Female Characters: Damsel in Distress or Ultimate Warrior

The characters in a video game are one of the most important elements of that game. Designers try to create characters that they know their target audience will not only want to play as, but also ones that they can relate to. The question is then why there aren't there more main female characters, and why are the ones who do exist extremely flawed compared to their male counterparts.

Throughout the history of video games, there has been more main male characters then main female characters. Only 4% of the main characters in the top 25 selling games of 2013 were female. Different studies have shown that since the 1990s, the number of female characters has remained at 15%. The reason this is surprising is because the number of female gamers is almost equal to the number of male gamers. As I stated in my previous blog post, female gamers make up 48% of the industry. The question arises why there aren't more female characters then.

At an E3 conference in 2014, James Therien, who is the technical director for Ubisoft, said that the new Assassin’s Creed game would feature no playable female characters. The reason for this is because he says, it would have “doubled the work”. This seems like a bad excuse because it shouldn't take extra work to change a few features of the male characters to make them female.

There are basically two types of female characters: the damsel in distress and the ultimate warrior. The damsel in distress would be described as a female character that needs another character to save her from someone/something evil. Perfect examples of this would be Princess Peach in the Mario series and Princess Zelda in the The Legend of Zelda series. Their goal is only to be saved. Nowadays, both these characters have gained a following, especially among girls, and are even playable is their own games as powerful characters. An example is the Super Smash Bros series, which includes both these characters as fighters.

                                                                       Princess Peach

                                                                      Princess Zelda

The ultimate warrior on the other hand is a female character who is strong and able to fight her own battles to accomplish a goal. This doesn't sound bad at all; except for the fact the developers of these games generally make these characters hyper-sexualized. Two examples of these would Samus Aran from the Metroid series and Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series.

Samus, as seen in the first photo, is a very strong and powerful character. It is almost hard to tell whether she's male or female when she is wearing her armor. It's not until she takes her suit off that you know she's a woman, as seen in the second photo. 

As you can see by this picture from the original Metroid on the NES, many fans were surprised when they beat the game and found out that Samus was actually a woman. The strange thing that Nintendo decided to do is to put Samus in a bikini for absolutely no purpose. 

As you can see by the picture of Lara Croft, the body of Lara is extraordinary hyper-sexualized because of her immense body size and perjuring breasts. As time has shown, the developers toned down the way they animated her body and tried to make her into a strong, independent woman.

 It should be noted, however, that sometimes it is not always the intention of the game developer to create sexist characters or sexist qualities. It is possible that they could just be trying to create a strong female character, without even take note of how they've designed her body. There are many examples throughout history of powerful female women who have immense sexual features, so it’s possible the developers weren't trying to be sexist, but instead just trying to mimic these women. This is a theory I would like to pursue and find out more about in future blogs. 

Female Representation in the Gaming World

The relationship between female gamers and the gaming industry has always been an unstable one. Compared to many years ago, the number of female gamers and their participation in it has changed substantially. Still, the idea of females having an active role in the gaming industry has not struck a chord with everyone.

The Entertainment Software Association publishes “Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry” yearly, which gives different statistics about the industry and the people involved in it. The one published in 2014 found that 48% of gamers are female, while the other 52% are male. The amazing thing about this is that female gamers 18 and older hold a bigger share in the industry than compared to boys 18 and younger. Throughout the years, the number of female gamers has continued to increase. In only a year the number of female gamers went from 45% to 48%. In 2008, the female gamers only made up 38% of the industry. As you can see, women’s participation in the gaming world has lessened the idea that video games are a man’s world.

Even though the number of female and male gamers is almost equal, female representation is still missing, especially in the workplace. As seen in Leah Burrows article, “Women Remain Outsiders in Video Game Industry”, found in the Boston Globe, only 11% of game designers are women, and only 3% of programmers are women. Just like in many other fields of work even the pay between men and women is different. Women employees seem to be making much less than their male counterparts. On average, male programmers make 10% more than women, male designers make 12% more, and male artists/ animators make 33%.  It seems like the video game workplace is not always a welcoming one to female workers either. As stated by Filamena Young, who is a game designer and co-owner of Machine Age Productions, in the Boston Globe article , the work environment of video game designers is unsafe for women to be involved in. She says that she’s even been groped.

You can imagine the kinds of female characters created by these men’s “boys locker mentalities”, as Leah Burrows describes it. Next blog, I will focus on the kinds of female characters designed and see if those characters are a reflection of the mindset of men creating them.            

Is Sexism Present?

Many people would argue that video games have a positive effect on the player. Some examples include making a player more creative or helping a player make decisions both quickly and strategically. If this is the case, do video games have the ability to have a negative effect on the player? The obvious argument would be related to violence, so I chose to focus on a different issue, sexism. I chose this issue for two reasons. One reason is that one of my favorite things to write about is humanity and what causes an individual to think or act in a certain way. Another reason is that this issue has been gaining popularity in recent times, both within the video game industry and outside of it.

The kind of news that I will provide in this blog are both news articles and studies. I will be using news articles to show how the media tackles this issue and to show any bias that might be present. An example of this is Time Magazine’s article "What is #GamerGate and Why Are Women Being Threatened About Video Games?" I will talk more about this article in future blogs, but this article talks about female writers, critics, and even video game developers and programmers who have been harassed and threatened by gamers for an assortment of reasons. I will use studies to show whether or not video games lead to sexist tendencies or if it depends on certain individuals.

My prediction or hypothesis is that video games do not create sexist thoughts. I think that there will be many cases where sexism in video games is present, but I don’t think that it will result in gamers developing sexist beliefs or thoughts. I’m predicting that there are people who play video games and are sexist, but these people were already sexist and they find certain elements in games to fuel these thoughts.