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Rolemodels are hard to come by. |
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Recently, I was lurking the Nintendo Power forums and I came across a thread where a bunch of female gamers where complaining about a lack of good female character in videogames.
I know, this may seem important and needs to be resolved, but it really can't. What most of you don't know is it takes alot of work to make the ideal character that's directed torwards women. Like Barbie, when it first came out every girl wanted a Barbie. Slowly as the decades have passed, our Malibu born blondie began to lose interest of girls in the 80s/90s. Girls wanted dolls that had what was important to their generation, so then barbie began getting a corvette, a dreamhouse, a beach bungalo. Materialistic possessions being dominant in the 80s, the '90s was the break out of Barbie's professionalism as she got a doctor's office, a job as a lawyer, and several other occupations. Now with 200s, there are so many social archtypes of women, it's hard to sell anything to women these days. Now, with the breakout of new techonology, video games seem more realistic, more fleshed out, and women are slowly becoming attracted to video games.
A franchise that used to be dominated by a male audience is slowly becoming invaded by women, if more and more women get interested in video games, companies are going to have to begin making a model of what they think is going to attract the most women to their game, but this means that they're going to have to cut out a stereotype of women out of the pie.
Where as with men, it's simply to make a character and a game that will lure them in. With games as popular as Dead or Alive for men who like fighting games and hot girls to the Final Fantasy series for men who want a story and a touch of magic and mystery to their games. There's a broad market when it comes to men and videogames, with women, it's nothing of the sort.
Let's take this group of whiners from the thread I was talking about before for example. Most of them where fans of the Legend of Zelda series, a Platform RPG that has brought millions to Nintendo, while some leaned more torwards Final Fantasy and other RPGs, while a smaller but still large group liked Fighting games. Where a small group liked cute games like Puyo Pop and Harvest Moon.. Varying tastes, but only one thing in common. A female lead character that all women can like.
This will be hard to do, as I list some of the most common female archtypes in video games. From the looks of things, Princess Peach won't be getting her own game very soon.
1. Princess
Characters who fit in this catagory; Princess Peach, Princess Zelda.
The "Princess" of video games are often stereotyped as having the big eyes, the feminine features, the cute outfits and the dream to marry their hero. In the games they're in, they're often being kidnapped by the villain of the videogame and have to wait for the hero to come save them. Whatever role they have in the game is to either get saved, or help out by being cute and adorable. (Note: See Princess Peach's little sideline story in Paper Mario) If any of these characters had their games, it would probably involve cute graphics and several mini-games. Heck, that sounds like fun, I might buy something like that. But, this would probably only attract young female gamers and leave older ones rolling in their own vomit from all the glitter and rainbows.
2. Kick butt chicks.
Characters that fit in this catagory; Samus Aran, Rouge the Bat, Kasumi (From Dead Or Alive), Tifa.
These characters usually show up in Action/Adventure type games like Metroid or Dead or Alive. Unlike their Princess opposites, these girls get down to the nitty gritty and arn't afraid of breaking a nail. Most of them fill the role of fan-service (Note: See the female cast in Dead Or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball) or are there simply to appeal to female gamers. While they may be the modern representation of the female hero, some female gamers might not want to sit through Double D breasts and explosions on the screen just to see a girl in a video game.
3. White Mages
Characters that fit into this catagory; Every female character in the Final Fantasy series.
A mixture of both Kick Butt and Princess with a slight moderation of what I call White Mage, these female character serve the purpose of healing your party and being Cloud's, Squall's, Zidane's, Tidus' love interest. Sometimes at the beginning they may seem to be the chick who isn't afraid of anything and will do something about it and somewhere in the middle she'll flip to running to the protagonist's side because of a spider. What the hell? Though they may be a simple tavern girl in a tanktop or the daughter of a Master Summoner, they're fun if you can put up with the over dramatic and exaggerated storylines of most cliched RPGs, and some of us would be pretty confused about why Tifa seems to be an ice princess and later on becomes a house wife.
As there are several different types of female characters I can list, they arn't used too often. And from seeing the examples I have provided above, it would be pretty hard to make a character that would be directed to /ALL/ women. Everyone has a different taste, I might like peanut butter on my toast, and you might like ketchup on yours, it's hard to please anyone let alone women. Instead of just bitching about lack of good female characters in video games, why not b***h about lack of good video games at all?
Videogames take lots of hard work to develop, the graphics, the storyline, the dialogue, the NPCs, everthing! Sometimes it's costly to take major changes in a videogame just for the sake of being original. For example, Beyond Good And Evil is a GREAT video game with a great lead character, who happens to be FEMALE. The video game centered around the Earth being destroyed by alien forces and the conspiracy of Earth's own government exploiting it's people. You play as Jade, a news reporter and it's your job to question the authority of Earth's police officers and lawmakers. This game did not get much attention and it simply blew past and it didn't make money either. Do you get at what I'm saying?
To put it simply, it's hard work to come up with great characters, whether they be male, female, alien, human, or some twisted zombie like creature.
Note: I mentioned this game to the angry chicks in the thread, they all said they had never heard of it and those who played it thought it was boring and confusing.
 SJL · Wed Aug 17, 2005 @ 10:41pm · 4 Comments |
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