General / Off-Topic Tropes vs Women in Video Games — Ms. Male Character

[kenwshmt]

This is interesting.

Tropes vs Women in Video Games — Ms. Male Character

The latest video in the Tropes vs Women in Video Games series by Anita Sarkeesian explores the trope of Ms. Male Character, defined as “The female version of an already established or default male character. Ms. Male Characters are defined primarily by their relationship to their male counterparts via visual properties, narrative connection or occasionally through promotional materials.”



http://laughingsquid.com/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games-ms-male-character/

 

[Darren Grey]

A link directly to the Youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqYLfm1rWA

All of the Feminist Frequency videos are great. They point out a huge range of problems across all sorts of media, video games being one of the worst offenders.

In the new Elite fiction we have a number of non-stereotyped women that I hope will help set the tone for the game

 

[Oss133]

Wow, she's hot!


What?

What did I miss?


Seriously, that was very enlightening but somewhat disheartening to see how shallowly women are portrayed in our games.

But, let me be very clear on this. Commander Shepard is a woman. Her name is Alison and,

She. Is. AWESOME.

 

[Darren Grey]

Command Shepherd is awesome, it's just a shame they decided to use some crappy male version of her on all the promotional stuff :-/

 

[Geraldine]

Commander Shepard *is* a woman as far as I am concerned. Jennifer Hale's voice really made that character in Mass Effect for me. I tried playing the game with the male Shepard, but somehow (at least for me) it just felt wrong.

 

[insanephoton]

I agree, Commander Shepard is female and Jennifer Hale's voice acting as Shepard is far superior to the male version. For some reason the male Shepard vocals remind me of Adam Sandler.

Much of the blame must go to the marketing departments and attempting to appeal to the imagined gaming demographic of 15-25 year old males. The default male version of Shepard is merely a variation on the overused bald space marine trope.

Thinking about it, how many protagonists in video games are female? Not that many.

 

[Darren Grey]

Thinking about it, how many protagonists in video games are female? Not that many.

You should watch the rest of the Feminist Frequency videos Not only are there very few female protagonists in video games, but the ones that do exist tend to be utterly defined by their femininity. They are caricatures rather than characters.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

Really interesting video, and it was embarrassing just how many examples of 'bows' there were.

Funnily enough, I've been loosely following the Zoo Tycoon news, and kept seeing pictures of their female zoo-keeper and thinking there was something unusual about her. Watching that video made me realise that it's because she doesn't really fall into the traps the video talks about. Yes she's got light make-up and nail-varnish on, but it's subtle enough to be naturalistic. The people in the background of the pic also do a good job of not stereotyping, and it's an example of a publicity shot with an equal number of men and women (looking closely, you can just make out that the lemur's male). Well done Frontier!

Just wish I'd known that 'Femshep' was the better option when I played ME2.

 

[Susimetsa]

Commander Shepard *is* a woman as far as I am concerned. Jennifer Hale's voice really made that character in Mass Effect for me. I tried playing the game with the male Shepard, but somehow (at least for me) it just felt wrong.

This!

I had the very same experience.

It is a shame how they detracted from the character by making her look like a teenage girl in the ME3 promo posters.

 

[Susimetsa]

You should watch the rest of the Feminist Frequency videos Not only are there very few female protagonists in video games, but the ones that do exist tend to be utterly defined by their femininity. They are caricatures rather than characters.

Mind you, the same can be said of most male characters in video games.

 

[Josh Atack]

Command Shepherd is awesome, it's just a shame they decided to use some crappy male version of her on all the promotional stuff :-/

Yeah why didn't they use the real one, sometimes they don't even depict her sniper rifle, tis madness.

 

[Darren Grey]

Mind you, the same can be said of most male characters in video games.

I don't think "most". Most male characters have some personality trait which is other than simply "being a man". Consider the prevalence of the colour blue amongst male video game characters vs the colour pink in women characters, for instance.

Going to the classic example, Mario and Luigi are represented with different personality traits. Peach is just the girl, with no individuality beyond stereotypical female traits. She is caricature and nothing else.

 

[Josh Atack]

Mind you, the same can be said of most male characters in video games.

Not really, for the same reasons outlined by Feminist Frequency in their videos, there have been too many teams (in all areas of media) with the heavy one, the leader, the specialist etc and the woman. By doing that you box off those characters from being thought of as women even if the graphics are simply at sprite level.

Also the crazy heels, cleavage armour, lipstick is something that has to stop being as widespread, luckily it is changing more and more and characters are often allowed to be characters. Though I haven't seen it changing much in toy shops, ye gads the horrible sexism.

 

[Darren Grey]

Also the crazy heels, cleavage armour, lipstick is something that has to stop being as widespread, luckily it is changing more and more and characters are often allowed to be characters. Though I haven't seen it changing much in toy shops, ye gads the horrible sexism.

Yeah, the worst thing is how society shovels this stuff on kids from the earliest age

 

[Oss133]

Thankfully we have real women in the world to compensate for the rubbish "game" ones.

 

[Susimetsa]

I do agree that there is a problem. I just don't agree that it only concerns women. Both boys and girls are subjected to influences that push certain image of manliness and womanliness to them and both sexes are shown to suffer from these "demands" that society puts on them.

Just look at the children's cartoons on morning TV. There are all sorts of monster characters who are big, muscular and growl all the time - clearly intended to relate a certain image of manhood to boys. At the same time, there are those colourful ponies etc. with high, soft voices arranging parties amd dressing up all the time - clearly intending to relate a certain kind of image of womanhood to girls.

It is a twisted world and there's a lot to fix on many fronts, not just one.

 

[Darren Grey]

Very true. But I think for gaming in particular it's a lot worse for representation of girls. In general the appearance of guys in gaming is pretty varied - we have characters that show emotions, engage in a variety of activities, are geeky, clever, etc. Where is the Professor Layton of female characters, for instance?

Anita does a great video on toys actually, and Lego in particular, showing how it used to be completely gender neutral, but over time they've separated it into specific boy stuff (cars, explosions, etc) and specific girl stuff (ponies, baking, etc). What once was an all-inclusive form of imaginative play is now a strictly segregated set of gender stereotypes.

 

[Josh Atack]

Oh indeed, but that isn't the purpose of this video. I'm not at all saying there aren't many many things wrong with often symbolic and generalising portrayal of people in games due to single identifiers and that we shouldn't be aware of many more of them.

 

[Andrew Sayers]

Going to the classic example, Mario and Luigi are represented with different personality traits. Peach is just the girl, with no individuality beyond stereotypical female traits. She is caricature and nothing else.

I've watched a few of those videos this morning, and while they're very interesting, I think the above speaks to a problem in the underlying thesis.

Mario and Luigi are just as caricatured as Peach - Mario is the enthusiastic hero, Luigi the clumsy sidekick. They only have a second dimension if you accept that "boy" is a valid dimension in itself. And if you accept "boy" is valid, why not "girl"?

In media with cartoonishly over-emphasised personalities, a more useful critique would be that girls only get one caricature, whereas boys get loads of them. Your options are fairly limited in that sort of field - you could try pushing Drew's argument that gender should be added quite late in character development, but I suspect you'd struggle to reach the target audience.

 

[Josh Atack]

Ha ha, Darren, I'm going to leave the replies to you, you are much more articulate than me, and noticeably a faster writer.