SFM REGINA DINO CRISIS GORDON FREEMAN CRACK
Men should be able to fail, to fall, to cry, to labor through uncertainty and adversity and crack under the pressure and succeed. It's poisonous thinking for both women, who will then not seek to solve their own problems and instead always believe that they need a man to save them, but it's also toxic for men as well, perhaps even more so. Thankfully, this has been changing for some time, but there is still work to be done in creating better and more interesting characters, both male and female, across the board.Īlso, the argument that seeing women as more pure and needing more protection and therefore somehow equating that to be a "good thing" is, well, a bad thing. It's not a case where it's bad because I can name three specifics, it's bad because there is an overall pattern of making a specific gender weaker, less heroic, less interesting, just less than their counterparts. The problem comes not from a specific characterization, but in the overall lack of variety when it comes to characterization across all games in all genres. As a female, I enjoy playing characters like Bayonetta as much as I like seeing or playing characters like Ellie in The Last of Us, or any of the female ninjas in DoA, and on and on.
I guess my feeling is that no one is saying that all female characters need to be perfect, nonsexual, powerful beings. Frankly, that's a bit absurd when boiled down like that, but that's my reading. The main arguments seems to be that there is a group of people, nebulous as that as, that wants all female characters to adhere to very specific positive traits, and that if they do not, that's going to be considered bad representation. I think the main issue I have with the piece is that it's attacking an idea that I don't think many people have. I think it's an interesting piece, although I can't say that I agree with every conclusion. My opinion hasn't really changed upon seeing the article again. I will just quote what I wrote for it when it was first posted. I don't think it's too crazy to think that women like me would enjoy to have a few powerful female characters, along with the usual softer, less powerful female characters.īTW, this article was already posted in a Worth Reading as a counterpoint to another article, I believe, at the end of last year. What makes anyone think that women actually want a female power fantasy? I'm interested what your thought on this are. But can you think of a female character in games that is actually sadistically evil? Someone who does unexcusable, vile things someone who perpetuates sexual abuse, someone who tortures for sheer pleasure, someone who causes pain not as a means to a selfish end, but as an end itself? Yeah, there are some nasty, treacherous and manipulative female villains in games. The issue of the lack of evil and imperfect women didn't really occur to me that much, but now that I'd given it some thought I think it's definitely true.
SFM REGINA DINO CRISIS GORDON FREEMAN TV
And that literally hundreds of titles where the player character can - and has to! - murder, harm, maim, impale, decapitate and abuse dozens of male characters is not vile enough it takes a woman getting hurt to elevate a title to 'this game is on TV showing us how games are terrible' status (this wasn't the case in the past, with the original Mortal Kombat and the Postal series, but it is relevant today, now that this issue is used to argue against sexism in games). I always thought it was kind of ridiculous that a game like GTA has lately been criticised not strictly because of the violence, but because the violence is enacted against women. It is the weakness, the imperfect roughness of men which allows for more believable and, by extension, better male characters.Īnd this resonates with my own thoughts on this matter perfectly. She makes the case that it's because society is less comfortable with women being hurt and being evil that we see female characters in games who are generally less fleshed out that their male counterparts. I stumbled upon this article on facebook and now I honestly think it's a must read for anyone interested in the discussion about the depiction of women in video games.īasically, the author argues that the criticisms of portrayals of women in games fail to recognize what these portrayals are rooted in.