There are many, many reasons why I love this game - far too many to go into right now - but one of the main reasons is that you can play a female character of your own design. Of course, as in most video games, the design choices are limited - she is still generally young, she is heavily made up and has a figure I could only dream of - but at least she is dressed for her environment (as opposed to being half-naked), and if I wanted to, I could make her older (but alas not fatter).
When I think of the (roughly twelve) Playstation games I have played so far in my noobtastic career, I can think of two where you could actually choose to have a female avatar, and two more where you could kind of play as a female, while the main emphasis still remained on the male characters (think Madison Paige in Heavy Rain).
Now, if we think about the statistics I quoted in my first post, the fact that there are more games with male avatar choices than females makes sense - the game developers want to appeal to a male-dominated (only just!) market.
But why, oh why, does the majority (of this minority) of female characters have to be the half-naked, anatomical equivalents of Barbie™? Is it because male gamers won’t play a game where the female characters aren’t “hot”?
If you’re up for a bit of heavy reading, you should check out this “feature” by Shaylyn Hamm (which is actually part of her thesis on the aesthetics of female video game characters). In this “feature”, Hamm talks about the wide variety of male characters (in terms of body shape, clothing and facial structure) and the limited design of female characters over a number of different games.
As a part of her thesis, Hamm designed two new female characters for the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2, based on the male characters already in the game (the Medic and the Heavy Weapons guy). You can see her female characters here.
I love them.
Neither of them are “pretty” or “ugly” and they are both dressed for their environment (i.e. fully clothed!). To me, they look like real women just doing their job, and I can honestly say if given the choice, I’d rather play as these women than the Barbie doll doppelgangers of most video games today.
What do you think of Shaylyn Hamm’s designs? If you’re a guy and the option was there to have either a male or female avatar, would you ever choose to play as a girl? Let me know! :)
5 comments:
A friend of mine (who is also obsessed with Fallout...hmmn, I still have F3 sitting in its plastic..i really should play it)always plays as a girl. My character in Rock Band is a girl(mostly cos all the guys look like freaks)but I mostly just choose based on the character design. More often than not its male i suppose.
Always been a fan of women/warriors and admire the gaming industry for doing it more often than movies and TV. Of course I am a huge Joss Wheedon fan and he is the source of most of TV's 'best' Warrior Women (Buffy/Willow/Faith/Kendra/Zoe)
I wish we saw more of that kind of character in movies....I guess you could include Hermione but I'm not convinced.
I recommend Mass Effect. It is an AWESOME game and you can play not only as male or female, but beef your avatar up or ugly it down as much as you like! Although we've got the PC version - no idea if there a playstation one :)
I must say I've always wondered why "warrior women" have to wear bikinis? Well, I know why - sex sells to guys off course, and that's the target audience for action movies & video games. Still, I sit there thinking "how impractical, and uncomfortable that outfit must be whilst chopping up the bad guys!"
Haha, I know! Who can run around, climb things and kill monsters in a bikini? No-one I know.
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