Doin' it for the Ladies

So as most of you have probably figured out at this point, Lynsey and I are women. Though I’d say we’re more “gamers who are female” than “female gamers” the issue of women in the video game industry is one that we tend to talk about with a certain level of frequency. While surfing around tonight in a desperate act of procrastination I came across the old argument of “what do companies have to do to get women interested in gaming?”. Now, I’ve already given my opinion on this before but tonight I wanted to elaborate on what I consider to be a key point on this issue: female avatars.

When it comes to the creation of female characters I feel very confident in saying that most developers design them for men rather than women. What really gets me going with some of these characters is that, in fighting games for instance, they’ll give the female characters all the same strengths and abilities as the male characters only they’ll be nearly naked and bouncing all over the place.

Now, before this goes any farther I need to give an important qualifier: I am not saying that unrealistic body images and the exploitation of those bodies do not exist for male characters. Not at all. However, I do think that for every male avatar who looks like this:

There are 100 female avatars who look like this:

Now, this isn’t always a terrible thing. After all, video games are an escape and I will be the first to admit that it’s fun to get into a fabricated world as a sexy and strong woman who kicks ass but I don’t need to see the avatar’s nearly naked ass for this to be accomplished.

Let’s take a look at some totally random examples:

Okay, so maybe these women aren’t entirely random but they do prove my point. Alyx Vance from The Half Life Series, Chell from Portal, Zoey from Left 4 Dead, and Rochelle from Left 4 Dead 2 are all women who more than hold their own in their respective games and are permitted to do so with hardly a single (if any) reference to the fact that they lack a penis. I remember playing Portal and being surprised when one of the little turret guns called me, “the lady from the test”. Gender is such a non-issue in Portal that it never occurred to me that I could be playing a female character. I – like most female gamers I’d bet – always assume I’m playing as a man when I can’t see my character’s face or body.

I really think that if more developers followed in Valve’s footsteps and made “normal” female avatars it would do wonders for getting women interested in gaming but in order to do that the industry would have to let go of a pretty deep-seeded sense of normalcy: that women are only exciting and enticing when they’re practically nude.

Just a thought.