Girls are becoming a much larger part of the gaming demographic, or even gaming culture as a whole. In fact, I think I know more women that play World of Warcraft on a regular basis than men (and I know a lot of WoW players). I could be imagining things, but it seems as though more and more companies are acknowledging females as a viable target demographic or at the very least they are including them as a group to keep in mind when developing video games. I'm not just talking about having girls in games, that's been going on for a while now. I'm talking about realistic women. You know, the kind of woman that would actually inspire a ragtag group of warriors and unite them under the same cause. The kind of woman that kicks ass, takes names, and wears proper ass-kicking attire.
Seriously, that's cool and totally sexy and everything, but come on. What the hell?
To be fair, that was taken from Bayonetta, a game with more over-the-top fight sequences than all three Matrix movies put together. It's not exactly going for realism. However, how many times have you seen an RPG with big manly men, covered in armor and spikes, only to find that the girl in the group fights in a chain-mail bikini; or the group of commandos with warpaint and uniforms, accompanied by the girl who runs her ass off in a mini-skirt? Even when you see a female warrior with full plate armor and a giant spear, she's wearing goddamn high heels (she's a badass but with a hooker twist).
Sex-appeal sells. I get it. Hell, I totally love it. Not every game needs to look like an issue ofHeavy Metal magazine, though. You can be realistic about it. It's not really all about the look, either. Hell, the female version of Commander Shepherd of Mass Effect has outfits that look like a dominatrix outfit, but made of kevlar. She's accompanied by a girl, Miranda, who's ass is nearly exploding out of the latex (I'm assuming) that contains it; and another, Jack, who's covered head to toe in tattoos and you can see almost all of them. However, Miranda is cold, calculating, precise and loyal but sometimes a little uncaring. Jack is hot tempered, destructive, vindictive and anti-social, yet she approaches sex casually. Real, strong characters.
Even Shepherd, whom you control and can shape into many different characters, is worth examining. She is, in all her incarnations, a no-nonsense, strong and inspiring military officer. Her voice is low and firm without going too far or sounding butch (which is fine, but it's good to know that people don't think that independent women are mostly shaved-head lesbians). In fact, when I compare it to male Shepherds voice, he sounds like a total chump. Even if the first game had the option to be female as a tacked-on afterthought, they certainly did a good job in both games, particularly the sequel.
"Sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you. Getting a lot of bullshit on this line"
Awesome.
Awesome.
Bioware is one of my favorite companies for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because of the emphasis they put on writing. They create realistic characters. For example, not every female has to be a stone cold murderer to do it right. Dragon Age II had a character by the name of Merrill, a Dalish elf blood mage who is half runaway, half outcast but completely confused with herself. She goes with you because she's totally helpless, despite her frightening power, and hopes that you can help her out somehow. The cool thing is that she doesn't fit into that stereotype of a damsel in distress. Part of her character is that she is bumbling, sheltered, easily embarrassed and unsure of herself and your job, if you like, is to help her on her way; not to rescue her. Not only is she an interesting character, but a cool juxtaposition: a trembling and adorable flower that commands horrible, forbidden demon magic. Neat, right?
If you took sex appeal out of games completely I'd be just as unhappy as if it were running rampant. It doesn't have to go, it just has to make some fucking sense.
I agree with you whole heartedly Isaac. Look at Samus Aran, she kicked ass and took names all while wearing the most massive body armour ever. She was quiet, diligent, heroic, dangerous and just a hint of sexy. That is until Metroid Other M where the "masters" at Team Ninja turned her in to a spineless, whining, useless simpleton, who couldn't feed herself without a man's say so. We need more strong female leads who can prove that women in command are to be taken seriously, and can also be sexy whenever they choose.
ReplyDeleteIt's something you don't see often in Japanese games, unfortunately. Not to say that they're the only offenders, but the games from overseas certainly seem to be much more over-sexualized.
ReplyDeleteBecause I got out of actual, serious gaming years ago, it's been very interesting to see these developments from the outside, in particular the way sex appeal sort of varies from non-existent or un-discussed to EVERYWHERE. Usually all I ever end up hearing about are the extremely cheesy stereotyped characters.
ReplyDeleteBrandon: I suspect a problem with the 'strong female leads' who combine femininity with strong authority is that it very easily also gets simplified into the cold-hearted-bad-ass-bitch / pseudo dominatrix archtype which is also in itself as unrealistic as the helpless waif in skimpy, impractical armour.
Personally, I think we should consider taking a step back from emphasizing and dwelling on the gender (or race, orientation etc) of characters. By which I mean specifically: We have to have games that write excellent characters, relationships and plots first, with their gender being incidental. It seems like (and I'm thinking more from movies right now, but hopefully it still applies) we don't have many strong women working WITH strong men, we have to either have pretty and useless female sidekicks or wimpy, along-for-the-ride boyfriends. We can't show protagonist women fighting female villains without that villain secretly working for The Man. On a tangent, Battlestar Galactica was amazing in this regard because throughout the entire series we see characters of different genders, races and orientations being clever, deceitful, violent, heroes, and villains all about equally, but not intentionally equally...it left you thinking of the characters as individuals rather than by their demographic labels.
Also, as an interesting twist to this: I'd love to see some studies investigating the realism of male characters in games as well. I wonder if we'd see some trends we hadn't noticed before, since the discussion on realism in game characters has mostly focused on relatively new demographic entrants to gaming like women, alternative sexualies, and visible minorities.
While on the subject of sci-fi series, I love bringing up Firefly. All of the characters were legit, excluding maybe River I guess. Even the cute and bubbly mechanic was realistic.
ReplyDeleteAs far as video games go, Greg, I'd say BioWare is still the go-to company for what you're talking about. I remember there being a big stink about a gay (or bi) male characters in Dragon Age II. It was not overtly obvious, but they still made passes at your character and there was the option for a romance.
While they were fine with the lesbian relationships in Mass Effect and Dragon Age, alternate sexualities in males still made people uncomfortable. However, BioWare replied with a commendable, "Fuck all you bitches."
You're right in saying that it would be awesome if this stuff could just exist and be incidental, but gamers on the whole might not be ready for that until a few more instances like this happen.
I found Firefly was a good attempt at that *in theory*, but to me the show ended up falling for what I call Joss Whedon syndrome: Calling it 'feminist' by making every female character amazing (best mechanic ever! fierce warrior! tender/vulnerable victim! sacred goddess!) and the male characters either clowns, idiots, or charmingly befuddled. Mal was the exception in that he was sometimes all three in one episode. Ditto female villains: The only real female antagonist in the series was still portrayed for the most part as this sweet victim of a poor upbringing. All of the major villains (The episode Heart of Gold leaps to mind here) are male, sexist caricatures.
ReplyDelete(Hilariously, you can even make an argument that it's incredibly unfeminist: Kaylee isn't the best mechanic because she spent years studying engineering, she's just 'mystically in tune with the machine'!)
I digress. To be fair, my analysis of Whedon syndrome was also partially the result of his overtly preachy, almost season-1 TNG style writing.
And the weird problem of my position is that while I think the solution is to make these demographic labels incidental, the action necessary to make elements like gay characters acceptable and (hilariously) incidental is to ACTIVELY establish it: We have to try really hard at creating an environment that looks like we didn't try.
Huh. Didn't think about it that way. Although the relationship between Zoey and Wash is interesting to look at. Zoey is an unstoppable badass, Wash is a bumbling, slightly submissive doofus, but the best pilot ever and a relatively smart guy. In fact I think him and Simon have to take on the blue-hands in the comics with nothing but their brains (only thing they've got). Not sure, so don't quote me on that. The marriage is more or less equal, just switched around.
ReplyDeleteWash's frustration at Zoey's submissive attitude towards Mal is also worth looking at. The only order she disobeyed was when she married Wash.
Mal might be confused and a rash at times, but that's chalked up to the fact that we was a strong, unstoppable rebel that had all his hopes crushed. He's distrusting, angry, spiteful and rebellious but still shows chivalry sometimes without being patriarchal or condescending. I think in general, he's a pretty strong character that just gets his head spun about by a woman every once in awhile, and that's something most guys can relate to I think.
Even seemingly most pitiful member of the group, Simon, is desperately needed by his psycho warrior genius sister or she'd fall apart. To put everything behind him to became a fugitive and protect his sister took a lot of grit.
Also, Book is an incredible badass.
I choose to disagree for the purposes of keeping this going AS LONG AS I CAN.
ReplyDeleteFirst, Book - Most of his incredible badassed-ness is implied rather than shown, and so much like Boba Fett we sort of assume his character is deeper and more flawed/realistic than we ever actually see (at least from what I remember about the series).
I also have some issues with your assessment of Mal. I think his 'chivalrous attitude' often comes off as incredibly condescending and patronizing. Defending Inari's 'honor' in Shindig, against even her own wishes, smacks of exactly the parochial attitudes of the 1800s the show is channeling. Almost any time that he's doing something that happens to be for a woman (defending the brothel, half of his interactions with Saffron) with the exception of when that woman is Zoey are often incredibly patronizing and old-fashioned.
Getting his head spun around by a woman certainly isn't something guys can't relate to, but it's not terribly realistic and I see it as two dimensional: The same way commercials and sitcoms constantly show us male characters who just can't think straight as soon as a woman walks into the room, we're so ruled by our wangs.
In fact it gives me a good segue into one of my main criticisms of Whedon's television feminism: His female characters are universally good. They are either incapable of malice, incredibly skilled, incredibly sweet and 'adorable', or sympathetic. The male characters are written almost entirely to defer to them: Wash doesn't like Mal and Zoey's connection but we've never (as far as I can recall) really seen him be anything but a super-loving husband. Jealous at times, but always ends up feeling guilty for having less-than-angelic thoughts about his wife. Mal challenges anyone to a duel, Simon (and occasionally even Book) exists almost exclusively to interact with River and more importantly, to take care of her and valiantly defend her with his life. It seems like the only one who isn't a complete push over when it comes to girls is Jayne, and he's constantly both the idiot and the ass, the example of who not to be.
Inari is another great topic for debate as well, since Whedon's whole companion idea is incredibly controversial, though I might save that for a future post. Suffice it to say it's another (and more common among social scientists) criticism of Whedon's writing.
Though, I have to admit I'm with you that Zoey and Wash do have a pretty good relationship for television: It is relatively equal, in that neither of them are regularly portrayed as the 'better person', and while we tend to see Zoey's skills in play more directly than Wash's, we're never meant to believe that he's not quite an incompetent clown.
It's been a while since I've seen Shindig. Was that the duel, or the brothel? Either way, the duel was more for himself than Inara, I thought. The brothel battle was for the girl he fell for wasn't it? (Also, I like saying "brothel battle".) Like most other things, he seems to be doing things for himself, rather than others. Even if it's just his swollen, but injured pride.
ReplyDeleteI don't think his brash, leap-into-action attitude only extends to the women on board, though. He's protective of his entire crew.
His dealings with Saffron are interesting, because even after she's revealed to be an evil, conniving bitch, it portrays him as wanting to kill her or at least leave her to die, but he's unable. I believe he even tries at one point, but his principles (and a possible payload) get in the way. I don't think it's a sense of rescuing the damsel in distress, since she can obviously handle herself and he has more than enough reason to let her die. I agree it's a bit old fashioned, but I don't think he's letting his penis do the thinking, nor is he a knight in shining armor or lovable scamp that swoops in to save the day.
He totally screws her over, regardless.
I'll concede that Whedon has a tendency to portray Wonder Woman more often than just you're average, independent female. It sometimes ends up having the male characters be more realistic and relatable, which might be the opposite of what's intended. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a step in the wrong direction, though.
No, certainly not. It's refreshing to see shows with actual ensemble casts of relatively not-terrible characters.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen it already I highly recommend Battlestar as well for having similar, usually well written characters and in particular a good example of balancing characters of different demographics in an equitable manner.