Sexual imagery in games

Sometime in the seventies women around the world got together and decided that male society was oppressing them. People like Laura Mulvey told the world that film where representing women as sexual objects and that it was all part of the evil women-oppressing society instigated by men. You might agree or not with this movement, but they did change a lot of things in our society since then. Today its not uncommon to see women as CEO’s, and i do think that most men (at least the ones who aren’t stupid) think of women as being able to do the exact same quality of work as men.

If we turn our eyes to games we see that women in game narratives are still being portrayed in a very cliche way. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps its because that it has just become tradition. Games started out being created and played by very geeky guys who just liked to see women being portrayed in certain ways. Perhaps it is because its what the audience wants, or perhaps it because “its just how its done”. However i cant help wonder when some movement will appear to try and change this status quo in games? As i see it women are being portrayed in 3 distinct ways in games:

The victim

This type of character needs to be saved. You as the player need to beat/shoot/puzzle your way through a ton of game challenges to save or help the helpless woman. We’ve seen this stereotype a million times. Games like Drakes Fortune and Mario. In one you have a plucky woman who constantly gets herself into trouble, in the other you need to save the princess. The victim is just like we know her from film. She is the one who MUST go to the attic to investigate that weird but scary sound, she is the one who don´t know about all the many murders performed in that same attic two years ago, and the one who can only scream when she gets in trouble.

The gun girl

She’s a woman and she knows it! She is the essence of girlpower, and no man shall get in her way. Usually the player takes the role of the gun girl themselves, or they work with her as a sidekick. Also the gun girl nearly always happen to be drop dead sexy, and very pleasing to any male eye. This is definitely where most people can agree that that the games representation of women is a bit sexist. Its usually obvious that the female models used in these games have bigger breasts and smaller waists than the norm in real life. Examples of this is all the Tomb Raider games, roleplaying games where you can pick a female avatar like Dragon Age: Origins, or pretty much any female character in any fighting game – like Dead or Alive.

The evil bitch

This type is evil and a villain. Most often she is not the main villain (they are most often men), but a sexy sidekick to the main villain. She is drop dead gorgeus, but if you covet her, she will kill you…. of course you most often end up killing her yourself, or perhaps you show her mercy and send her to jail or similar. Examples could be Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins, or perhaps even GlaDOS from Portal.

So what now?

I know that there are other types out there in games, i just find that these three are the most common. Actually i think it is a bit sad that women are typecast like that in games. If you look at the movie industry you see woman characters of all sorts, pretty much across the board. This tendency to turn women into such cliches in games does seem a bit unsettling. Of course, being a guy, i do enjoy such a cliche once in a while. But i also enjoy other cliches, like always having to save a village in any rpg game I’ve ever played.

I just can’t help wonder when gamers and game developers will start moving in a different direction. It was difficult to do for the film industry, but in the end they did it. It was difficult to do for the business world, but they did it. When will games mature enough to do it as well?