Women in Videogames

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Mistermostyn

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You've read the editorial, now voice your own viewpoints!

Does Alex Ely's article ring true, or does it stoke your fires of fury?

Are you an angry girl-gamer who feels that women portrayed in games are given unfair treatment in a male dominated industry?

Are you a boob-happy 'Y chromosome' male who's never more satisfied than when slipping BMX XXX into your disc tray?

Your opinions, your tastes, your argument.
 
Alex is right when he says that the "strong female character" is a move in the right direction, but it's also clear that some of that growth is compromised by the character models. I understand why developers create attractive female (and male) characters--this is what many people want to play. It wouldn't be the same if Dante were ashort, chubby and balding middleager. However, it's the extent to which the female body is designed that is the problem. Most of these avatars aren't even close to proportionate to a woman's body. If a woman actually had the body of the Dark Elves in Lineage II, they wouldn't be able to stand up straight for all the gravity pulling down on their gargantuous breasts. They'd have to crawl! And the argument that because young boys make up so much of the gaming population, this is just good marketing, can't be made today like it couldv'e years ago. According to an ELSPA survey, 39 % of gamers in the US, 36.8 % in Japan, and 65.9% in Korea are women! But, the majority of game consumers are still male. This suggests that women are playing games their guy friends buy. So, there is a whole market out there that has barely been tapped.

But then, you also have to wonder if these character models are not only the fantasies of men who have bad luck with real life women, but if they are also fantasies for women. I don't in the Gia, Ellen DeGeneres, High Art sort of way. But perhaps some women would like to BE those women as much as men would like to "have" them. This is the same reason that women flaunt the covers of women's magazines, not men. So, in effect, women are objectified by both men and women--men want the ideal, women want to be the ideal. This is a marketing ploy like any make-up commercial featuring a beautiful model or actress; the only difference is that in video games, what is being sold is the chance to "become" one of these women for a while. All the while, these games are perpertuating an ideal that doesn't exist anywhere, and in doing so they're perpetuating the skewed social relationship that men have with women's bodies and women have with themselves.
 
Nobody wants to play as an ugly character usually, male or female. That's why nobody plays as people like Zangief (street fighter), Xiahou Yuan (Dynasty Warriors) or Orcha (Chrono Cross). Really, the only cool middleaged balding male in any video game I've played was Barry Burton, though Wesker's getting a bit old too.....

Anyway, I don't think females would play a Tomb Raider hoping they could one day be a dispropotionate temple-thief. But I dunno, males can't tell what females think.......ever. But watch out there.....what ya said could be taken as saying female gamers are ugly, and nothing is scarier than a woman's rage......

But there have been VERY few independent, non-ditsy, non-cowardly, non-slutty, bachelorettes in any game ever. In fact, the only ones I can think of are Chris from Suikoden 3 and Ada from RE2.
 
Well, let's see. I am a woman gamer, so I wouldn't be calling myself ugly. Believe me. I wouldn't. I'm way too vain. :l: Besides, my point has nothing to do with what women really look like; it has to do with how women are told by the media (in all it's forms) what they are supposed to look like, whether they be gamers, dancers or advertising executives. Women and men are both being feed an ideal image of femininity and masculinity through various avenues, one being video games. Like I said, if images of women couldn't be sold TO women, there would be men on the cover of Cosmo.
 
I think Alex makes some good points. Today, women are not merely portrayed as strong characters but are used primarily as sex objects in video games. For those that are familiar with the industry I do not need to start listing off games. This practice will continue to be perpetuated as graphics improve. Women's bodies and sex appeal is a major marketing tool and why would the industry not use it in video games where the majority of the audience is assumed to be men. Whether its a girl's chest bouncing up and down while performing a move in Tekken 4 or a half dressed S&M vampire killer (BloodRayne), designers and marketers are placing greater emphasis on a women's beauty and sex appeal than on her strong character. Given, this shift may be the product of designers creating their fantasies; however, it does not change the fact of what is happening.
Over the last 10 years as the industry has gone mainstream it only seems understandable that mainstream values will be adopted. In addition, a more mature audience is now being catered to. I think what we see now in the Guy Game, Leisure Suit Larry, and Playboy: the Mansion will pale in comparison to what will be on the market 5 years from now. I see a shift towards emphasis on women's sex appeal and away from the strong character. Come on; when guys see Blood Rayne do you think they say "wow, what a powerful women" or "wow, look at that?" Personally, I hate to see the industry moving in this direction.
 
A couple of people indirectly touched on this theme, but it bears being said explicitly: indeed, there are hunky men portrayed in videogames along with sexy women, but the important difference is that the women are hypersexualized much more often than the guys are. Pick an average square-jawed marine or demon hunter and their characters are designed to look appealing but not any more sexualized than your average television heartthrob. Pick an average post-Lara, pouty-lipped and pert-breasted female character than they look just as ready for a good fuck as for a good battle.

To look at this from another perspective, the equivalent for the male character models would be to have them sporting raging hard-ons while hacking and slashing, for instance.

Someone else mentioned BloodRayne, but I think that's a bit of an exception. Yes she's highly sexualized, but so is much of vampire mythology to begin with.
 
They're talking about Alex Ely's [a]http://www.mygamer.com/index.php?platform=&publisher=&developer=&game=&page=articles&mode=viewarticles&id=75[aa]article about women in videogames[/a]. I think there are a lot of good comments in here, but my opinion is twofold.

Firstly, it all boils down to the fact that game manufacturers are still designing characters that appeal to men/boys. This means ripped guys, a stereotype that we are generally "told" by all media that we want to attain, and hypersexualized women, another stereotype we're told we want to "attain", albeit in a different way. If you look at the ads in any men's magazine, the models will tend to look an awful lot like your average video game character. Now, if you look at a women's magazine, they'll look similar too (I think someone already pointed this out), so if games were pushed more for female gamers, I don't know that we'd see all that much of a difference!

Secondly, the only voice we really have in the matter comes from our wallets. As long as games with these stereotypes continue to sell well, the stereotypes will continue to be used. Unfortunately, a kind of boycotting of sexualized games would mean skipping many games that really are quite good. More unfortunately, there are many excellent games that feature more realistic female leads (like Beyond Good and Evil and Ico) that have sold very poorly. Looking at that data, one has to wonder if the game publishers aren't on to a good thing, and that those of us who are concerned about this at all are in a very small minority.
 
Now, I do not think women are being portrayed poorly. Its alot like comics. People used to complain about how the women looked outragous in comic books. Well the men look just as outragous. Yah the women are made to look apealing to the guys. But male video game characters are not that much better. There are countless male video game figures that look like bodybuilders. And if the men on video games do not look like that, then they have a boyish "teenie boper" boy band look. Although I do agree games are made to apeal to teenage and adult males, but both male and female video game characters look unrealistic.
 
I think the portrayal problem goes beyond just the character models. I don't think people have a huge problem with an oversexualized female character who also has a strong role. Look at how accepted Lara Croft was, she was made a female role model even though it's physically impossible for any woman with all internal organs in the correct places to look like her.

I think the issue is around games like Rumble Roses or DoA: Beach Volleyball. These are games that have been solely designed to sexualize the female characters, and the end result looks like the game was actually designed around the characters, instead of vice versa. The developers sat down and thought of a way to maximize the suggestiveness of the game instead of trying to make it a great game first and foremost (not that some of these types of games aren't good, which adds another layer to the issue). But, in the case of Tomb Raider, the lead character was originally going to be male, and it was only late in the design that Lara Croft was created. Thus, the game was centered around the gameplay primarily, not how to maximize T&A time (not that that didn't eventually happen).

Or, look at the ads that came out for Bloodrayne 2. They purposefully appealed to the character's sexuality. She was in Playboy for chrissakes, and make no mistake, that was just a huge ad for the game that people paid for. The ads for that game invariably told little or nothing about the game itself, instead showing the digital voluptuousness of Rayne. Big surprise, then, that the action itself turned out to be second-rate.

Which brings me to another point. The developers have something here. Bloodrayne 2 sold a lot of copies, and wasn't that good of a game. The Guy Game sold a lot of copies, and was a terrible game. As much as we can say "this is bad, it's stupid, and it objectifies women", it seems that the game playing audience will buy these games, regardless of how good they are! That's sad, for two reasons; because we really like to stress that good gameplay can make or break a game, and because it seems to put those of us who don't get sucked into the hype in a position where we appear not to understand the market. For those of us who write reviews, that's a bad thing; we should always be aware of trends and the desires of the audience.

So, it's not just having scantily clad women of unrealistic physical propotions that's at issue, it's primarily how they are portrayed as characters and the context they are placed into relative to the game itself.
 
well Rayne was a voulumptious woman who just loved killing. Lara Croft was a voulumptious woman who loved action and blowing up stuff. Although these are strong and beautiful characters, and something you would think to apeal to women. But lets face it, women are not like men. They as a whole only like action and violence to a certain point, unlike most men who just can't enough of it. I really cant see big breasted women shooting the crap out of stuff appealing to women. Females like more depth of character. I believe thats why most women who consider themselves gamers play RPGs. Its also why I think the FFX-2 females are more popular with the girls than the guys.
 
Fighting games are the biggest on putting women in skimpy outfits. Taki, Sophitia, Mai Shiranui, Dead or Alive (as a whole pretty much), Morrigan, and many others.
 
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