Many critics wring their hands in response to hard data on the gender gap in our medium. Polling in recent years has shown the population of female console gamers somewhere in the range of 35%. When the general population is split down the middle on the gender line, why are the majority of video gamers men?
A quick Google tour drops in my lap a cache of articles about objectification and hyper-sexual character desigans foiling attempts to lure the attention of girl gamers. These essays reference the same pool of complaints from a sampling of female opinions as hard evidence. Yet, anecdotal though it may be, my own conversations with the women in my life that play video games paints a different portrait.
Meagan VanBurkleo’s Game Informer review of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light sparked my initial curiosity. She opens her review with an important point: She loves Lara. How is this possible? Isn’t Lady Lara public enemy number one, the sexpot iconoclast of feminism?
Reading further, Meagan takes care to clarify that she’s been hot and cold on Tomb Raider games, but her affection for the character itself helped her stomach the least palatable entries on the franchise menu. That stands out against the chorus of voices drumming up a mob to storm Angelina Jolie’s house. Meagan doesn’t just love the character — Lara Croft was what kept her coming back to those games.
Recently I spent some time talking to the women in my life that play console video games about women in the medium, female characters, etc. Their answers seemed scattered at first, with contradicting opinions and confusing stances on certain issues. But as I analyzed the things they were telling me, a few points started leaping out at me.
I asked these women what I thought was a leading question: What springs to mind when I ask you for your least favorite female game character? Instead of responding with a gypsy curse aimed at Lara’s head, I got a range of answers, including Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4 and even a few female characters most men revere, like Navi the Fairy and Princess Peach.
When they brought up Ashley Graham, I’d follow up with the question, “Well, how do you feel about Sheva in Resident Evil 5?” The response was almost unanimously positive. With a few, I’d ask a second follow-up: “How do you feel about Sheva in her leopard bikini?”
“That’s my favorite costume,” most of them replied.
In the end I was left with a series of questions I couldn’t answer. Why is it that the characters that some people point to as personifications of the issues that cause our gender divide were the favorite characters for some of my female friends?
As I was pondering this, Gearbox Software announced its revival of the mummy that just will not stay in its tomb, Duke Nukem. As I perused the press coverage, it dawned on me why.
Duke is the male equivalent of what many people claim drives women away from games – unrealistic physical traits and exaggerated gender stereotypes. Duke’s physique is ridiculous. He spouts sexist machismo, only laying down his weapons long enough to pause the blood bath for a chance to shove cash into the underwear of strippers.
I’ll admit it — when I discovered Duke around 12 or 13-years old, I thought he was awesome. Hilarious. Cool. You could argue that the reason why two generations of gamers can’t seem to let Duke rot is because we look back at him so fondly for being exactly what he was: self-image porn.
Archetypes like Duke over-populate modern-day gaming, especially in certain genres. When was the last time you met a protagonist outside of Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman that looked mortal? Chris Redfield’s biceps have grown larger than many small children.
I realized that many girls probably had a relationship with Lara similar to mine with Duke. To men she amounted to a 3D modeler’s wet dream, selling games to heavy-breathing dudes by doing digital cartwheels in a tank top and crevasse-revealing hot pants. But she also displayed strength and power by navigating traps and doling out death from double-fisted revolvers.
Duke’s appearance was inconsequential to me. What I admired about him was how he was capable, strong, and entertaining. As I thought back fondly to slaying pig-man-hybrid police, I wondered if these were not the same reasons so many girls venerate Lara.
Some women appear to actively enjoy the sexuality on display, though it is absorbed through the filter of escapism and admiration. For the rest, they seem to ignore overt and aggressive sexual content in favor of the strength beneath.
If characters like Bayonetta are capable of ascending above ridiculous sexual caricature to become beloved for their ability, suddenly the venom directed towards characters I previously considered safe choices as good female role models made more sense.
Games are rife with female characters that are shrill, burdensome, cold, mean, manipulative, and obnoxious. This is the crux of the true problem: there is a famine for female game characters that female gamers actually admire.
Female characters seem to be so often connected to the worst gameplay sections of some games. No wonder some women have a hard time relating to video games in general. If your gender was relegated to continuous escort missions, catty cut-scene dialogue, and trophies for level accomplishments, you’d probably feel alienated, too.
Some great female characters in video games do exemplify competence. Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid, Chun Li — the list could go on for a while. At least someone out there knows how to create these sorts of characters. Then why do they seem to appear so infrequently?
I don’t want to throw my own gender under the bus, but men in the industry, both on the production and consumption end of the spectrum, do earn a lion’s share of the blame. There simply aren’t a lot of female voices employed in the creation of games to serve as advocates. Too often, we get character designs straight from the fantasies of a small unit within the design team. What message do we convey with a game thinly masked as beach volleyball, which is, in reality, a simulator engine for sexual fantasies? If a young girl sees this game on the shelf, what message does she receive? “This is what we think you’re good for?”
Luring more qualified women into the field is the best offensive in the attempt to tear down the wall isolating the female gamer. It makes sense from both a social and business standpoint. More women involved in the process translates to an infusion of a fresh perspective.
Yet it seems that most of the strongest candidates get pushed around in a field dominated by men, sent off to the mines to labor on the very sorts of games that they could be helping to banish to obscurity. So few of the strong titles we see on the market are headed by women.
The audience is hungry for more. The market share of female console gamers is growing, and female gamers actually make up a majority of some speciality markets, especially on the PC. Until developers and publishers learn to approach women without insulting them, however, I wonder if the sexes will ever have equal representation in the marketplace.
Creating quality content populated by female characters that aren’t one-dimensional annoyances seems like a good way to make that approach. Complex female characters in games help to create experiences that both genders can enjoy. More women in the industry can help ensure that we all get that sort of experience far more often.
Or we could all just spend our time rescuing Ashley from Las Plagas over and over. That’s…fun.