The title is a little extreme, but bear with me.
There was a time in games, back before Alyx in Half-Life 2, before Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, when female characters in games came in only one variety: overboobified, underwaistified, barely-dressed stripper. For a female gamer like me, it was an easy time championing the fight to include less sexed-up female characters with more clothes on on their body and a few more brain cells in their head. All we had to do was hold up any ad from any gaming magazine that had a prominent female character and point to it. Or just say, "come on...just look at Lara Croft, for God's sake."
Then we were rewarded with the Alyxes and the Jades, and we female gamers were the happier for it. Finally we had some realistic female characters, ones who were smart, ones who wore real clothes and didn't exist solely to serve the male fantasy. We had characters we wanted to be.
So we should be happy, right? We won our fight, didn't we?
I had an interesting discussion with friends and fellow game developers today, and it made me realize that we're in danger of thinking we've won the war when we've only really won the battle. The discussion started with video from Gears of War that I can't link to because it's been pulled for copyright reasons, but the video had a shot of a female character that helps the player through the game -- her name is Anya and she's an intelligence officer that you mostly hear but never see. The video, however, gave us a sneak peek of her and one of my friends raised an interesting point: while Anya certainly isn't scantily clad by any means, my friend found it interesting that in the video she's standing with a fully-armored soldier having just landed in a helicopter. My friend wondered why the one female character didn't have any armor on while the male soldiers had full protection?
I'm not going to pick on Gears of War specifically -- Anya is a great character. She's exactly what a great female character should be: intelligent, approachable, and not oversexualized. I think the way Epic designed her is terrific. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that she's another character in a trend that I worry is almost eroding the very thing we're trying to get video games to stop doing: perpetuating the idea that women are an unusual commodity unfit for ordinary places in these fantasy worlds.
In an effort to raise video games out of the depths of sexism, more game companies are designing female characters that aren't oversexualized, that are approachable, and that play a pivotable role in the game. This is commendable, certainly. But what do Alyx and Anya have in common? (Or seem to -- I'll certainly be quite happy to retract any of this once GoW is released and I'm wrong about the role Anya plays.) They're helper characters. And they're almost always the only female character in the game.
It's as if the designers have figured out that they need to have a woman in the game in order to help work out this whole strippers-in-games problem, but they didn't broaden their scope enough to go beyond a band-aid solution. So they put in a female character that's certainly important enough to be a key part of the game, but its at the expense of the rest of the game world. (I should note that I'm mostly limiting this to shooters and other "hardcore" genre games -- RPGs generally do a pretty good job of having a lot of characters of both genders in their game worlds.)
Women make up 51% of the population. Women are construction workers, CEOs of large corporations, soldiers, some of whom serve in combat now. Why, when we're creating futuristic worlds, are we not including them among the background characters of our game world? Why is it that when you're walking around a military base in a futuristic world and encountering one generic soldier after another, not one of them is female?
I'm not absolving my own company (Raven Software) of this. We made Quake 4 and we absolutely should have had a good female marine in the game. We have a few women at Raven and all of us told the team that we really wanted a female marine. One of our artists even concepted a very good character but due to memory andtime constraints, we were told, there was no way to put her in. It's unfortunate, and it's something we ought to remedy in future projects.
But the remedy isn't making one very special female character, one carefully crafted to please the eye yet not offend the sensibilities, charged with carrying the burden of representing the entire female gender in the entire game. The remedy is actually a lot more plain than that: just add female characters to your game world. Add them in ordinary positions doing ordinary things. Got a game that has a scene in a futuristic space dock? Make one out of four of your generic dock worker models a woman. Got a game that takes place on futuristic battlefields with squads of soldiers, most of whom are there to add a living element to the game? Make one of them a woman. And if you can't spare the memory for the extra female model plus her voice files, put a couple of generic female voice files on one of your armored-up helmeted soldiers. After all, do men and women soldiers in heavy armor really look that different? (This idea was suggested by my friend who originally asked about Anya's armor, and I think it's a great idea. Okay, the model animations should definitely look different between a man and a woman, but hey, I'm willing to sacrifice that for something so much more obviously female as a voice file.)
Making special female characters is great, but in doing so we shift the focus from wondering why there are only strippers for female characters in a game to why there is only one woman in the game. That just shifts the problem, it doesn't help to solve it. We're an industry that's grown up a lot over the last couple of decades and we're really making strides. Many of the young guys who make games today have gone on to become family men, yet we're still seen as the socially awkward pimply-faced teen who has completely unrealistic ideas about women in games and art. Imagine how your wife, your girlfriend, or your daughter live in a world in which they can do anything they want and be represented, and then look at the game world that you're helping to create and re-evaluate why you might be leaving them out of it.
Special female characters are great and it shows how far we've come in our short history. But when the day comes that the inclusion of women characters in games is as ordinary and unexciting as the inclusion of male characters already is...that's when we've really nailed it.
And by the way, I want to add a postscript here. Some of you may say, "but Caryn, what about the Hellchick model? That's supposed to represent you, and she's the height of oversexualized, underdressed game characters!"
I want to make it clear that I have no problems with these kind of characters existing, and existing especially in game worlds that are suited for them. I like the expression of sexuality in games; I just don't want to see it as the only representation of women. Did anyone play Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2? I did, and the main character was Julie Strain, a stripper heroine with only a few scarves around her that could barely be called clothes. And I loved her, because it fit the world she was in, just like the Hellchick model fits the world she lives in: a succubus creature designed specifically to be shown off in that way.
It's great to have both kinds of characters. We just need a little bit more of the ordinary ones to catch up with the extraordinary ones.
are there male stripper game figures? Because I think the world will be complete when we have a shooter that is all women except for one guy who gives them all the clues in a voiceover.
Posted by: Cinda | October 24, 2006 12:54 PM
the ONLY FPS game that does what you want (that I have played anyway) is Elite Force. Great game (I know, there could be no women on the hazard team, but based on the backstory of voyager, the only woman who could of been on there already was the engineer).
male stripper game figures... I got a big smile on my face when I think of scenes with that. :D (maybe that's why DN3D is taking so long!)
Posted by: The Happy Friar | October 25, 2006 09:13 PM
I just surfed over here from the latest Feminist SF Blog Carnival, and I wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your post. You very clearly outline a lot of the things I've been thinking lately about not just women in video games, but women in certain kinds of genre TV shows and movies, as well. Thanks for putting it so well!
Posted by: Revena | November 20, 2006 10:57 PM
Anya is indeed the only female character in Gears of War, and I was annoyed to see the reactions of the male characters when she's introduced -- shock at the sight of a woman on the battlefield. In addition, when the bullets start flying, Anya hides in the chopper, right beside a door-mounted machinegun, and never even mans the gun to help the soldiers pinned down outside. Throughout the game she feeds information to the male characters who take all the meaningful actions, and she's "on-camera" for less than 30 seconds. A huge disappointment, but Gears is a macho-macho testosterone-fest so I can't say I'm surprised. Oh, and final irritation: the enlisted men refer to the male officers by their rank, but call Anya (a Lieutenant) by her first name.
Posted by: Brannon | November 21, 2006 01:15 PM
I recently played Gears of War round my friend’s house, and I also brought up the fact that the only female I saw in game is barely seen and when she is, it’s out of the up close action. And likewise reading this article from the beginning, Quake 4 came to mind as another game where any females involved are out of sight for the most part of the game, or even as far as not seen at all.
I generally believe there is a reason for this lack of female presence, at least when it comes to the combat. Both GOW and Quake 4 have serious amounts of gore in them. I can’t vouch entirely for GOW, but suffice to say, I was blasted into meaty chunks on more than one occasion, and this only in a few hours playtime. And Quake 4 likewise has some extremely graphic depictions of dead soldiers, killed and used in all manner of ways.
I hope I’m not stating the obvious here, but it’s my opinion that females are left out of game situations like that to avoid having to depict females in such a nasty situation. And it seems the games industry, maybe just like the real world, seems to have less of a problem with men being sliced and diced, blood guts and brains all over the shop, rather than women.
I myself would have been extremely uncomfortable if the opening scene of Quake 4 featured the corpse of some female soldier blown in half floating through space, instead of a man. Yet I recognize and sympathize with points made on female characters depictions in games, and if games are going to have that kind of balance of male and female characters in games like this, it’s something that has got to be accepted. So perhaps the problem here is the ease of which people will happily see men blown to bits, but find it intensely uncomfortable to see women in the same position. Even I admit that seeing such gory depictions of dead men doesn’t affect me as much as it would women.
Is that a sexist idea though? Would it suggest that a man’s life means less than a woman’s? Or that a woman could not handle that kind of situation? I think to have a good thing like women fighting alongside men as equals in games like Quake and GOW, people like me might have to get over this aversion of seeing the females suffering the same as the males. After all, to keep things the way they are is perhaps unfair, and more importantly, unrealistic.
Sorry, perhaps that is a little long winded to simply say “women appear less in those games because people don’t like seeing them get killed”. Still, its what first comes to my mind if people ask the question of why they don’t appear as often as men do.
Posted by: Jona | November 23, 2006 04:04 PM
I was... amazed (shocked isn't the right word) when I saw there was female soldires in the CoD series under the Russian campaingns. I'm so used to NOT seeing women on the front lines I assumed they were all men until one day (I belive it was in CoD2, even though I played through CoD1 near release) I saw a ponytail.
The intergrated them so well they were a natural part of the game! (Q4 could of been this way too, hopefully ETQW will be)
Posted by: The Happy Friar | November 23, 2006 06:04 PM
Why can't gender equity be fully realized in this DAMN society? Why do many people look upon the gender to determine a character's role and personality? I hate this!
Girls shouldn't be oppressed by being side-kicks or supplemental characters to commonly-lead male heroes. They should be independent!
At this state, I am dreaming about a game, a game where for once, they made a girl look "gangster", and thug-like! I mean, that would be really cool. She would have the same cloths as a gangster male would do!
If is one thing that will enhance my life, its gender equality. No gender is superior than others. I believe female characters can become popular among both, male and female.
Look at Mario, and Sonic the hedgehog! They have a lot of fan-boys and even fan-girls. Why can't a female character achieve the same status?
A female character can dress the same way a male can. They don't need to reveal their body and all sorts to define them; they can just be who they are: The Lead character!
I wish I was running for president....I would surely approve the "Equal Rights Amendment" that has been denied 30 years ago.
I hate PATRIARCHY!
I hate SEXISM!
I LOVE and WANT GENDER EQUALITY, and by any means, I will do ANYTHING for it, even if it means risking my dignity, pursuit of happiness, or finding myself dead!
Posted by: AlvaroX (A BOY who heavily desires equality! A guy who wants to abolish "Gender Roles)"! | February 13, 2007 04:06 AM
Wow, I completely agree with your article, but for the moment the same problem is still in television as such, where strong females characters are hailed, but shouldn't need to be, as they should be a normal occurance.
The recent Battlestar series is a really good show of what you hope games will evolve into, no big deal is made, where women are engineers, pilots, soldiers, everything; and that's how it should be set in the future, I really hope that games do evolve to this standard. I only wonder how long it will take til we see a game full of both male and female characters performing similar jobs.
Though I must say I really cannot stand the 'overboobified, underwaistified, barely-dressed stripper' :)
Posted by: Charlotte | April 13, 2007 02:43 AM
This problem about women being "objectified" exists only because of the way lads and lasses
are brought up.... seperately, differently..
And yes, this happens all over the world, for example, in the UK, girls were averse to exercise
as they considered it "un-feminine" and those
who were brave enough to join boys in football
games were dissed as "tomboys".
As long as people just don't implement practises
that ensure equality, you won't get it... plain and simple.. Video games were seen as a sort
of adrenaline rush, which WAS believed to be the
a feature of lads like us, but not girls..
As the market became competitive, you'd naturally
expect sexuality to enter the picture (Just look
at all those ads today, sex sells and its a fact)
and because the audience was primarily male,albeit due to improper social conditioning,
this was bound to happen...
And yes, it's true that you may win a hundred battles and still be vanquished in the war,because people won't change unless the
way in which they're brought up changes.
Posted by: Ankur | April 20, 2007 07:59 AM