Tropes vs. Women Protagonists

[DioWallachia]

I've heard the argument raised that the muscular beefcake men that show up in some games (template: Kratos) are the equivalent of Ivy from Soul Caliber; some male players will say "Look, the same thing happens to us men, now stop complaining!"

Except that that isn't it. The unemotive slabs of meat we see in games aren't designed to be attractive to women- they are the representation of what a stereotypical male thinks is attractive to women. They're the societal stereotype that the "nerd" sect continually ran up against as they matured... the overmuscled omni-athelete, with a jaw you can crack marble on, an inability to feel emotions aside from anger (let alone express them) and a relentless single-minded pursuit of his goals that would make a Terminator nervous. We men (this is a generalization here) internalized this stereotype, made it our paradigm, built our escapism around achieving it, and blindly expect that women actually agree with it.

I never understood how that kind of brute would be an "ideal" for male or even NERDS. My feelings towards this can be summed up by good old Thanos himself:

In fact, we see this CONSTANTLY. All those brutes are ALWAYS manipulated into fucking up the world by their own hand, so i dont see how this can be a power fantasy when in doing so you make everyone lives worse. It seems more like the developers taking a dump over this ideal "male" by using the good old trope of "Nice job breaking it. Hero"

Unless the audience was made by pure Sociopaths or something.

 

[Voltano]

As for Chell, I feel she's one of those non-examples. She never speaks or acts in any way that is not prompted by the player. Just like Gordon Freeman she's a name and a body without any other characteristics to actually make her a, you know, character. She's not sexualized certainly, but neither is she give any other form of portrayal. In that respect she's not a good example of a female protagonist, simply because the only clue we get that she's a woman is that we can see her character skin through portals, she's got no personality and as such we've got nothing to connect to as audience. Replacing Chell with a big purple cube (a'la missing source engine assets) would not in any way impact on the narrative or portrayal of Chell.

You could say the same argument for Samus Aran in the "Metroid" series. However, most gamers felt like Samus was a more strong-willed character in classics like "Super Metroid", unlike the strong-willed Samus we got in "Metroid: Other M".

Chell could be something of a blank slate or non-specified character, but that isn't the case. She is the one that takes down Glados - twice.

Spoilers about "Portal 2":

Spoiler

Even looking at Glados there is a hint of female empowerment in her as she was originally based upon a female helping Cave Johnson. Plus Glados and Chell do team up to take down Wheatly towards the end of "Portal 2", an androgynous but also recognizable male character. But getting back with Chell, we think she is adopted based upon all the taunting from Glados and Wheatley.

Like Samus, there is some hints of Chell's character. We can assume that Chell has some kind of brain damage by saying apple with jumping, but she has to be a smart person to get through all the traps in the Apeture facility. She never fights against the player to cower off in fear when a turret shows itself, but pick it up and hold it to a laser with sadistic glee (like I would).

I'll admit that all this is implied and up to anyone's own interpretation. But considering the mixed views of people's opinions on "Metroid: Other M", I believe Chell does have a character that could be expanded on more. Instead of making Chell as a weakling, like what most people's interpretation for Samus in "Metroid: Other M" when she encounters Ridley, who she killed a few times before that game.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here.

I can easily say that the Developers are faced with an overwhelming task of making the game accepted by all masses. And while some might be brilliant game designers, that doesn't mean they are sociological geniuses. Stereotypes are there because people in real life don't want to get invested enough with other people, so they want to get a broad stroke understanding and move on.

If the individual chooses to get invested, yeah, they'll be shocked to find out that well endowed woman loves classic music and one day dreams of being an engineer. Or that well muscled Latino character that drips Masochism loves having sex within his same gender and feels no shame in doing so.

It's very telling that Anika herself talks about tropes against women, but her icon selection only shows one 'type' of women. Save for that... fairy thing, Mai (who is the most causasian looking asian woman I ever saw in my life, and Cortana... they are all surprisingly Anglo-Saxon looking.

Even Shamus himself doesn't mention race or sexual preference (other than women being slutty and that's acceptable). No bashing to him, but I do have the same issue that girl gamers have. I would like to pay a character that represents me. As a non-white male, I really don't think that I have. Having an XY doesn't mean I feel that much kinship to a character with a background not the same as mine instantaneously just because he also has a XY. Just like girl gamers don't feel the same even though that characters in question might have a double X, they are vapid and sex objects. And don't get me started on gay protagonists. I don't know of a one that was designed as a non changable lead character that's your avatar.

Designers, I recognize the hardships you will go through trying to incorporate all of the different gamers around. Focusing on white male.... not the best way to go. So, don't design a character. Leave it open. we have MUCH MORE FUN going deeper with those characters that are our design than having to roleplay as who ever you think would fit us all.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I've said this before and I'll say it again pointing out what is bad only does not help the situation. Pointing out thing us and developers already know is not helping as evident by this being continued. If people really do not like this then they have to show they are and point out good examples of females characters of which there are plenty. Just for some reason people know like 5.

As an aside JRPG characters as a whole are not androgynous.

Spoiler: Actual androgyny and psuedo androgyny

This is androgynous style.

This is not despite what most people think.

 

[vhailorx]

This is, as usual, a solid article from Shamus, but I think he abused mirror's edge by 1) saying that it was bad and 2) lumping it in with Wet and probably Velvet Assassin though i haven't played must of the VA.

Mirror's Edge was undeniably a commercial failure. But I think it would be a mistake to suggest that the game was bad. Obviously I am a fan of the game and therefore biased. But the metacritic score for that game was right around 80, so I think it's fair to say that critics generally enjoyed it. By contrast Wet and VA were ~70 and 60 respectively.

Basically rather than lumping ME in with other games that had female protagonists but were 'bad for unrelated reasons' the article should/could have emphasized just how few games there are like ME that have basically done exactly what shamus is calling out: had a female lead that wasn't an object of titillation for male players. I don't think it's coincidence that ME is the only 1st person game of the 5 he explicitly calls out in the article (ME, Wet, VA, Bayonetta and Lollipop Chainsaw).

I think that DICE came very close to succeeding where so many other companies have failed in creating a female protagonist who was heroic, capable, feminine but not played as a sex object and generally likeable. Obviously this is subjective, and the failure of the ME IP probably says some sad things about what the industry thinks of the commercial viability of female protagonists. There are so few good female characters in gaming (protagonist or secondary) that it seems like a mistake to lump one of the really good ones in with what'r'their'names from Wet and VA.

I also wonder if albino boo doesn't have a point about the difficulties of developing any character in the gaming medium. There are obviously many more fleshed out male gaming characters than female, but I don't think the percentage of 'good' male characters is very high compared to the overall population. There's a lot of Kratos/Cole MacGrath/the guy from Crysis/the guy from Prototype idiots out there too...it's sad to realize just how much the games industry is going through the same growing pains process that the movie industry went through during the middle of the last century.

FWIW, The character of Alex in Breakdown was always one of my favorite in gaming. she's not the protagonist, so the game still the standard male-centric fantasy story strucutre. But alex was very capable, started the game off by saving the PC and was among the best of the whole family of 'secondary, love-interest NPCs' a la Alyx from half-life or Elena from Uncharted etc etc. Also helped that alex was a soldier who actually dressed like one: combat fatigues, tactical vest etc. rather than a halter-top or other chainmail bikini equivalent.

 

[Jordi]

Shamus put my opinion into words almost perfectly. I don't like Sarkeesian and her analyses at all, and I think that pretty every much every problem in the entertainment industry stems from the fact that "male" is the default.

I think some of that is because of marketing. Gaming is probably still perceived to be mostly done by teenage boys and young men, and pandering decisions are made accordingly, even if that isn't true. If it indeed isn't, than I think this is the easier problem to solve.

The harder problem, I think, is that I very much suspect that most game developers and publishers (especially the higher ups) are male[footnote]I studied (a branch of) computer science and not even 10% of my fellow students were women. I hear the same from my coworkers at the small company where I work where all ~15 programmers are male. I believe the figure for computer science studies in the US is a little better (around 15%) and the number of females employed in IT is better still (suggesting that if any discrimination is going on, it is probably "positive"). Nevertheless, the percentage is fairly low, and it was even lower in previous years, so the discrepancy in "experienced" people is probably larger.[/footnote]. If this is true, that also explains a large part of why men are so predominant in the things they produce. I believe that if you ask anyone to tell the story they have been making up in their mind, most would have a protagonist that is basically an idealized version of themselves. And even if that's not the case, developers are often encouraged to write what they themselves think is awesome. The alternative is to try to guess what other people will like, and that is usually not a recipe for success, because chances are you'll get it wrong. No man knows what it's like to be a woman. They can of course guess right, but I think it will be much easier for a woman to make a cool game for women than for a man (and vice versa).

The solution to this would be to get more women into the industry. They need to be in positions where they get to make the big decisions, or at least be extensively consulted on how to make a game appealing to their demographic. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done, because as it stands it just doesn't appear to me that many women are interested in such a career. Hopefully I will be proven wrong though.

As for Chell, I feel she's one of those non-examples. She never speaks or acts in any way that is not prompted by the player. Just like Gordon Freeman she's a name and a body without any other characteristics to actually make her a, you know, character. She's not sexualized certainly, but neither is she give any other form of portrayal. In that respect she's not a good example of a female protagonist, simply because the only clue we get that she's a woman is that we can see her character skin through portals, she's got no personality and as such we've got nothing to connect to as audience. Replacing Chell with a big purple cube (a'la missing source engine assets) would not in any way impact on the narrative or portrayal of Chell.

I see this as a big problem. On the one hand, you have people complaining when the protagonist just happens to be a woman and the game doesn't make a big deal out of it. On the other hand, (other) people would complain if it did. According to user @Labyrinth above, a game shouldn't comment on the relative skill/power of men/women in the game world. According to Sarkeesian you cannot make your women pregnant. According to the Tomb Raider backlash, you cannot have them get raped. Even though these are things that women will (unfortunately) have to deal with more probably. Maybe these are extreme examples, but how would you bring attention to the specific femininity/masculinity of a character without using some kind of stereotype? If you don't, then the gender truly doesn't matter and we are pretty much back to the Chell case, aren't we?

FWIW I think Chell is a very good example of a very good female character. She is actually characterized quite well (we learn a lot about her in the games and comic) and I like the fact that her gender isn't really important. It's just normal. The odds were (presumably also in the Portal world) 50%. She's female, it's normal, nobody cares. In my opinion that is how gender should be treated in most situations. I don't really see how they could have done it better.

To be fair, I agree it's probably not a female power fantasy in the same way that some games are for men.

 

[ex275w]

I think the best solution for female video game players is to offer a female and male option a la Pokemon. Still if that's not possible since the character is fixed, have the character be androgynous like Kirby who appeals to everyone.
If you are want to write a great female protagonist do it as you would another great character, good things never come if you are worrying what the feminists or the audience will think about it.
One of the biggest steps is stop putting women in a pedestal. Valve wouldn't have written the TF2 to be as funny if they were worried what the Russians or fat people would think about the Heavy. Kiyohiko Azuma just wrote funny characters who happened to be girls because he wanted to.

 

[KrystelCandy]

It's interesting that you mention Bayonetta as made for guys, because I've heard from women gamers (including Susan Arendt, an editor at my favorite website) that they love Bayonetta as a strong female character.

Further, if you compare Bayonetta to Japanese eye-candy characters (Dead or Alive, for instance), she has a number of design elements that were intended to make her more feminine (instead of sexy), and her sexiness was suppose to come more from her mysteriousness and intelligence than her body. For instance, she has normal-sized breasts, her hips are rounder, and her limbs are exaggeratedly long--which also makes her incredibly tall and tower over other characters (not something that most guys look for in their fantasy women, since height has implicit power implications).

Note: I haven't played Bayonetta; I'm mostly just regurgitating what I've heard Susan say on a podcast and interviews of Mari Shimazaki, Bayonetta's lead character designer, that I've read.

Women gamer here telling you she hates Bayonetta.

The guy who made Bayonetta made her according to his fetishes basically, and the link to the post below highlights alot of the problems to me. I couldn't even get past mayyybe an hour of the game before I quit it and never played it again, despite it being a decent game.

http://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/bayonetta-and-the-male-gaze/

Well, if I had to pick one, I would say it is the scene where Joy first appears in the game, with Bayonetta and her impostor getting into a pose battle. That was my way of expressing the feminine notion that, to one woman, all other women are enemies. Even women walking by each other will check out what the other is wearing, and might smolder a bit with antagonism. Women are scary. (source: Bayonetta dev: to one woman, all other women are enemies)

Hair attacks are something that only a woman can do, it?s a woman?s beauty. So that?s why I came up with the hair idea. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

I strongly feel that women outside should dress like her. Like, when she does a hair attack, you?d see the skin. I want women to wear fashion like that. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

[in reference to Devil May Cry sequel being done by someone else] I wanted to do the sequel. I used to want to do the sequel, but now it?s like, some other guy?s chick. It?s not my chick anymore. And my chick got fooled, and played all around from all over, so I don?t want her anymore. I?m only concentrating on my current chick. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

But anyway that?s how we?re creating Bayonetta?s moves and all that, and that?s actually the most fun part of this game, thinking about all that stuff. So you will be able to see what everybody in the team likes in a girl from the finished project. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

[On whether her outfit really is just hair] Yes, completely hair. That means that she?s actually naked, but naked because that?s just hair, that?s not clothing. She has strong magical powers, she?s using her strength, her magical power to keep her hair on her body, to make it form an outfit. So when she gets weak or something, she might just lose her magical power, and if that happens?you know what that means. (1up.com: Bayonetta developer interview)

Indeed.

Empowering.

As for 'power implications' not being attractive well... there's an entire market that revolves around that kind of thing. You might have heard about it, if not, someone else can inform you I'm sure.

Nearly everything Bayonetta does is eye candy, her entire voice and the lines she says is filled heavily with innuendo and breathyness.

The only thing empowering about Bayonetta is she's female and can fight.

 

[Shamus Young]

It's interesting that you mention Bayonetta as made for guys, because I've heard from women gamers (including Susan Arendt, an editor at my favorite website) that they love Bayonetta as a strong female character.

Further, if you compare Bayonetta to Japanese eye-candy characters (Dead or Alive, for instance), she has a number of design elements that were intended to make her more feminine (instead of sexy), and her sexiness was suppose to come more from her mysteriousness and intelligence than her body. For instance, she has normal-sized breasts, her hips are rounder, and her limbs are exaggeratedly long--which also makes her incredibly tall and tower over other characters (not something that most guys look for in their fantasy women, since height has implicit power implications).

Note: I haven't played Bayonetta; I'm mostly just regurgitating what I've heard Susan say on a podcast and interviews of Mari Shimazaki, Bayonetta's lead character designer, that I've read.

That's fair. I know some women like her, some don't. I need to be careful to make it clear that I'm not speaking on behalf of women or anything. Susan digs her, KrystelCandy above doesn't. Either way, THIS conversation is so much more interesting to me than the idea of stacking up female sidekicks and sorting them by trope.

 

[DioWallachia]

Indeed.

Empowering.

As for 'power implications' not being attractive well... there's an entire market that revolves around that kind of thing. You might have heard about it, if not, someone else can inform you I'm sure.

Nearly everything Bayonetta does is eye candy, her entire voice and the lines she says is filled heavily with innuendo and breathyness.

The only thing empowering about Bayonetta is she's female and can fight.

Here is a video that may help (not really) to understand Bayonneta. Courtesy of Movie Bob:

 

[jehk]

So what should a proper female lead look like?

See Persona 3 Portable's female main character. Yes, she is a silent protagonist and the player is the one ultimately deciding her personalty. However, there's so much personality to choose from it's hard not to have a multidimensional character come out at the end.

She not just a different model and set of sprites from the male protagonist too.

 

[DioWallachia]

" I hope that if Sarkeesian doesn't, someone else will."

I hope it won't be Sarkesian, she doesn't seem interested in open discussion.

Anyway great article. I think maybe you should've ended it after the first page although maybe it's just because I'm sick of discussion about her popping up all the time.

It's honestly refreshing to stop hearing 'oh we need to get rid of jiggle physics and cleavage from all games or else women will never want to play' (exaggeration I know), and I don't even want those in my games. I'm not on a crusade against them it's just that if I wanted something titillating I'll use internet porn.

Oh and what do you think of fighting games which have cheesecake women fighting alongside women who are badass and alongside women who are both? I've seen Soul Calibur attempt the male cheesecake before (at least I'm 80% sure that's what they were going for).

You may as well ask him what does he think about Skullgirls (who were drawn by other women)

The Anita thing is over, she never brought up anything new to the table and she is just calling sexist to anything she finds (including ICO)

Point is, gamers can detect sexist bullshit just fine. The fact that Metroid Other M bombed harder that the walls of text of that game is proof that we can defend ourselves just fine and arent playing for any power fantasy of making women or servants and shit.

She is not needed.

 

[DioWallachia]

See Persona 3 Portable's female main character. Yes, she is a silent protagonist and the player is the one ultimately deciding her personalty.

Do you expect a protagonist of a RPG to act in another way? they will always start with a pre determined personality and end up shaped by the actions during gameplay (like IJI), so i dont know why the need to clarify that.

 

[Toriver]

Indeed.

Empowering.

As for 'power implications' not being attractive well... there's an entire market that revolves around that kind of thing. You might have heard about it, if not, someone else can inform you I'm sure.

Nearly everything Bayonetta does is eye candy, her entire voice and the lines she says is filled heavily with innuendo and breathyness.

The only thing empowering about Bayonetta is she's female and can fight.

Here is a video that may help (not really) to understand Bayonneta. Courtesy of Movie Bob:

Sorry, I usually agree with Movie Bob, but I totally disagree with him here. While she may be more naturally proportionate than other female characters, even Bob admits she was designed to be primarily a sexual character for the enjoyment of male gamers, just in a different way than other characters, such as Bob's examples of Chun-Li and Cammy, are. Knowing what I do of feminism, there are certainly different strands of feminism that would react to Bayonetta's characterization in different ways. Some, from what I gather, would indeed see it as Bob does, that her intimidating sexual nature can be a source of empowerment. But given the average demographic that most game developers shoot for, and reading the interviews with Bayonetta developers such as those quoted above, I don't believe that's exactly what the developers were going for, and I think the game speaks for itself in that matter: Bayonetta, in her visual character design and her moves, while certainly badass, is meant to be primarily eye candy for male gamers. She was not meant to be an empowering figure for women. I mean, just look at the way she fights in-game. Standing on her head in flexible, suggestive poses to fire the guns on her feet? Transforming her hair, which is also her clothing, into weapons, effectively stripping her clothing off to use her ultimate attacks, also standing in suggestive poses while doing that? Yeah, that's TOTALLY in there to be empowering to female players... (/sarcasm)

As I said before, I do agree with Bob on a lot of things, but we just don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to women in pop culture designed for nerds, such as Sucker Punch and Bayonetta (though we do agree about Other M). A lot of other gamers don't agree with his views on women either. But he has his own view on it, I have mine, and female gamers have theirs, and there will be differences of opinion.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I think the problem is that games are just showing an extension of a problem that exists in every medium (and forgive me, I can't remember who I'm stealing this from, but it wasn't about videogames).

The range of stories written about women as characters is vastly narrower than those written about men as characters. Whilst male protagonists exist in a wide variety of stories, stories about adventure, revenge, romance, fatherhood, coming of age, crime, self-respect, justice, and so on; stories about women are almost always either about romance or motherhood. There are exceptions, but they're few and far between.

This is one of the biggest reasons we have so few female protagonists in gaming, because gaming rarely delves into those two stories that women get to be the protagonist in.

The irony is that all of the things that Anita Sarkeesian complains about, either about games or other media, would be far less noticeable against a background where women as protagonists were in balance with men as protagonists in the variety of story types that were told about them.

 

[Darkness665]

Nice to see you back so soon.

I will usually choose a female character when I have the option. Borderlands was the first time I shifted in that I played the Solder but I was playing co-op with my son and he went for the Hunter. Later I ran the Siren and she was an incredibly powerful character.

I disagree on Bayonetta as she is a very powerful woman. My adult daughter loves her and the warrior from Heavenly Sword as well.

 

[DioWallachia]

Sorry, I usually agree with Movie Bob, but I totally disagree with him here. While she may be more naturally proportionate than other female characters, even Bob admits she was designed to be primarily a sexual character for the enjoyment of male gamers, just in a different way than other characters, such as Bob's examples of Chun-Li and Cammy, are. Knowing what I do of feminism, there are certainly different strands of feminism that would react to Bayonetta's characterization in different ways. Some, from what I gather, would indeed see it as Bob does, that her intimidating sexual nature can be a source of empowerment. But given the average demographic that most game developers shoot for, and reading the interviews with Bayonetta developers such as those quoted above, I don't believe that's exactly what the developers were going for, and I think the game speaks for itself in that matter: Bayonetta, in her visual character design and her moves, while certainly badass, is meant to be primarily eye candy for male gamers. She was not meant to be an empowering figure for women. I mean, just look at the way she fights in-game. Standing on her head in flexible, suggestive poses to fire the guns on her feet? Transforming her hair, which is also her clothing, into weapons, effectively stripping her clothing off to use her ultimate attacks, also standing in suggestive poses while doing that? Yeah, that's TOTALLY in there to be empowering to female players... (/sarcasm)

As I said before, I do agree with Bob on a lot of things, but we just don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to women in pop culture designed for nerds, such as Sucker Punch and Bayonetta (though we do agree about Other M). A lot of other gamers don't agree with his views on women either. But he has his own view on it, I have mine, and female gamers have theirs, and there will be differences of opinion.

That is why i said that it may (NOT) help

Then again, i wonder how much is a developer or artist allowed to speak about this kind of details? i mean, if what Bob says its true, then wont that mean that the developer is flat out INSULTING the audience by making an impossible woman and saying by subtle moments that "the audience" doesnt have a chance? Or to put it in another way, what would you feel when you have to EXPLAIN you magnus opus to the audience? isnt that a failure on the artist ability to deliver a message?

Hell, how Orson Welles would have felt when pressed about the issue that Kane was inspired in part by William Randolph Hearst? the shitstorm was about to hit the fan as soon he said "yes".

In the other hand, now i am perplexed on WHY do you agree with Bob on the Other M thing.

 

[Dastardly]

Tropes vs. Women Protagonists

Women want to play games too, and right now, games are failing them.

Read Full Article

Interestingly, I've thought that many games and stories are vastly improved when the main character isn't the hero. (Harry Potter comes to mind as a quick-an'-dirty example -- he didn't really save a thing, so much as he was the banner around which many other heroic people rallied.)

But I'm not entirely sure that Sarkeesian is missing the point. She's focusing on these tropes because you can really only find female characters that are "second banana." And it may very well be that these tropes (and their predilection toward being foisted upon women) are the reason there aren't many female protagonists -- why would I want a protagonist that is X or Y, as women so typically are, right?

We won't get any writers/developers to buy into female-aimed female protagonists until we deal with how they currently (on the whole) view women characters. Changing what they DO before changing how they THINK is how we got things like Bayonetta and [/i]Lollipop Chainsaw[/i] -- they do something that approximates 'right,' but fails because it lacks the correct reasoning.