In regards to the game Amnesia shown at the end of the
lecture today and the idea of the fear and dread being created as the protagonists
hears the girl screaming, I was wondering if they have games where the girl is
the hero who has to save the man? When I was watching the clip I was
nervous for both the protagonist and the unknown women, and when reading Gaming
Made Me – Tomb Raider, it made me realize how women are seen to be too fragile
and that the world is too “dangerous” for them to be by themselves. The author Ellison
draws on these ideas in relation to Lara Croft and I was wondering if this had
anything to do with the masculine idea of males instinct to protect women.
When playing the Cecil games and trying to understand them I
found that the issue of gender is everywhere. In the games Ben There, Dan That
and Frostbite, they have either male protagonists or a masculine robot. Are
there more female protagonists in video games now in the 2000's or are the
heroes still dominantly males? Would a female protagonist make particular games
less appealing to men?
Masculinity and femininity is such a large part of video
games and they seem to parallel issues in society. If you are a female and you
are playing a video game with a male protagonist, does that damage your level of
immersion within the game and vice versa for men?
I don't feel any difference in immersion between playing as a female character versus playing as a male character-- it's the character's personality that'll decide how much I immerse myself in playing as them. For example, in Folklore, I always choose to play as Keats, the male lead, over Ellen, the female lead, because I relate to him more. He's investigative and solitary, where she's spontaneous and adventurous-- I can see more of myself in the way he reacts to the plot, so I enjoy playing him much more than I do her.
ReplyDeleteAlso, with regards to female protagonists, there aren't necessarily MORE games coming out with them, but there are more games with strong female leads who aren't considered 'fragile'. Here're a few examples of these, off the top of my head:
Portal-- Chell, a silent but determined woman trying to escape alone from a murderous female AI.
Final Fantasy XIII-- Lightning, a soldier who is fighting to rescue her younger sister, who has been turned to crystal by a malevolent god.
Bayonetta-- Bayonetta, a witch suffering from amnesia who is trying to regain her memories.
Yea to me it doesn't make much of a difference whether my character is male or female as long as my character looks badass..
ReplyDeleteIn Portal you play as a girl and the game is just as popular among guys if not more popular
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting how its more about the protagonists personality, and probably good for the gaming companies and people who play video games that the level of immersion isn't determined on the gender of the character. Are people often offended by either the portrayal of men or women in particular games? For example are there very strong stereotypes like the ones mentioned in Tomb Raider that are generalizations of the genders
ReplyDeleteI'm not offended by characters so much as I'm offended by the creator's intent. A lot of the time you'll have very interesting women who're ruined by their design, which'll be sexualised to the point that it's sort of embarrassing to say you like their character at all. I can't count the number of times my female friends have said 'but you can't like HER, she's just eye candy!'. Do developers really feel they need to make women sexy or pretty to justify their place in a story? That's what I really find offensive-- the fact they think men and women alike can't appreciate game characters beyond their appearances.
DeleteThere's one game I love-- .hack//G.U-- which has an interesting jab at the concept. .hack is about a game-inside-a-game-- you play a teenager named Ryou as he plays an MMORPG called The World, as a character named Haseo. In The World, Ryou ends up the coworker of a woman named Reiko. Reiko is a very smart, savvy businesswoman who is trying to track down her missing brother... whose credibility, even to the other .hack characters, is ruined by the fact her character in The World wears nothing but leather underwear.
Reiko's character, Pi, was created by a coworker to be aesthetically pleasing to men in the game, and Reiko can only use her administrator privileges if she uses Pi. As a result, she has to grapple with players underestimating and mistreating her because they cannot see beyond her character model-- dismissing her as 'eye candy' and nothing else.
I thought Reiko was a really interesting comment on the gaming industry when I played through, and a really cool representation of the industry's attitude toward female character design. Here's hoping they learn to think past it soon.
Unfortunately female characters, even when supposidly the tough and badass hero like Lara Croft, are often only there to be love interests, or as mentioned eye candy (Lara Croft again) to the presumed male audience.
ReplyDeleteAn incident I can recall from personal experience was when playing multiplayer split screen Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. A guy friend laughed that the owner of the game (also a guy) was using the female model on motorbikes (as if there was something wrong with a guy playing a female character). His reply was "Well I'd rather stare at her ass for 5 laps than a guys"
And this seems to epitomize why we have great leaps and bounds made in female character development.