It is clear that the video game industry has left its metaphoric infancy state and has enter its metaphoric puberty state, since it can’t stop talking about girls. In the last couple of years one of most prominent topic in the industry has been women. Their roles in the industry, how they’re treated in the workplace and their depiction in games. So trying to keep up with what’s hot and modern I decided to tackle this not-so-controversial-but-some-how-controversial topic! To be clear I will not talk about the role of women in the industry or how they are treated in the workplace, as I feel its not my place to talk about that and there’s better literature on that topic out there in this vast place called the Internet. Also, I don’t want this blog to become my personal soapbox where I try to impose my values and standards on to other people. (We all now that’s the first step on a long road that leads to me jacking off in San Diego) But just to be clear I do support the equality of women in the video game industry and feel that its just a matter of time before this won’t be an issue anymore (Like with any minority). Alright! So with that being said, lets talk about women and how they are depicted in video games.
The impression that I get from the video game and mainstream media is that when it comes to portraying women in video games, game developers are either:
- Immature pigs.Sexist pigs.Misogynistic pigs.Assholes.All of the above.Women.
Now, for the longest time I didn’t really know what to make of this. I mean, I only had to look at TERA online, Soul Calibur, God of War (to name a few) and see where this accusations were coming from. But at the same time, I meet other male game developers and guess what: There not immature-misogynistic-sexist assholes! As a matter of fact, they’re educated professionals. And while there’s the occasional jerk, most of them are pretty much good guys. It didn’t add up! There must be another explanation for this epidemic of boobelicious female characters! Because, while I do believe that there’s female character design done with “sex sells” motto in mind. I don’t believe that all of female character design comes from game developers trying to sell you sex. I also believe that there’s a good number of people that write about this topic with good intentions and do care about this issue. But there’s a bunch of people talking about this issue oversimplifying the problem with the intent of generating attention for their specific outlets by taking a somewhat immoral advantage of people’s tendencies to obsess with topics that they feel affects them one way or another. (Anita Sarkeesian I’m looking at you) There had to be a logical and non-confrontational explanation as to why many female characters are being depicted in a way that seem acceptable by the developers but appalling to a large sector of the female audience. It was while thinking about this I was left with a concept that I wish to share with you. And that is THE ALPHA FEMALE.
Let me explain. The world is so big and full of so many variables that the human brain is not capable of keeping up with it. Just trying to think about it could be overwhelming. So the human brain, being the modern marvel that it is, decided that since its terribly bad at understanding variables but is ridiculously good at when it comes to patterns, it would work with patterns. And that’s how it has been all throughout human history. Culture, religion, science, technology, there just a bunch of patterns. That’s how we learn, how we do things and more importantly how we cope with the world that surround us. Hell! we love patterns so much that we get mad when people break them even if its not on purpose.
Now you might be wondering “What the hell does this pattern jibber jabber have to do with female characters?”. Well, I think a good number video game developers have this pattern of what constitutes as an empowering or “scientifically cool” character. This pattern is called “The Alpha Male”. And what’s happening is that we’re applying this pattern to female characters. When we do this the result is the “Alpha Female” character that, by nature, most men will think is cool and awesome. (The most accurate example of this is the “Amazon” character from the game Dragon’s Crown) The problem with doing this, is that the alpha male pattern is made to fulfill male emotional needs. And guess what? Most male emotional needs are different than most female ones, and therefore women tend to dislike this pattern and use other patterns to satisfy their emotional needs in a more effective way.
I believe this is a reason why people are arguing about the depiction of women in games. Its quite simple. A game developers creates an alpha-female character. The game comes out a man sees that character, unconsciously recognizes the alpha male pattern, he’s familiar with it, there’s even a good chance that’s one of his favorite patterns and therefore likes that character. But when a woman sees the same character, she also unconsciously recognizes the alpha male pattern, she is not comfortable with it, it probably clashes and endangers another pattern that she uses to meet her emotional needs, so naturally she will end up hating that character and attacking it. The man hears the woman attack, feels that something that makes him feel good is under attack and fights back. And we end up having both sides of the argument feeling hurt because unwillingly the other side is attacking something that makes them feel good. (The really amazing thing is that this all happens at an unconscious level!)
Now what fun is it for me to tell you what the “problem” is without giving you a possible solution? Luckily for me this “problem” has a real simple one. It is that, regardless if you are a man or a woman, you should talk to people of both sexes and figure out what they like and what they don’t like. Talk to all kinds of different people, not just people in game development. (You would be amazed how awesome ordinary day to day people really are) Combine that information with what you like and make ideal patterns that you are comfortable with for you male and female characters and roll with them! Like anything worth doing it’s gonna require a lot of work, but the reality is that there’s no way around this since the end result is something that can even be considered art and therefore really personal that cannot be copied. But guess what? That’s whats going to make it so incredibly awesome! So you better get ready to go out there and experience how awesome the human race is.
I want to be clear and say that I do not think this is the solution of the “How to correctly portray women in video games” “problem”. But I do feel that its a good thing to keep in mind while designing a character for a game. Hope that this helps you or at the very least it was an interesting way of killing time. Also feel free to share what you feel would make a positive pattern for both female and male characters.
And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. Now go play some games.
