Comments on: Feminist Video Games?

By: Lauren Hartley

Lauren Hartley — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:27:01 +0000

I am a psychologist working on an intervention for sexism using video games. Of course, I may have to design my own to fully address the issues of sexism. I understand the view that feminist games should show woman as full human beings, but perhaps you are not aware that female characters who behave in stereotypically male ways, would also qualify as sexist. Violent, dominant, survival, adversarial perspectives are paternalistic viewpoints.
So what else is there? The result of several years of research presents these alternative perspectives: co-operation, egalitarian, group survival, joint decision making, respect for all members of the group, and individuals as unique and not group representatives. Areas of difficulty in sexist individuals are, insistence on either/or options instead of a wide variety of solutions, grouping people instead of recognizing all people as individuals, judging everything as “superior or inferior” which is a value judgment instead of recognizing that different solutions work in different situations, projecting anger outward as in scapegoating instead of taking personal responsibility, etc. We need to also look at the perspective being promoted, not just the character.

By: Marisa

Marisa — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:53:50 +0000

I am a feminist, and I just bought a Wii system. Immediately, I did a search for feminist video games, and this was actually the most helpful place to answer that question. So thankful for everyone’s comments. Too bad the answer wasn’t a laundry list of games that met the criteria completely. One day… .

By: 100littledolls

100littledolls — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:03:30 +0000

The few games that I’ve found to have feminist elements (besides some that have already been mentioned) are Primal (though I don’t know too many people who have played this) and right before I left for vacation I was playing Dark Cloud 2. I’m not too far along in it, but it shows promise to me:I was truly excited that the main female character, Monica, has a sword as her main weapon. I could make an argument for Baten Kaitos (mainly because of the character The Great Mizuti), but the game as a whole could be up for debate.

By: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Feminist SF Carnival: 4th Edition

Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Feminist SF Carnival: 4th Edition — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:05:56 +0000

[...] Jeff of our very own Shrub.com kicks off this section by questioning why “feminist video games” didn’t pull up any matches in his post, Feminist Video Games? Of course, thereâ€™s the larger question of what would make a game good from a feminist perspective. In addition to being good from a gameplay perspective, Iâ€™d say such a game would include female characters who are full agents in the game world, and who are treated as subjects rather than objects. I think a variation of the Mo Movie Measure applies as well, in that female characters should interact with other female characters in ways that arenâ€™t centered around men. [...]

By: jfpbookworm

jfpbookworm — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:38:29 +0000

Dianne: The question of whether the player-character should be able to die has been with adventure gaming at least since LucasArts’ LOOM in 1990, and is easily worth a series of posts on a general game-design blog. On the one hand, killing the player off too often or too arbitrarily is an annoyance for the player who has to restore or undo; on the other hand, if it’s obvious that the player-character won’t be killed, that can break mimesis and situations that should be suspenseful are merely “dangeresque.” (See also the meteor in FF7 that stops falling while you do side quests.)

You raise a good point in your comments about The Longest Journey: just because a game is “feminist” doesn’t mean that a feminist will necessarily like it. I probably wouldn’t care too much for a feminist first person shooter or real-time strategy game unless it transcended its genre, because those kinds of games don’t appeal to me as much.

By: Dianne

Dianne — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:10:33 +0000

tekanjii: I have to admit that a glitch in my computer kept me from finishing TLJ. I then got rid of it in favor of a mac, so never did get to see the ending. Maybe on the next computer (if it still runs on whatever OS is in use by then.) So maybe I’m being unfair to April (whom I did like as a character, but thought fell back on stereotypes at times…then again, that’s not inconsistent with her background as presented in the story.) Anway, fight scenes I can do without (I prefer running away, hiding, and cleverly talking your way out of trouble scenes), I just thought the whole “dystopian future” trope didn’t work if the character was never really in danger.

What I’d really like to see and am not likely to anytime in the near future, is female characters who don’t resemble models at best, barbie dolls at worst. Male characters too, come to think of it. But it’s worse for female characters. The message seems to be that it’s ok for a woman to be smart, independent, etc, but she has to be traditionally beautiful or she’s nothing. Literally.

By: tekanji

tekanji — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:39:55 +0000

Dianne: I have to disagree with you about TLJ. While I’m not sure it qualifies as overtly feminist (I’d have to play it again, which I intend to do as soon as I return home to grab the discs), I wouldn’t disqualify it because of April’s personality. Partially because I heavily identified with it, and partially because she was made that way to set her up for the ending.

Indeed, her personality in Dreamfall is entirely different (to the point that I didn’t like her as much, nor did most people, but I’m hoping that in TLJ 3 she’ll grow into her true personality).

And speaking of that, if you like action and danger, Dreamfall has it — not only are your characters in peril of dying on numerous occassions, but there are even fight sequences (I found the controls very clunky, though). Dreamfall also has a very high quotient of female characters, although I’m not sure if I should count the fembots (who had this Asian Dragonlady thing going on, to boot).

Again, I’m not entirely sure that I’d call either of the games consciously feminist, but they’re games that feminists can enjoy without having to deal with common pitfalls like the hypersexualization of all the women in the game and without the “knight in shining armor” cliches. Not to mention it’s nice to play as obviously intelligent, go-getting women.

By: Dianne

Dianne — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:10:13 +0000

JFP: Fallout2 had its points, but in general it was annoying and I ultimately decided to pretend that it had never happened and that the series ended with the original. It sort of resembled Star Wars in that way…

I’m not sure I’d consider The Longest Journey as a feminist video game either. While it did qualify by the MMM, the main character was too much of a stereotype for my taste. Plus I thought the rule that the character would not die no matter what you did was kind of silly. Why make a big production about how dangerous things were if she was actually perfectly safe? I’ve never played Beyond Good and Evil. Is it any good?

By: rehana

rehana — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 21:15:35 +0000

Shion is handled terribly. I love the Shion they tell you about, but the Shion they show you has no will of her own when there’s a man around. KOS-MOS is fun, though. Badass, listens to nobody–the only problem is that she only seems to exist to railroad the plot along.

By: jfpbookworm

jfpbookworm — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:55:59 +0000

Well, in Fallout all the characters pretty much looked the same.

Most of the problems I had with Fallout were actually with Fallout 2, which used your stats to calculate how good you were in bed, added the ridiculous “Kama Sutra Master” feat, and actually used the fact that you could get married and then pimp out your spouse as a selling point.