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Tropes versus Women in Video Games

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Devolution said:
There are problems with how both genders are portrayed in games.

There are more problems with how women are portrayed.

Why are these two statements still being debated as if they're mutually exclusive?
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Because people see that this thread is aimed at the female portrayal and want to talk about male portrail because they must think "what about meeeeeeeeeee" =P

Also, Welcome back =3

Goya said:
This all stems from the fact that certain games are played primarily by adult males, so the people who make these games, who are also males more often than not, lack a strong incentive, and perhaps even the necessary perspective, to create realistic, female protagonists.
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[citation needed]

And that is 1 year old.

Devolution said:
Oversimplifying a bit. I wouldn't say inclusion of women (while it might help) is necessarily a salve. A woman wrote Twilight. There isn't too much perspective necessary. Men have written women with depth. It's about not underestimating demographics/intelligence and writing women as people.
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I love this quote

George Stroumboulopoulos: There's one thing that's interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different. Where does that come from?

George R.R. Martin: You know, I've always considered women to be people.
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Reason 387 why Game of Thrones is loved by everyone ?

RedSwirl said:
Have you SEEN Chris Redfield fan art since RE5 came out?

The purpose of my post though was to try to steer the male portrayal discussion away from power fantasies and try to find examples of sexual fantasies that could've been aimed at women. It is... difficult in the environment of GAF.
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Chris Redfield letter costume comes from Metal bands in the 80's like Judas Priest and TRUST ME, Rob Halford was NOT trying to please the ladies =P

And people will grab what they have ... wich is like the Poison example to the trans community that I said earlier.

edit --------

Fimbulvetr said:
Have you played Catherine? If so, what did you think about how they handled
Erica
?
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She was very good ... of course
the jokes that the main char makes about her not being a "real woman" or something along those lines and the fact that she has the dreams, wich is implyed to be a male only (related to the Y cromossome ? Not sure if that was what the creators were going for...) thing could be better...

My favorite is still Vivian from Paper Mario !
They got the insecurity and bullying thing wich was a nice touch ... and the fact that she is one of the (if not THE) best partners in the entire paper series isn't a problem either xD
 
The Anti-Monitor said:
It's been 17 pages of people saying the same.

See why people, for the most part, aren't complaining about Bayonetta, or Lollipop Chainsaw, or the prostitutes in GTA, but about Samus in Other M or Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider.

Nobody wants to ban anything here. I honestly just wish that the male protagonist stereotype (the 30 somethings short haired guy) had a somewhat common female equivalent.
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17 in inferior format maybe. It's only on superior page 9! 9 is less than 17 so that makes it less depressing.

About the new tomb raider, though, I honestly haven't been interested enough in an uncharted clone (LOL IRONY) to familiarize myself with the game. All I really know are the producer's (it was a producer yes?) hilariously cave-man style statements about player interaction with Lara. Is that attitude really reflected in the presentation of the character and the gameplay? because that is just.... wow.


Edit: Is "devolution's back" a new meme or something? I keep seeing it everywhere /sarcasm.
 
Htown said:
The problem is not that "eye candy women" exist in video games. It's that women NOT meant exclusively as eye candy are nearly nonexistent.
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uuuurrr i dissagree

I dont play every game that comes out but there are plenty of "not-exclusively eye candy" female characters in games.

whether they're good/memorable/well-developed female characters is another story(of video games storytelling and character development) , but there are plenty of women in video games who play parts more than being eye candy.
 
~Devil Trigger~ said:
uuuurrr i dissagree

I dont play every game that comes out but there are plenty of "not-exclusively eye candy" female characters in games.

whether they're good/memorable/well-developed female characters is another story(of video games storytelling and character development) , but there are plenty of women in video games who play parts more than being eye candy.
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~Devil Trigger~ said:
uuuurrr i dissagree

I dont play every game that comes out but there are plenty of "not-exclusively eye candy" female characters in games.

whether they're good/memorable/well-developed female characters is another story(of video games storytelling and character development) , but there are plenty of women in video games who play parts more than being eye candy.
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Well for one, rarely do we get to play as them, and two, I agree and disagree. Perhaps it's not that there aren't many "not-exclusively eye candy" female characters, rather that even when they are meant for other purposes, it is either badly written (Other M) or their looks have clerly taken precedence over creating an actual character.
 
Man, I remember starting up Heavy Rain and I was all like "sweet... reporter woman with a kick-ass leather jacket who's going to find out everything and stuff...." Instead she turned out to be Madison Paige :l at least her jacket was still awesome I guess.
 
Tomat said:
Why not make a worthwhile post instead of posting stupid macros? This thread seems to call for it.
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Since you apparently ignored worth 17 pages, I've written tons of detailed replies in this thread thank you very much. It's getting tiring reading the same kind of comments where the same kind of replies have to be written over and over.
 
squidyj said:
Man, I remember starting up Heavy Rain and I was all like "sweet... reporter woman with a kick-ass leather jacket who's going to find out everything and stuff...." Instead she turned out to be Madison Paige :l at least her jacket was still awesome I guess.
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The only thing I really know about Heavy Rain is that Madison was forced to strip at gunpoint. Oh, and some people don't like the game.
 
JokerOfSpades said:
The only thing I really know about Heavy Rain is that Madison was forced to strip at gunpoint. Oh, and some people don't like the game.
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She was a stupid waste of a character who served mostly to get into ridiculous situations like where she had to strip or where she was drugged. Other than that she was really just the dad's helper-maiden/fuckbunny.


Edit: But like I said, she had a VERY cool leather jacket.
 
squidyj said:
She was a stupid waste of a character who served mostly to get into ridiculous situations like where she had to strip or where she was drugged. Other than that she was really just the dad's helper-maiden/fuckbunny.
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Yeah that was quite the disappointment since I otherwise liked Heavy Rain.
 
JokerOfSpades said:
The only thing I really know about Heavy Rain is that Madison was forced to strip at gunpoint. Oh, and some people don't like the game.
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And dress attractive in a club and strip again there. And have a naked shower scene. And having sex with another character

That's a lot of crap that really left a bad taste. Despite that, I really liked the game where it had strong points.
 
RpgN said:
Since you apparently ignored worth 17 pages, I've written tons of detailed replies in this thread thank you very much. It's getting tiring reading the same kind of comments where the same kind of replies have to be written over and over.
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Sorry for not reading the previous 850 posts. Regardless, telling someone to read the thread is a better tactic than posting condescending image macros.
 
RpgN said:
And dress attractive in a club and strip again there. And have a naked shower scene. And having sex with another character

That's a lot of crap that really left a bad taste. Despite that, I really liked the game where it had strong points.
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I guess I'll spoiler it

The club scene is what led to being forced to strip down just as a matter of continuity. Also you forgot that after her shower the entire sequence was in her underwear.

I like the part where the flimsy pretense of her being a journalist of some sort falls away and the only reason she's involved in anything is because she was lovestruck by Ethan's scruffy demeanor... or something. Also they completely dropped her PTSD plot which was the motivation behind her being in the motel in the first place and would have been important to her character if she'd had one.
 
Platy said:
She was very good ... of course
the jokes that the main char makes about her not being a "real woman" or something along those lines and the fact that she has the dreams, wich is implyed to be a male only (related to the Y cromossome ? Not sure if that was what the creators were going for...) thing could be better...
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To be fair
Vincent (and the rest of his friends who knew Erica when she was still Eric) all casually call her she, implying that, even if they are occasionally a bit awkward about the subject, they still support her decision. Also, Vincent is supposed to be the occasional douchebag, so it's not like the game is backing him when he makes his little comments.
As for the other thing,
the nightmares are controlled by an ancient being with outdated values. I mean serious, wanting humanity to reproduce as efficiently as possible when we're already reaching overpopulation levels?
 
squidyj said:
She was a stupid waste of a character who served mostly to get into ridiculous situations like where she had to strip or where she was drugged. Other than that she was really just the dad's helper-maiden/fuckbunny.


Edit: But like I said, she had a VERY cool leather jacket.
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RpgN said:
And dress attractive in a club and strip again there. And have a naked shower scene. And having sex with another character

That's a lot of crap that really left a bad taste. Despite that, I really liked the game where it had strong points.
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Sucks. Perhaps Beyond will do a better job of that "playable book" with a... toned down main character.

EDIT: And better written overall, really.
 
Tomat said:
Sorry for not reading the previous 850 posts. Regardless, telling someone to read the thread is a better tactic than posting condescending image macros.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I should have done that instead.

I guess I'll spoiler it

The club scene is what led to being forced to strip down just as a matter of continuity. Also you forgot that after her shower the entire sequence was in her underwear.

I like the part where the flimsy pretense of her being a journalist of some sort falls away and the only reason she's involved in anything is because she was lovestruck by Ethan's scruffy demeanor... or something. Also they completely dropped her PTSD plot which was the motivation behind her being in the motel in the first place and would have been important to her character if she'd had one.
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That's right...my memory is a bit hazy, thanks refreshing things up.

At least the father-son relation was portayed pretty well. And I like how they handled the villain along with his backstory.

It's a shame QD can't seem to get this part right.

JokerOfSpades said:
Sucks. Perhaps Beyond will do a better job of that "playable book" with a... toned down main character.
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QD are pretty bad with females. They've handled that female cop even worse in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy where they suddenly have sex out of nowhere near the end of the game. It felt so odd and out of place. Heavy Rain had more revealing scenes, but the game before it didn't make a lot sense.

In that sense, Heavy Rain is an improvement. I hope they get it right with Beyond even though it seems like a wishful thinking based on their track record. Maybe they will get it right since a female is the lead character this time? *not sure*
 
RpgN said:
And dress attractive in a club and strip again there. And have a naked shower scene. And having sex with another character

That's a lot of crap that really left a bad taste. Despite that, I really liked the game where it had strong points.
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Don't forget how, in the grand scheme of things, she was a mostly superfluous character.
 
Fimbulvetr said:
Don't forget how, in the grand scheme of things, she was a mostly superfluous character.
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Sorry, I was getting distracted by the situations she was put in before noticing this :P

In the end, that's what she turned out to be. When they first revealed the game, it seemed as if they had bigger plans for her.

She doesn't look like eye-candy at least :x
 
RpgN said:
Sorry, I was getting distracted by the situations she was put in before noticing this :P

In the end, that's what she turned out to be. When they first revealed the game, it seemed as if they had bigger plans for her.

She doesn't look like eye-candy at least :x
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well.... not so much when she's wearing regular clothes anyways.....
 
I think it is perhaps worth mentioning that many of the aspects of the portrayals of men that have been complained about are simply the flip side of the same coin. If you define masculinity and maleness in a particular and narrowly construed way, it shouldn't be surprising that you have men in video games who appear targeted towards this notion of masculinity - relatively inexpressive and stoic, over-muscled to the point of being almost unrealistic, apparently unintellectual, etc. These are stereotypically masculine traits. And while men being portrayed with stereotypically masculine is never going to be as bad as women being portrayed with stereotypically feminine traits, because masculine traits are generally more valued than feminine traits, I think that having more nuanced portrayals - including portrayals of men as we currently have them - is a perfectly admirable thing worth asking for and talking about. I personally better identify with a more nuanced portrayal myself, neither fitting into nor aspiring to portrayals of men that seem straight out of the cultural id's conception of masculinity. But I don't think it is the right conversation for this topic.

And for what it is worth, I would not call the mere fact that a male character is intentionally made to be attractive evidence of sexualization. Even when the character is explicitly being designed to be attractive to a gay man, that alone does not mean that the character was sexualized. A character designed to be sexualized and a character designed to be sexy do not describe the same thing. And I think it is relatively rare to see a male character that is sexualized in the way that the APA was describing.
 
~Devil Trigger~ said:
uuuurrr i dissagree

I dont play every game that comes out but there are plenty of "not-exclusively eye candy" female characters in games.

whether they're good/memorable/well-developed female characters is another story(of video games storytelling and character development) , but there are plenty of women in video games who play parts more than being eye candy.
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There are a few. I can name four or five. Maybe ten. Relative to the number of female characters actually out there, I certainly wouldn't call that "plenty".
 
Games with a admirable portrayal of female characters IMO. Some old, some new. Just the ones that come to my mind.


Beyond
Dreamcast D2
Metal Gear Solid(Olga,. Meryl, Boss, etc)
Breakdown
Gears of War series
Silent Hill 3
Tomb Raider
Splinter Cell
The Legend of Zelda
Prince of Persia
Folklore
Dragon Age
Resident Evil
StarCraft
Red Dead Redemption
Mass Effect series
Yakuza 4
Final Fantasy 13
Catherine
Halo
Last Remnant
Left 4 Dead
left 4 Dead 2
Lost Odyssey
Skyrim
Metroid
Mirrors Edge
Borderlands
Beyond Good and Evil
Portal
Ninja Gaiden 3
Tales of Vesperia
Dragon Age
Wet
Still Life,
Red Faction,
Binary Domain
Bullet Storm
Hard Corps Uprising
Dead Space
Hydrophobia
Deadly Premonition
Mirror's Edge
WarHammer 40,000
Last of Us
Heavenly Sword
Uncharted
Enslaved
Half Life 2
American McGee's Alice
NOLF Cate Archer
Perfect Dark's Joanna Dark
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Syberia
Tribes' Victoria
Eternal Darkness
Indigo Prophecy
Primal PSOne




These are some of the characters I thought could be eye candy for female gamers. The point of this list is because I feel that these are some men that don't fit into the dudebro, power male fantasy image.

Jin Kazama
Nathan Drake
Akira Yuki
Lion from VF
Brad Burns
Steve Fox
Rafale from SC
Chris Redfield
Alistar(Dragon Age)
Leon Kennedy
Mass Effect male charcacters(Shepard was based on an actual model, right?)
Squall
Vaan
Most pretty boy male characters in JRPG's and there seems to be a lot of them
Ezio from Assassins Creed
Altair from Assassins Creed
Sephiroth
Solid Snake
Ryu Hayabusa
Raiden
Liquid Snake
Dante
Balthier
Henry Townshend
Nero from DMC4
Jacky Bryant
2 male protagonists from Resonance of Fate
Kilik Soul Calibur
Zwei from Soul Calibur
Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur
Most Soul Calibur characters in general.
Dark Sector main character




This is just my opinion. Carry on.
 
mrklaw said:
Isn't that just a function of most main characters being male?
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Well, that's one reason, but it also has to do with what sort of stories and relationships are seen as appropriate for each gender. Women are very, very rarely given revenge stories, for example, so you almost never see a story where a female character's love interest is killed to motivate her to hunt down the killer.
 
Pretty weird to see so many focus on the sexism or misogyny in this whole ordeal, when there is shit being lobbed at this girl that I haven't seen in perhaps my entire life. Like, pretending to analyze her facial features, claim to know that she is of Jewish heritage, and then... yup. Shit I've never seen outside of fiction. Unbelievable.
 
Duffyside said:
Pretty weird to see so many focus on the sexism or misogyny in this whole ordeal, when there is shit being lobbed at this girl that I haven't seen in perhaps my entire life. Like, pretending to analyze her facial features, claim to know that she is of Jewish heritage, and then... yup. Shit I've never seen outside of fiction. Unbelievable.
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It's the internet. Shit is the norm. It's seen so much worse thrown at just about every gender or race. We're paying attention to it because it involved a woman and video games.

215499488_8pSZr-L-2.jpg
 
Kinda random but only if the Perfect Dark series was still relevant in this generation full of shooters. It certainly could have been a positive image for more ideas like that.

Htown said:
There are a few. I can name four or five. Maybe ten. Relative to the number of female characters actually out there, I certainly wouldn't call that "plenty".
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The way I feel about is that unless there are really more standout female characters taking prominent roles in noteworthy games there won't be a change in how women are written in video games. You're not going to change the mind frame of developers and publishers without having solid proof that it could work. And so far there hasn't been a lot of standout examples this generation, imo.

charlequin said:
Well, that's one reason, but it also has to do with what sort of stories and relationships are seen as appropriate for each gender. Women are very, very rarely given revenge stories, for example, so you almost never see a story where a female character's love interest is killed to motivate her to hunt down the killer.
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True. Again, I think the risk of failure is stopping developers from really exploring these interesting story ideas. It's a shame.
 
GamerSoul said:
The way I feel about is that unless there are really more standout female characters taking prominent roles in noteworthy games there won't be a change in how women are written in video games. You're not going to change the mind frame of developers and publishers without having solid proof that it could work. And so far there hasn't been a lot of standout examples this generation, imo.
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The only way a change is made is if people speak up, continue to speak up, the press gets behind the story and people stop buying games without them. THEN you have have to buy the game with these strong females in it.

Which is the heart of the "problem." Do gamers, both male and female gamers truely give a shit enough to buy that game in droves? If they do, all we, the press, and everyone is doing is blowing smoke up our asses.
 
Kintaro said:
The only way a change is made is if people speak up, continue to speak up, the press gets behind the story and people stop buying games without them. THEN you have have to buy the game with these strong females in it.

Which is the heart of the "problem." Do gamers, both male and female gamers truely give a shit enough to buy that game in droves? If they do, all we, the press, and everyone is doing is blowing smoke up our asses.
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Having a well written female lead is only part of it, the game itself has to be great and worth the purchase. I wouldn't expect people to purchase a game just because of the lead character no matter how much the're are pushing that fact. If more developer's can continue to create those female characters without the stereotypes in their games then it would be easier to progress them into better written roles and such. That's the great thing about games, you can implement the little touches and innovative ideas without the player really realizing it.
 
I agree with what GamerSoul just said.

The big problem is that a lot of negative stereotypes wouldn't affect sales negatively or positively in light of good gameplay/marketing.

It's more a lack of awareness that seems to back a lot of the worse/unnecessary choices.




/edit nevermind the added question, it was right on the page. x_X


I'm glad there's gonna be a video of good examples as well. That's the sort of stuff that's most interesting after seeing an entire list of bad tropes.
 
Alice: Madness Returns is probably the best example I can think of, of a game written by a man that goes against pretty much all the negative, cliched, stereotypes. Alice's character design is attractive but in no way sexualised. she is not defined by her relationships with men. we explore her personality (and solve her problems) by delving into her subconciousness (which SHOCK! isn't remotely drawn with such cliched brushstrokes as repressed sexuality), and HUGE SPOILER
the entire game is her resisting being sexualised by her psychiatrist who wants to turn her into a child prostitute.

it's also a great game.

as i've said before, a wider variety of main characters can only be a good thing, giving us more choice and variety in the kinds of stories we can play through.
 
plagiarize said:
Alice: Madness Returns is probably the best example I can think of, of a game written by a man that goes against pretty much all the negative, cliched, stereotypes. Alice's character design is attractive but in no way sexualised. she is not defined by her relationships with men. we explore her personality (and solve her problems) by delving into her subconciousness (which SHOCK! isn't remotely drawn with such cliched brushstrokes as repressed sexuality), and HUGE SPOILER
the entire game is her resisting being sexualised by her psychiatrist who wants to turn her into a child prostitute.

it's also a great game.

as i've said before, a wider variety of main characters can only be a good thing, giving us more choice and variety in the kinds of stories we can play through.
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That game has one of the best and most disturbing twists I've seen in games in a long while. Best part, she never brings up anything about her sexuality or boys, even though she's now a teenager.
 
Rhazer Fusion said:
Games with a admirable portrayal of female characters IMO. Some old, some new. Just the ones that come to my mind.


Beyond
Dreamcast D2
Metal Gear Solid(Olga,. Meryl, Boss, etc)
Breakdown
Gears of War series
Silent Hill 3
Tomb Raider
Splinter Cell
The Legend of Zelda
Prince of Persia
Dragon Age
Resident Evil
StarCraft
Red Dead Redemption
Mass Effect series
Yakuza 4
Final Fantasy 13
Catherine
Halo
Last Remnant
Left 4 Dead
left 4 Dead 2
Lost Odyssey
Skyrim
Metroid
Mirrors Edge
Borderlands
Beyond Good and Evil
Portal
Ninja Gaiden 3
Tales of Vesperia,
Dragon Age,
Still Life,
Red Faction,
Binary Domain
Bullet Storm
Hard Corps Uprising
Dead Space
Hydrophobia
Deadly Premonition
Mirror's Edge
WarHammer 40,000
Last of Us
Heavenly Sword
Uncharted
Enslaved
Half Life 2
American McGee's Alice
NOLF Cate Archer
Perfect Dark's Joanna Dark
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Syberia
Tribes' Victoria
Eternal Darkness
Indigo Prophecy
Primal PSOne




These are some of the characters I thought could be eye candy for female gamers. The point of this list is because I feel that these are some men that don't fit into the dudebro, power male fantasy image.

Jin Kazama
Nathan Drake
Akira Yuki
Lion from VF
Brad Burns
Steve Fox
Rafale from SC
Chris Redfield
Alistar(Dragon Age)
Leon Kennedy
Mass Effect male charcacters(Shepard was based on an actual model, right?)
Squall
Vaan
Most pretty boy male characters in JRPG's and there seems to be a lot of them
Ezio from Assassins Creed
Altair from Assassins Creed
Sephiroth
Solid Snake
Ryu Hayabusa
Raiden
Liquid Snake
Dante
Balthier
Henry Townshend
Nero from DMC4
Jacky Bryant
2 male protagonists from Resonance of Fate
Kilik Soul Calibur
Zwei from Soul Calibur
Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur
Most Soul Calibur characters in general.
Dark Sector main character




This is just my opinion. Carry on.
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*puts fingers in ears*

Lies, all of them!
 
Neoriceisgood said:
Just curious, I've been wondering this for a while:

Do you guys know any female-specific tropes that are actually quite positive/good ?
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well, tropes aren't good or bad, if we take the proper definition of them. a trope can certainly be overused... but having a character with daddy issues or maternal instincts or what have you isn't necessarily a bad thing. maternal instincts can be handled well, and be positive things.

compare say, how Ripley taking care of Newt in Aliens comes across compared to how Ripley taking care of Newt in the extended cut of Aliens comes across.

really though, we shouldn't be getting hung up on the idea that women are this alien different species, and that's the trap that most male writers fall into. the 'male as default, female as other' trap. i can think of so many strories and games where the main character is a man and could just as easily be a woman without impacting the story at all... but since they were written by men, the men put men as the main character... and only used women when they felt there was a need to. as an object as desire. as something to rescue. what have you.

people that don't understand women use these awful cliches to patch over the cracks of their understanding... but for the most part men and women aren't that different, and most men exagerate the differences when writing women.

the maternal shit in Other M was bad because it was done horribly, not because maternal woman is an inherantly negative trope.
 
~Devil Trigger~ said:
uuuurrr i dissagree

I dont play every game that comes out but there are plenty of "not-exclusively eye candy" female characters in games.

whether they're good/memorable/well-developed female characters is another story(of video games storytelling and character development) , but there are plenty of women in video games who play parts more than being eye candy.
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This a thousand times.

If you ignore well written/nonsexual or well written/sexual but not only sexual female characters this generation it's your own fault.

Just off the top of my head from things I've personally played or seen my girlfriend play in the last 6 months or so.

Ezio's sister doesn't get enough screen time but is a bad ass. Nothing sexual about her that I can remember.

In the same game the Pantasilea Baglioni is pretty awesome as well in the handful of scenes where she tells you to keep an eye on her crazy (in a good way) husband.

In Red Dead

Marston's wife is awesome, she used to be a prostitute but she is never in skimpy outfits or performing her old job in the game. She is just a tough s.o.b.

Louisa the fighter from Mexico, not sexual at all from what I recall.

Bonnie McFarland is one of my favorite side characters of any sort and is not sexualized at all. There is a clearly a "thing" between her and Marston that isn't possible due to his wife/honor and the super subtle word choices/body language in these interactions are fucking amazing. It's hard in tv/movies for this sort of flirtation to avoid the easy/cheap sexual tension but for it to be pulled off so well in a game was frankly shocking to me.

GTA4

The super violent female drug dealer.
Kate
Roman's girlfriend/wife.

Don't think I saw any of them sexualized except for the creepy taxi guy hitting on Roman's girlfriend in one or two cutscenes.

Mass Effect (series)

Depending on choices made there are some great female characters that admittedly are dressed skimpy to a silly extent but are only sexualized content wise if you intentionally go down that path.

My shepherd never got with Liara or even came close but their friendship was genuine and outside of poor wardrobe choice I never saw her as sexual.

Aria T'loak. Again an asari so bioware sexed them up visually but story wise she is simply a bad ass gangster/warlord type.

Dragon Age 2

Aveline the warrior woman who is a party member.
Hawke's sister.

Neither are amazing characters but I don't remember anything sexual about them.

Gears (series)

Anya/Sam.

Halo (series)

Cortana (to be fair she isn't a physical woman)






I know I'm missing a ton but these are some of the biggest franchises/best selling/best reviewed games of recent years and just off the top of my head. To act like non sexual important female characters don't exist/are crazy rare is simply unfair.
 
Rhazer Fusion said:
Games with a admirable portrayal of female characters IMO. Some old, some new. Just the ones that come to my mind.

This is just my opinion. Carry on.
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Add to this Psychonauts, Max Payne, Mario RPGs, Red Dead Redemption, Sly Cooper, Monkey Island games, etc.

The last two generations especially have seen enormous strides in presentation of female characters, and I think that's a direct result of the rising importance of writing in games in general. Just looking at my shelf of PS3 games, every single one has at least one positive female character OR no humans at all (except God of War Collection, but that's kind of the point of that series... not that that makes it ok). In fact I'd say that nearly every game that has come out that could be considered anywhere close to well-written also has well-written females. I don't think it's an issue at all that Peach and Chun Li aren't strong, multi-faceted characters since Mario and Ryu aren't either, that's not the point of those games.

The main issue here is that a lot of those positive and/or well-developed female characters are secondary characters still. The reason for that, as has been said a trillion times in this thread probably, is that mostly men play video games, and females don't play games as much because there are fewer relatable females to play as, and that's because females don't play games as much. It's a never ending cycle. The obvious solution is to make good games with female leads, and that's been done, but the games are never big enough to make it a trend. I think that's mostly just because games like CoD and Mario where the characters don't matter at all are what really sells; even Red Dead sold mostly because you could be a badass cowboy and not because it had a tragic lead character.

tl;dr There are tons of well-written/ non-sexualized female characters in video games, but they're never the lead and if they are the games aren't Calladoody huge so they don't count.
 
From reading this thread it seems a lot of people are ignoring that the youtuber didn't just say "women characters are too sexed-up." Her series have been and will be about tropes in regards to women in media, and that doesn't just cover sexual exploitation. Women-as-a-sidekick, the-damsel-in-distress, and women-as-background-characters are all types of tropes that don't need to involve boobs spilling out of a top to be lazy, or boring, or whatever.
 
041311_historyofMK_obs07--article_image.jpg


The original Sonya Blade was a great character. Former army, joined the tournament to avenge her friend killed by Kano. She could kick-ass, break necks and was not exploited for the babe factor. Even if they replaced the actress for MK3 for a playboy girl, she was still very respectable and not over the top

The newer 3D mk kinda went over the top cheesy; but her original look was awesome. She was based on Cynthia Rothrock too originally
 
Zoe said:
It's not, you have to click.
Click to expand...

It most definitely is for me.
I think it is since i put this dark skin (much easier on the eyes) or maybe i messed with some other Greesemonkey script, i don't know. :\
Anyway, didn't want to derail the thread.
 
plagiarize said:
well, tropes aren't good or bad, if we take the proper definition of them. a trope can certainly be overused... but having a character with daddy issues or maternal instincts or what have you isn't necessarily a bad thing. maternal instincts can be handled well, and be positive things.
Click to expand...

Oh I know that. I'm just curious if there's any gendered tropes that are actively seen as positive (or mostly positive).
 
UrbanRats said:
It most definitely is for me.
I think it is since i put this dark skin (much easier on the eyes) or maybe i messed with some other Greesemonkey script, i don't know. :\
Anyway, didn't want to derail the thread.
Click to expand...
I just tried it and yes clicking shows the spoiler. I usually highlight it.
 
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