It’s A Man’s Overworld
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Nechrol
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Space Marines, hit-men, secret agents, wild west cowboys, they all have one thing in common besides a strict nutritional and exercise regime that leaves them looking like they’re about to burst out of their taught armour. They’re men, big burly men that’ll break your arm, bang your mother and then take a whisky shot through the eye. Maybe they’ll even kill some aliens if they have time between workouts.
Women can take a backseat, they’re only useful in games if they’re being abducted, tortured, or being a general inconvenience to the games protagonist. This time Peach, sort yourself out, I’d rather go out with Luigi and eat shrooms. I don’t care if you made me a cake.
Mario was the first example for me when women were seen as a plot device more than anything, a pixel lady on a string leading a plumber to this castle and that. That’s the way it’s always been though, it’s not like games were/are the only sexist environment. Film, literature, jobs, whatever, there’s a long list of mediums that treat women as little more than window dressing. Film and literature has certainly moved on with female protagonists galore, no more sitting in the castles and kitchens for the hero to come along.
When ladies have been more than a visual distraction in games they’ve either been an active and productive member of the games cast or a broom with two beach balls stuck on.
Team Ninja are big culprits in having females as productive members of the games cast though they turn the sexualisation dial to 11. Dead or Alive has yet to introduce a female fighter without a back condition due to the weight they’re carrying up front. In reality it would really throw your balance off and after every somersault you’d probably suffer a black eye. The guys in the game don’t have a pair of socks stuffed down their lycra jumpsuits, I suspect if they did it would impede their ability to roundhouse an opponent. Tekken’s characters on the other hand are relatively in proportion to each other which no doubt saved them a lot of processing power.
One other example of Team Ninja’s female design priorities I noticed was in Ninja Gaiden where a lady demon killer introduced herself covered in monster splooge in a beautifully rendered cut-scene. I’m a guy; I appreciate that kind of thing. The only problem was that I was playing the game when it first came out so I was living at home. My mother enters the room as this FMV is happening and I had to dive to press the start button on the pad to extinguish any evidence I was playing a highly detailed interactive porno.
Even more serious games like Metal Gear Solid 4 had women in it that had joyful back stories of violence and abuse. Instead of seeking some sort of counseling they had been transformed into maniacal killing machines. Maybe that was a step of the therapy plan, I was left to wonder. When you eventually kill the ‘beasts’ they are revealed to be clad in tight fitting onesies and then go on to writhe in a mixture of pain/ecstasy before expiring. Hideo Kojima knows how to get my fire burning.
Final Fantasy had productive women in their games, Terra in VI was neither under or over stereotyped but that game had a solid cast on the whole with both male and female. Sqaure’s latest offering XIII, I think, had a lot of annoying characters in it. Lightning had more testosterone than the rest of the male cast combined, even her voice sounded as if she had just taken a fistful of man pills. Vanille was so saccharine that I contracted diabetes just playing the game. Fang was the better of the two and reminded me of female Mel Gibson, just angrier.
I think that games with well rounded female characters that aren’t as sexualised (by the company at least) would be someone like Samus Aran from Metroid, the female equivalent of Master Chief but with meatier man parts.
Jill Valentine deserves a mention because of her consistency in the Resi series for not whinging about the zombie situation which most of the others do. She can dispose of explosives and isn’t bad with a gun too. Stick her and Clare Redfield in a paddling pool full of jelly and the undead and it would be a well met extension to the series.
One female character that made we want to destroy my console was Kreia from KOTOR-2, yes she was the old menopausal jedi-lady. I get it, you feel hot all the time and your junk stopped working but don’t take it out me! If I had my way me and Atton would have dumped her out into space, got our hyperdrive on and played pazzak.
So yeh, women can sometimes get a bad rap in games but they’re slowly breaking away from the shadows of their male counterparts and coming into their own. The industry is still quite male orientated so until some balance is struck and we have a larger female presence things will change, just not a quickly. Hopefully one day we can sail somewhere close to an accurate rendering of the female protagonist. For now though we’ll have to make do with the ol’ rake with watermelons… not that I’m complaining.
Cue some female empowering music like ‘I will survive’…or something.