Today's blog entry is about women and video games. Let's have a discussion, shall we?



This comes from a combination of several articles, tweets, and assorted comments that I have seen over the last several weeks.

I game. I am, by far, not a hardcore gamer. I am a bit more savvy than a person that casually games; I'm no n00b, but I'm not a high level achiever nor a completionist. I'm cool with that. When I play video games, I am there to blow shit up, enjoy the plot and the graphics, cackle my way through the resolution, and then log off. I'm not there to socialize nor compete with people I'm not in the same room with; if I wanted to fight with people about intangible things, I'd take overtime at work. I want to get involved in a storyline. I want to be shocked, saddened, happy, giggle. I want to care what happens in my game. My household knows when I'm in a good gaming space because I get a shot of Wild Turkey, cackle, and start shrieking plot points for everyone to hear. MMOs aren't really my bag (I don't like level grinding), but I always enjoy watching people play Warcraft and EVE. It entertains me to no end. "WHAT'S HAPPENING? EXPLAIN THE PLOT TO ME."

I remember my Sierra, Westwood, and Lucas Arts point-and-click adventures very fondly. I loved Doom, System Shock, Chronomaster. I loved the Living Books series! I love Telltale Games, and I always buy one of the Indie Bundles for charity, even if I already own all the games packaged. I LOVE World of Goo and Machinarium is not only terribly fun but GORGEOUS. I loved The Longest Journey and still play it, even if I wasn't in love with its sequel. I played Halo (way, way back when that sucker was NEW) until the CD broke. I loved that world! I was good without the multiple player teabagging, but I found it amusing. I played Metal Gear Solid way, way too much and still have a stupid affection for Solid Snake (and WHY NOT? Awesome character!).

I found Mass Effect 1 a few months after it came out, right smack in the middle of my undergraduate thesis research. I played that thing from casual (for the plot) to hardcore, and for all its glitchy glory, I still love and play that thing. Mass Effect 2 didn't inspire the same sort awe and affection that ME1 did (it just didn't have ME1's plot twist about who the enemy really was), but I loved its world, I loved the choices I could make. I adored it. It was a game designed with my sort of playing style and gaming wants in mind. Single player with an expansive world, with a long term plot that is described well by the world epic (without capital letters, without the buzz word connotation).

It's hard to explain why I'm so slavishly devoted to this one video game. I was, and still am, devoted to The Longest Journey in the same way, and while these are both epic storyline games with female leads, that isn't it. It is this perfect storm of character traits, heavy and complicated plot, it's lampshading of itself, fleshed out and great supporting characters from all along the moral spectrum, and it's protagonists that just really interest me for entirely different reasons. I don't need a female protagonist to love a game, but it is nice to find an awesome one.

Warning: TV Tropes link and SPOILERS

I loved The Longest Journey because it was this very normal, very young college girl's Hero's Journey. Hers just has both fantasy and scifi world jumping with a side of saving the known universe. It is built into the story that she messes up, multiple times, and that this is hard. That she just wants to give up, multiple times, and it is only having to face some very serious consequences does she end up agreeing to help save the world. You watch the character go from a very nice but flighty young girl into a determined, entirely capable and resourceful young woman.

"Mystery is important. To know everything, to know the whole truth, is dull. There is no magic in that. Magic is not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and where." That's a quote from one of the characters in the game, the sort of mentor for April, your point of view character. It just really explains why I love the series: it's all about the magic and mystery of the world that we remember from our childhoods that gets forgotten as we get older. That our reality is a complex, fascinating (albeit, sometimes very dark) place; things happen that are not always black and white, and it is part of growing up to realize that just because a choice is morally complex, that doesn't mean it is wrong.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, isn't about growth. You start the game as an adult, decorated soldier, and you as the player decide how your character will go about saving the galactic population from systematic destruction by a race of ancient sentient machines that have been going about this 25,000 year cycle for who knows how long.

...look, it's actually GOOD, OKAY? It was a big plot twist in the first game when you find that out! You think you're gonna blow up the bad guy's ship and you find out that, NO. The bad guy is just a tool FOR HIS SHIP. And then it menaces you all monotone-like while everyone goes HOLY SHIT, that ship has it RIGHT WHERE IT WANTS US, and that freaks EVERYONE OUT.

In Mass Effect, the universe is huge. It doesn't take you days to complete the game: it takes you days to explore the world. You wander the planets, cities, and satellites, and there is also sorts of little easter eggs of conversations to hear and animation to see. There's a whole space marine squad that gets schooled on the scientific reason why Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sonofabitch in space (yes, there is an icon for that).

Minor supporting characters are fleshed out with personalities and back stories. Even places that you can't travel to, but only vaguely hear about this one time in random side mission #48, you eventually go there. You eventually have to deal with this shit that is vagued about a game ago. Plot-wise, its a universe that is very consistent. There are ramifications for your decisions. There not always good things. Yet, you can be the hero here in a way that isn't always dark (I love the developer, Bioware, because they do have no fear about going into that dark place). You can save the day. You can do the impossible, be that larger than life hero, get the girl (or guy or BOTH), and have that swell of music at the end as you pose for you happy ending.

The thing that really got me about Mass Effect that you can play your customized character as either gender; and when you play a female character, it is never said "you can't do this thing because you are a woman". That is never a discussion. You are never the most decorated and celebrated woman. You are the most decorated, the very best the human race has to offer. Period.

Do you know how refreshing that was to me? This is why I am utterly devoted to this series. I get to play a woman soldier that kicked ass (REALLY kicked ass! With nuclear weapons!) that was respected, not spoken down to, and was found hot for being the biggest BAMF in the galaxy. Your character gets hit on by EVERYTHING (yes, even the jellyfish, sometimes. Yes, there are space jellyfish.) because you are the biggest BAMF in the known universe. Do you know what sort of message that sends to young women? To even me, an adult woman that is very confident in herself? Especially since it isn't a message. You're not beaten over the head with it. You're just there, playing an awesome woman that is awesome, respected for being awesome (not a woman that happens to be awesome, not an awesome woman that it is pointed out again and again, she is a woman being awesome).

I don't need a protagonist that is a woman in video games. I don't need female supporting characters (though, without them, why do you want to write a story? Without half the global population?). But when I get them, when I ones that shine as real characters that are recognized for their talents and abilities, it means something to me. Bioware cemented itself in my heart for all my geek life with Aveline in Dragon Age 2. Where the sexy focus is placed on her giant biceps, and the fact she is your tank for much of the game. That she was married to a strong man, widowed, and she gets to have another relationship with a man that finds her hot for being strong and powerful. It means something.

It is frustrating that the female Shepard isn't advertised by Bioware. Shepard is always the default male (bald, white space marine) because he is "iconic". The company fully admits that Femshep is the "fan favorite" but still market only with the male. The implication that if it isn't Lara Croft-esque, a game with a female protagonist won't sell. Why?

I know why. I can actually understand why. There are many guys that flat out say, "I don't want to play a game as a woman/I can't play a game as woman." And it is still considered men make up a much larger part of the gaming market than women (we make up about 40% now). I understand. But that's why when I get that one character that means the world to me, I cling desperately. It is going to be a while before I get that again.