less, not more. Then you take a character like Morrigan from Dragon Age. She definitely dresses in skimpy clothing that emphasizes her sexuality, but they not only explain why the clothes are revealing, they make the fact that they are fit her character. She, according to the description of her outfit, pieced the outfit together from scraps. That, combined with her generally practical nature, makes it understandable that there wouldn’t be much coverage. And she discusses, more than once if memory serves, that she uses her sexuality, which is accentuated by her clothing, in a ruthless manner that is completely in line with her overall character. Does the male audience get some eye candy? Yes. Is there a well-defined, in-game reason for it? Yes. They asked “why?” and put some thought into it. The answer doesn’t have to be that deep, either. I’ll accept some excuses or hand-waving in a game like Dead or Alive, which doesn’t have as much time to flesh out its characters as a lengthy RPG does, but at least put in the effort.
On a final side note, who is the character in the “traditionally female” picture? I feel I should recognize her, but can’t place her.
Palutena, from Kid Icarus Uprising.
Thanks, I should really play that game. Of course, I’d need to buy a 3DS to do that…
Actually the amusing thing about that is it’s shameless pandering to all who play DoA, the male characters are getting the same treatment and funnily enough all the DoA players that i know that are really any good are all female.
The male characters are getting the same treatment?
First of all, about sexism-related harassment: trolls, MRAs, and the rest of internet low-lives definitely should not be ignored, because their presence shows there is an obvious problem. But they should not be taken personally either. If ms Hepler or any other person, female or male, retreats from the ‘net because of the trolls’ actions, that’s a win for the trolls. So while “grow thicker skin and don’t let it get to you” is definitely not the ONLY step that should be taken, it’s a necessary one regardless.
On the article itself – the process of writing a female character is simple. Rather than “a female who is “, you approach the character from a “a that is also female” standpoint. The sex should not be ignored, as it’s often an important part of one’s personality. But it cannot be the sole point of characterisation either. Just a single facet.
Simple. But simple does not mean easy. Hell, if it was easy we wouldn’t have a need for articles like this.
EDIT: Also Austin, while some positions of your female characters list I find objectionable, in general I really like your taste.
If by positions you mean their numeric order, he said just above the list that they are currently in NO particular order.
Bah I can’t edit my post to put this in. So I’ll make a new one.
Interesting and great article. I was always trying to figure out whether The Scythian was male or female. It’s hard to tell with the art style. But the voice sounded feminine.
It’s thoughtful and insightful articles like this that make me return to Blistered Thumbs every now and then. Good read!
But seriously, you put Morrigan smack-dab at the middle? I would put her higher. Oh well, perhaps Bioware will have her return in Dragon Age III and flesh out her character more, though her air of mystery and intrigue in Dragon Age Origins will be tough to follow.
No particular order.
I’d like to point out that Rapelay is a sex simulator. Developed by a company that profits from sex simulators. The only real difference between their games are which fetish they’re using to sell their game. It’s like claiming that porn is sexist. It may be but it’s redundant to even mention it. And please can we let the topic of Rapelay die. It’s as close to real rape as Mario is close to actual plumbing.
The main character from Wet was suppose to be a sex object? o_O
I guess, for anyone who actually played it. As far as I know, she just looked good. She didn’t seem overly sexual, she didn’t dress outrageous, either.