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Is Gaming the New Female-Friendly Media?

Is Gaming the New Female-Friendly Media?

I’ve gotten pretty pissed off at television this spring. It seems like no small-screen heroine is safe from death or cancellation. They cancelled Agent Carter , a mini-series featuring fantastic actors that fell prey to some poor plotting this season. They killed off Abbie Mills in Sleepy Hollow , deciding that a show that was only good when it equally featured Abbie and Ichabod didn’t actually need the female half of the equation (I predict it crashes and burns even more next season). They apparently even thought of pulling Beckett off Castle , another show that’s largely popular because of the dynamics between its male and female leads, before deciding to just cancel the show altogether. TV execs wouldn’t even greenlight Nancy Drew , a show that tested very favorably, but mostly among icky, cootie-laden girls.  Seriously, TV?  You were doing so well for a while, but you’re really sucking this year for anybody who believes that female characters are just as important as male ones.

The game industry may have a fairly poor ratio of female to male leads overall, but at least it’s going in the right direction. Despite some publishers who stubbornly refuse to believe that a female lead can carry a game, we’ve recently gotten another great Lara Croft game, we can finally play female soldiers in the major first-person shooters, and soon we’ll be seeing Aloy take the lead in Horizon: Zero Dawn , the return of Faith in Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst , and Emily Kaldwin as a playable character in Dishonored 2. This rise of female protagonists in gaming is aided, in part, by unique aspects of gaming that allow creators to sidestep the usual sexist nonsense that dooms women in non-interactive entertainment.

One of the big issues we’re seeing in television right now is the death and/or removal of female co-leads, while male co-leads get to continue their title roles. The fans may have thought a show depended on a mixed-gender pair, but apparently to the people behind the scenes, the male lead was the real hero all along. This kind of erasure is less likely to happen in games, as long as the female lead is playable. Since the player tends to become rather attached to the character he or she is controlling, games very rarely kill off player characters.

The other big issue that we see in both television and gaming is the mistaken idea by the big cheeses that a) men don’t want to watch/play female characters and b) that the only demographic that counts when it comes to spending money is young men. We’ve seen these frustrating viewpoints stymie far too many great game and TV / movie ideas, but games have at least one way to make an end run around crusty old sexist executives and advertisers. Games can provide players with the option to create their own hero or give the player a choice between male and female leads. BioWare and Bethesda games tend to do the first, while Dishonored 2 is doing the second, allowing players to choose between grizzled veteran Corvo or the young empress-assassin Emily.

Is Gaming the New Female-Friendly Media?

Ideally, we will someday live in a world in which male and female heroes are equally valued by creators, consumers, and advertisers. Until then, however, I’m happy with any strategy that helps female characters be heroes. As a form of interactive entertainment, video gaming has some unique advantages that can help games be female-friendly and keep our heroines alive and well. The game industry has nothing but loads of money to make by courting women who want to see themselves reflected in entertainment, after all.  TV is messing up in that regard, so it’s a great time for games to come along and say, “Hey, come check out our kickass heroine who you can not only watch, but control! And no, we won’t be killing her off just so some dude can feel angsty. She’s the real lead.”

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