Women in Games: A Reaction

First off, I really enjoyed the Friend's List with Tracey Lien and Megan Farokhmanesh. Also, the piece by Michael Moore and Elisa Melendez are must reads. I wanted to write this in response.

After Elisa Melendez's article I was dismayed. Everyone jumps on board and says yes, games are moving! Change is slow, but happening!

Dismay came when I thought about the actual backlash many games have suffered where there is a female playable character. Think about the criticism surrounding The Last of Us last year, or Tomb Raider, or pretty much any MMO where men play as women. Critics seem to agree its hard to accept men playing women without it actually adding more to the problem of socialization.

And that's really at the core of what needs to be discussed-- inclusiveness does not stem social critique. Instead, such a push is currently toward a grey amorphous shape that is anonymity.

Anonymity is both good and bad for games. It is good on the one hand because you get women that carry heavy weapons and defy stereotypes. This is Mass Effect. I feel most of what I've been reading wants this. I agree symbolic representation is okay for most games.

But the bad is--well, it is generic. If you don't define sex, then you never examine any of the issues surrounding it. Instead, you are just a ball of perpetual agency making neutral choices. Being a woman actually doesn't mean anything, sex and gender become invisible.

To avoid this, some games should aim to depict women as women.

That's what I found incredulous about the criticism surrounding Tomb Raider last year. Critics decried the game for depicting sexual assault, but nearly 240,000 women a year are sexually assaulted. Tomb Raider depicted women as women in its masculine and unforgiving world despite the distaste. But of course, this was complicated by the fact that men were largely playing Tomb Raider and that drew an insane line to paternalism, control, and rape culture.

That said, I just hope developers take the current criticism narrowly. In a lot of games there should be better representation, but in other games we should definitely realize sex-based perspective is exactly what is going to elevate that game above others.