The Videogame That Finally Made Me Feel Like a Human Being

OK, to go off on a tangent...here's the best example I can think of that illustrates the imbalance of gender neutral roles that men take for granted and that women basically have never had: the only time I can think of, in American entertainment history, that a woman achieved the authority and an unforgettable identity that had nothing to do with "...because she's a woman" is: Ripley in Alien and Aliens (never saw 3 and 4, and probably never will).

In fact, she was so good at being "just" Ripley that it wasn't until I saw Sigourney Weaver in other movies did I realize, "Huh, Sigourney Weaver is a woman and she is hot"...She is the only female character I can think of in which her gender has no real bearing to how she acts, what she says, or how she is presented on screen.

I challenge anyone to think of any other woman character who follows Ripley's mold:

1. Does not overtly seek a romantic relationship

2. Sexual tension is not a compelling foil or conflict for the character

3. Is not thrown into an action role purely for the spectacle of a woman kicking ass

4. Is not shouted down or treated differently specifically because she is a woman.

5. Is not shown in a gratuitously sexual light (she is in her underwear the same time everyone else is logically in their underwear).

6. Is unequivocally the hero of the movie. In fact, in both movies [spoiler alert for 20 year old movies], it's quite notable that she is literally the last human being standing, and she wins on her own terms.

No other contenders, that I can think of, meet this standard, especially in the action film role: Catwoman, Aeon Flux, Tomb Raider...nope. Clarice Starling...even if you want to argue that no sexual tension exists between her and Hannibal Lecter (even though he specifically refers to it), much of the non-gruesome psychological conflict her character faces is precisely because she is a woman in a (tall) man's world. Beatrice in Kill Bill...great role, but again, it only works because she is a woman and it is a spectacle, even if empowering (i.e. could you imagine Kill Bill being made with a man in the role?)

The only woman character who comes close to the unisex appeal of Ripley is Marge Gunderson in Fargo. Other than that, it's pretty slim pickings...whereas for males, there are too many to count.

Anyway, I sometimes wonder how much growing up with Alien/Aliens affected how I think about gender roles and imbalance. Those being among the first and the most interesting of the action movies I'd ever seen (then, and today), I kind of think that the idea of a woman action hero was completely normal to me. And yet, as far as I can see, no one like Ripley has since been written...

Such console games "get" this effect just because they look more and more like movies, not because they are better intrinsic games than what we had before. And the examples shown by the author show her clear ignorance of PC games in the 80-90s, so it's not surprising he didn't feel "much" in front of consoles games. We basically had to wait for late SNES games and PS1 games to see more and more games on consoles with deeper storylines and character development. But this occured on PC way before it happened on consoles, and you had actual strong female characters way before on PC too (hey, come on, the Roberta Williams games had almost always female protagonists, and were hugely popular!).

The idea that "we had to wait until 2014 to feel something when playing games" is what I considered the most painful. Because it's preposterous.

Wired has really become an over-hyped tabloid.

> Although women make up nearly half of all gamers, only a fraction of videogame characters are female, and fewer still are playable.

Double false claim. Women certainly don't make half of gamers (unless you consider people playing Tetris and phone games real gamers, and that's a very different subject altogether).

Fewer are playable, false claim as well. Tomb Raider, Bayonetta, Most adventure games from Roberta Williams, Lots of japanese games have female lead characters too (too many to list here), and a lot of these games were very much liked by male gamers as well. I'm personally a huge fan of Bayonetta, and the fact that the character is a female had a huge part in this preference.

Hi! I'm a female video gamer.

I grew up playing video games. I have played, and still play, a lot of games involving shooting things, punching and kicking things, and colorful explosions. I got hooked on the medium with Williams' "Defender".

I don't play FPSs because they are, with very few exceptions, coded as Games For Guys. I've had a great time playing Portal, System Shock 2, Antichamber, and a few other first person puzzle shoot things, because they are either genderless, or are strongly feminine. (You would destroy me in a high-speed deathmatch because my 'put cursor on dude' skills are minimal - largely because almost every single 'put cursor on dude' game requires me to inhabit the grey/brown shoes of Mancho McGruntsalot, so I really don't feel like playing them.)

I avoid most AAA games for similar reasons. They are all clubhouses with a "NO GURLS ALLOUED" sign hung out front. I played the hell out of Skyrim and Saint's Row 3/4 in no small part because I could make female avatars and the game would happily let me be that. (For that matter, I basically quit buying the 3D GTA games when they stopped having any 'play as another model' codes that I could input to force the game to acknowledge my gender. Even if it did sometimes result in a cutscene where a lady model stood with her legs wide open, talking in a male voice, and dangling a gun in front of her crotch obscenely.)

I have a bunch of lady friends who have spent tons of time playing MMORPGs. I haven't, myself, because I know I'd fall into that hole and never come out - but again: easy access to female avatars right there in the stock game, no hassle, hey maybe we'll welcome women.

I think the author is deliberately excluding interactive fiction from the kinds of "videogames" that are criticized here.

Which is too bad; there has been great stuff in the genre for a long time. Photopia (1998) has a heartbreaking story and a strong female protagonist and is well worth playing through ( http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl ).