
Lara Croft Has Company: More Female Heroes Appear in Big-Budget Games - lmcnish14
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/arts/lara-croft-has-company-more-female-heroes-appear-in-big-budget-games.html
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cableshaft
Surprised they don't mention _Life is Strange_ or _Heavy Rain_ in their
examples of female protagonists. They pushed that angle quite a bit when they
were released. I also liked _Remember Me_ from Capcom quite a bit, even though
it wasn't a commercial success.

Personally I usually prefer playing female characters, even though I'm a guy.
Currently rockin' a female character in _Sunset Overdrive_ right now. I was
always a fan of the novelty (to me) and the different approach female
characters often had to the gameplay (like lightning-fast kicks with Chun Li
in _Street Fighter II_ , for example).

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CM30
I find these sorts of articles misleading, since there were quite a few old
school games with female main characters that rather conveniently get
forgotten about when making arguments like this.

Like Dixie Kong and Tiny Kong from the Donkey Kong Country series. It's funny
how many people ignore franchices like that for their political screeds
because the casts aren't human.

Heck, you could say Super Mario Bros 2 had a 'female hero', because it was the
first game to have Peach go from being a damsel in distress to playable
character.

Or the numerous games where you choose the gender (and general appearance) of
the main character. It's pretty common in Western made RPGS, and it's getting
about as common in Eastern ones (Pokemon has this since gen 2). How about
games where there's a party of people and some/most of them are female?

I find this attitude that female characters are somehow a 'new' thing for
gaming being rather unfair, and find the attempts of trying to then mix in
crap like 'gaming's war on women' as even worse.

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seivan
Not sure why you're down votes. But I know what kind of people are doing it
though.

You're right. Female protagonists isn't a new thing. This is overblown. No one
would give two shits if it was Gabrielle Freeman or Gordon. A good game is a
good game.

And a shitty game with a female main is still a shit game. No down votes will
actually change they. That's the satisfying part.

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dawnbreez
I fail to see the significance of the main character's gender, unless it
relates directly to the story in some way (i.e., being male/female affects
their social standing). It strikes me as silly that so many people raise hell
over a detail that should be meaningless.

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mrerrormessage
It's relevant for at least two reasons, in my opinion. The first is that video
games, like novels, are stories told through the the protagonist/s. If this
character is always male, you miss out on a whole class of stories which are
women's stories. Just as literature rarely told women's stories upon a time,
video games up to the present time rarely tell women's stories.

The second reason is that having a female protagonist changes the entire
meaning of the story. Consider Pierre Menard, author of Quixote
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote)),
which discusses how the particular context of the author effects the meaning
of the work.

Wikipedia had an excellent article about gender representation in video games
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_vid...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games)
. One part of the article notes:

> 60% of girls but only 39% of boys preferred to play a character of their own
> gender, and 28% of girls as opposed to 20% of boys said that they were more
> likely to play a game based on the character's gender.

So it may not matter to some people, but it matters greatly to others.

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dottrap
Agreed, but it also kind of assumes stories are actually important and
integral to the video game. Most stories in the current dominant video games
follow the John Carmack mantra of "Story in a game is like a story in a porn
movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

To go deeper into the problems of story telling in games, see Jonathan Blow's
Conflicts in Game Design Talk.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGTV8qLbBWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGTV8qLbBWE)

But as for actual story telling games with female protagonists, go back to
King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella. Designer Roberta Williams said a lot
of interesting things about it, like how it was more uncomfortable designing
deaths for her, and how she was worried there would be a fan backlash to
playing a female character (but never happened).

Hell, since I mentioned both Jonathan Blow and King's Quest, somebody just did
a big ass Sierra retrospective applying Blow's talk to Sierra games, examining
both why Sierra was able to successfully do story telling games for 20 years
and how they differ from modern adventure games. Highly recommended.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wua96SI6SBE&list=PLPAVYgFfed...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wua96SI6SBE&list=PLPAVYgFfeddJzax1X4VUj69Z1Vs4PqGlA&index=1)

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Nadya
_sigh_. Because none of the following exist.

Samus Aran - Metroid

Joanna Dark - Perfect Dark

Jill Valentine - Resident Evil

Rayne - BloodRayne

Tifa Lockhart - FF7

Yuna - Final Fantasy X

Elizabeth - Bioshock

Bayonetta - Bayonetta

[Range of Characters like Marta, Presea, Shina, Colette] - Tales Of ____
Series

And this is a pitiful list I came up with in a minute.

