1: Women. They’re strange,
difficult to understand creatures. They have feelings and thoughts,
but said feelings and thoughts consist almost solely of “shoes”
and “boys” and, occasionally, “sex”. They look pretty, taunt
us with how pretty they are and spray stingy liquid in our eyes when
we get too close. Their only purpose in life: to make sandwiches and
babies. Outside of that, they’re nothing. Toys to be played with.
Helpless creatures with no real thoughts of their own, right?
2: Wrong. Women are strong,
women are powerful, women are, in many ways, superior to their male
counterparts. And, if not superior, then equal in most every way.
We are not weak, we are not emotional time-bombs, and we are
certainly not useless toys that men can play with. Stop that.
This is something that movies and TV
are working hard to fix. In the last decade, tens, dozens, maybe
even near the hundreds of strong female characters have popped up.
Characters who do more than just stand around being eye candy,
getting kidnapped and talking about periods. Characters who, if you
get engrossed enough, can feel like real human beings.
Videogames, however, are still stuck
three decades in the past.
Title Sequence (9 seconds)
2: Pop
quiz! Who is the first female character in a videogame? Time's up.
If you answered Ms. Thunder Thighs here (picture of Chun Li),
(comical buzzing sound) you are wrong. And if you answered Ms. Wakka
Wakka (picture of Ms. Pac Man), (comical buzzing sound) you are also
wrong. No, the first recorded instance of a female protagonist in a
videogame, a playable female protagonist in a videogame, is Ladybug.
1: Ladybug
is a long forgotten 1981 arcade game that managed to pre-date Ms.
Pac Man by a couple of
months but had a lot in common with Ms. Puck Face by being a maze
game. Maze games back then being like FPS' today. Ms.
Pac Man and Lady
Bug were strong female
characters, even if one of them is technically an insect rather than
a recognisable lady, pixels back then not being what they are today.
So, why are they strong?
Well, they both
instigate the plot, they both do their own thing and they both don't
have their entire lives revolve around or be ruined by men. They let
nothing stand in their way, they aren't slaves to their emotions and,
unless you look at some horrible, drudgery corner of the Internet,
they don't get their kit off for no reason. They are both strong
female characters.
2: And,
in fact, it'd probably be very fair to say that they are the only
truly strong female characters in videogames, alongside Chell,
GlaDOS, Alyx Vance and, of course, Commander Shepard. But that still
only means that I can count the number of truly strong female
characters on 1 hand and an extra thumb. In addition, three of those
are from Valve games, two are from games with little to no story and
one is part of a character creation suite where the default option is
a male. That's bad.
So, this begs the
question of, “Why?” Why are women so poorly treated in
videogames and yet you can turn around and see 900 examples of big
burly men who are always in control of the situation and know what
they are doing and are never the victims of a horribly misguided rape
scene? Well, there are three main reasons. Poor story writing in
general, cultural differences and a misaimed target market.
Interview Segment (40 Seconds)
1: Bad
videogame writing usually stems from an over-reliance on stereotypes
and cliches; the things that the industry grew up with, essentially.
Damsels in distress, unflappable white heroes, minorities and
foreigners either being helpers or just plain evil. Some games have
moved past such outdated things, but most haven't and that's
precisely why you can fit most every female character into one of
three generic archetypes.
First, there's The
Girl. There's pretty much nothing more to her personality, she's
just The Girl. She's usually on the team purely to tick a box on the
diversity checklist though sometimes she may get some semblance of a
personality. Don't hold your breath, though, for any groundbreaking
characterisation as it pretty much amounts to...
Model 1: Let's
do the mission, guys.
1: Or...
Model 1: I
totally want to have sexual relations with you, player character.
2: But
the important thing is that the developer tried, right? That's
pretty much the attitude of the developer too. And, since the
character is pretty much just a blank slate, you can also expect them
to be sexualised in some way, shape or form. Either their power
armour has a lack of sleeves, they prefer tight fitting tank tops to
actual armour or they star in a fantasy RPG; but you better believe
that they will be sexualised the hell out of.
Cut-off Point.
There is more to the script, in case we get through all of this script long before the 5 minute mark.
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