This essay was submitted for my Rhetorical Analysis class. It was returned with a message that it exceeded expectations and earned an A. I was also invited to take a look at Iowa State University's graduate program in Rhetoric - I was flattered, because I think there's a lot of room for improvement in this paper.
Choosing to revision the roles of women in videogames isn't hard, the very problem is made immediately obvious with a quick glance at store shelves where product languishes in the limbo between publisher and player. Finding the problems with how women are portrayed in games is the low-hanging fruit of feminism. Of course, if no one does so, it's a disservice to women who genuinely enjoy gaming.
Female leading and supporting roles in videogames aren't rare. The problems in game design aren't a lack of inclusion. In fact women abound in games. Even a glance at my own shelf reveals at least ten titles out of twenty-something in which women are the main characters or outnumber the male main characters (where such roles are clearly defined). No, exclusion is not the problem. The biggest issue with female characters is their portrayal.
Female characters suffer from two problems, which I'll tackle in order of offense. The first, the lowest of low hanging fruit is oversexualization. Most women in games are large breasted and scantily clad. Beyond those common traits, a who's who of female leads looks like a fetish catalog. The second issue is related to the first - a respectable female role ends up completely undermined in sequels or alternate content. Finally, I'll discuss some examples of good female roles.
Oversexualization is easy to see. Perhaps the worst offenders here are the games that are unabashed softcore pornography. Tecmo's Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball featured a nearly all female cast of characters from a fighting game that included "boob physics". Despite the apparently minor issue that the breasts portrayed in the game acted like jello-filled water balloons in zero-gravity, the game series has become one of the more well known franchises in gaming. In DoA:BV you can unlock and buy new swimsuits for the characters, the rarest and most prized being The Venus, which is basically three large gemstones and a length of string.
And this is just the most egregious example. Far less obvious but no less detrimental are the characters that, were it not for their bodies, would have made good characters. Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII is one of the strongest characters in the game. She leads the player's group of warriors when the male lead is rendered catatonic by the game's events. She cares for a friend's child and runs her own business, but designer Tetsuya Nomura decided that the best ensemble to fight the doom of the planet in was a white tank top, suspenders, and a miniskirt.
The problem is obvious, the causes, less so. Tomonobu Itagaki, creator of Dead or Alive, claimed that he thought of the characters as his daughters, and that no sexual intent was ever present. However, he must have not relayed that information to the game's marketing department. The game's advertisement in men's magazines claimed that tissues were not included. The cover of the game simply shows three of the bikini-clad ladies. The comment was a fig leaf.
It's no secret that the game development industry is male dominated. In Video Game Careers, Anna Kipnis says "Although you do see slightly more female modelers and animators working in games these days, the ratio very much favors men." (Hodgson, 270) In a mostly male industry, the voices of women often take a backseat to demographic considerations. The primary market for games is young men, and try as one might, it's almost impossible to avoid the adage "sex sells".
Which leads neatly into the next problem female roles are subject to. It's entirely possible for a game to have a strong (or at least neutral) female lead, only for her to be exploited as an object in other content. Jill Valentine is one of the playable characters of Capcom's Resident Evil series. A member of an elite government agency, trained in firearms and covert ops, she dressed the part and acted in a manner consistent with her profile. However, when she returned in Resident Evil 3 (she was absent from RE2), she was dressed in a blue halter top and miniskirt. No explanation was given. Likewise, Monica of Level 5's Dark Cloud 2 is a sword wielding princess, but one who is intelligent, courageous, and dressed in an outfit that completely covers her vital parts.
Unfortunately, as a reward for sinking dozens of hours into the game and completing numerous difficult challenges, the game rewards the player with an alternate costume - the "Sexy Panther Ensemble" - a tiger print bikini complete with cat ears and a tail. But the worst offender in this category is Yuna of Square Enix's Final Fantasy X. In FFX, Yuna is a young woman with the highest position of respect in her village - she performs the task of sending spirits to the next life. She is dressed in a full length skirt and a two layer shirts - there is little overtly sexual about her, she might even be considered slightly stocky compared to typical female body depictions. Yet the sequel, FFX2, was so offensive to women it seems like a joke - the main method of increasing your power and changing your skills was the "Dress Sphere", a system where cutscenes show your character magically changing outfits. All three characters in the game are female, and they all have the option of dressing up as gamblers, wizards, knights, samurai, etc - with the caveat that all of the outfits are extravagantly revealing and completely embarrassing.
The reasoning for this is harder to pin down. It's almost as if game designers take a reactionary stance to positive female role models, crushing them whenever they appear and gain some success. But this seems unlikely - any such attitudes of "keep women in their place" is likely to be subconscious, not a directed effort. But it is also hard to ignore that all of the games I've listed so far are titles that originated and were developed in Japan. Cultural values in Japan are not the same as they are in the United States. At the risk of painting with a very broad brush, women in Japan are raised in more subservient roles. Culturally, it is considered unattractive for a Japanese woman to make a scene. This can even be seen in the epidemic of "chikan", where groping on public trains occurs because women are unlikely to complain. But this fact isn't an excuse, nor does it explain the sexual tones of western developed games like Grand Theft Auto or Duke Nukem.
No culture has a monopoly on the objectification of women, and videogames are hardly pioneers in the field. But it seems more prevalent in videogames because of the nature of the medium. The film genre, for example, has long treated women as eye candy. One need look no further than the James Bond movies (and these are based on an even more ancestral genre, Ian Fleming's books). But film has the advantage of only needing to tell a story. Games (with astronomically rare exception) have action as their focal point. Whereas a film like "The Hours" might deal with women's issues in a eye-opening way, story is peripheral in games; at some point, the lead female role will have to knock someone out or blow something up. When a game lacks elements of combat or social conflict, it fails to take advantage of the affordances of the medium, and you might as well make a movie at that point. The point I'm making is that females in gaming are necessarily more akin to the heroes of pulp genre fiction than women roles in literature.
It seems the only way forward is to look carefully at a game's content before purchasing, and trying to avoid games that are exploitive of women. But the problem lies in that it's difficult to know all of a game's content without experiencing it. Games today essentially have an adherence contract - opened media is rarely returnable at most retail outlets, meaning that by the time you discover lewd content, you're already stuck with the game, and the publisher has your money. A slightly better alternative is to do research online before making purchase, but this too is flawed. There is no consensus on what disqualifies a character from being a good female role. Do high heels in an otherwise modest outfit preclude a good character? Discourse on the internet breaks down quickly wherever gender is concerned.
As promised, there are some shining gems in the art form. Jade from Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil is an investigative reporter who uncovers a government conspiracy and must use her camera more than her martial arts to record proof and get it to the public. But she also cares for a small cadre of orphaned alien children. Her determination, nurturing instincts, and physical self reliance make her an example of a character that defines her role, rather than being defined by it. She is also far from the typical gaming bombshell - she's modeled to appear asian or latino, her hair is chopped short, and her attire is a shirt, casual jacket, jeans, and sneakers. She fulfills the role of an action heroine without being a gender-neutral automaton (such as the seminal example of a "good" heroine, Metroid's Samus Aran). She also fulfills a typical female role of mother, though she isn't bound by stereotypical maternal conventions.
Another excellent female role is Jaheira, of Bioware's Baldur's Gate. With most of the action taking place at a distance and with most interaction conveyed by onscreen text, Jaheira's onscreen avatar amounts to a very small piece of screen real estate. This has the fortunate effect of freeing designers from the perceived necessity to make her "sexy". Also, since more interaction is conveyed in text, Bioware's writers were given some leeway with the medium requirements I mentioned earlier of having to hurt someone or explode something (though the game does feature plenty of that) to keep the game moving. Jaheira is painted as a woman in tune with nature, but blunt and demanding, though she also exhibits a wealth of wisdom, common sense, and respect for those that earn it.
So while gaming has a long way to go, a few rare examples have proven that it's possible for a game to be well received without treating the women in it as bimbos. Unfortunately, it seems that most developers are still of the mindset that giving a pair of breasts a handgun and calling her "independent" is a positive way to show respect for women. Game developers routine claim that they want more women to be involved in gaming, but if they really want it to be true, they're going to need a better flagship than Lara Croft.
Works Cited / Referenced
Baldur's Gate. Bioware. 1998
Beyond Good and Evil. Ubisoft. 2003
Dark Cloud 2. Level 5. 2003
Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball. Tecmo. 2003
Final Fantasy VII. Squaresoft. 1997
Final Fantasy X. Squaresoft. 2001
Final Fantasy X-2. Square Enix. 2003
Hodgson, Rush, Stratton. Video Game Careers. Prima Publishing, 2008
Metroid series. Nintendo, Retro Studios. 1986 - 2007
Resident Evil. Capcom. 1996
Resident Evil 3. Capcom. 1999