Tropes vs Women in Video Games pt 1 is out.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Playing Metal Gear Rising actually made me think back to the original introduction of Raiden and how his more androgynous/feminine physique and character caused a stir when MGS2 came out. A lot of it was down to the deception of Snake not being the protagonist in the game, yet there was still plenty of teeth gnashing over the way Raiden was. To the point that Konami play up his bishie stylings in various trailers for subsequent games in response to fan outrage. I wonder if the average Zelda fan would have been more accepting of the character.

It's not just women that are targeted. It's anything not macho white male stereotype. Like Stark mentioned in another thread relating to TV show voyeurism and male power fantasies, it's the gender and what is accepted as defining that gender and how prevalent those memes are that pose the biggest barrier. People clearly aren't fond of the unfamiliar, and it shows in how these games are marketed every bit as much as film or TV or any other media franchise aiming for the biggest demographic. That momentum is hard to fight against without having that concrete idea of what should replace what we have right now.

[TheFeniX]

Yes yes, lets equate sexism against men and women, how 1971.

I said that, where? My point was that it isn't sexist, just like having an attractive, but badly written, female character isn't inherently sexist. It's just bad writing. I can put together a list of atrociously sexist stuff, but I can also find articles claiming stupid shit like Beth games being sexist because of a few horrible female characters, even though Beth has numerous example of powerful women and women in power and are portrayed about as well as Beth is capable of (read: passable). And, as noted, Starfox wasn't about keeping a female character out of the lime-light. It was about suckering Star Fox fans into buying a shitty game that would have sold nothing without it.

[Grumman]

I can't watch it at work, is it more indepth than the original Tropes vs. Women videos and is there a prescription for how to do better in future and/or comparison with good examples in other media or is it just complaining? (The old series very much felt like shallow complaining without saying "and here is how I would actually like it to be done").

I had the same problem with the old videos. I want more of X (awesome female protagonists and supporting characters), while she sounded like she just wanted less of Y (weak female characters).

Then again, I didn't see all of them, so maybe there were better videos.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I also don't get where Alyx is held as a good role model. It's news to me she was even on the radar of female protagonists at all given her rather small role in the games. She's no Samus (well, no pre-Other M one).

[Grumman]

It's news to me she was even on the radar of female protagonists at all given her rather small role in the games.

Nobody said she was a good female protagonist, because she is not a protagonist. She's not a substitute for good female protagonists, but she is a positive step in her own right.

[Vendetta]

Alyx isn't a protagonist, that would be Gordon Freeman, but yes, she is frequently cited as a positive female character design. One look at the wikipedias will show you a large number of videogame publications falling over themselves to say how strong willed and independent and heroic she is. She literally exists to do nothing other than fawn over Freeman and thereby the (presumed male) player because he is Science Jesus.

And that is not good writing. At no point does Alyx engage with Gordon as a character (because he isn't one, so she can't), so we get no presentation of her relationship to the player other than being a sycophant. Her initial reaction to Science Jesus would be justified if that ever developed through interaction as characters, but it doesn't because Gordon isn't a character, he's a gun with shoes. That means that Alyx never develops in her relationship with the player, she is there to stroke your ego by telling you how she's always wanted to meet Science Jesus for real.

That all means that she has no agency, she exists to support the player and for no other reason, and that includes a bit of ego massage. She is not the only character with these problems, but she is about the only one whose PR agency is determined to sell her as a positive female character.

[weemadando]

Team only positives I associate with Alyx are that she's not enormously out of proportion and dressed like a hooker.

But thankfully a recent HL2 graphics overhaul mod fixed all that.

[Starglider]

The solution is so obvious, so basic, and so simple that it really doesn't need extensive discussion. Basically, if you made a video game and then threw a some darts at some dartboards to figure out who this character is, that'd do half of what needs to be done.

That makes no sense. I suspect you are thinking of a tiny subset of best-selling games, fantasy/action/adventure where the main characters can be anyone. Let's look at the actual top 50 cross-platform sellers from last year;

1. Call Of Duty: Black Ops II – Activision Blizzard
2. FIFA 13 – Electronic Arts
3. Assassin’s Creed III – Ubisoft
4. Halo 4 – Microsoft
5. Hitman Absolution – Square Enix
6. Just Dance 4 – Ubisoft
7. Far Cry 3 – Ubisoft
8. FIFA 12 – Electronic Arts
9. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Bethesda Softworks
10. Borderlands 2 – 2K Games
11. Mass Effect 3 – Electronic Arts
12. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes – WB Games
13. Need For Speed: Most Wanted – Electronic Arts
14. FIFA Street – Electronic Arts
15. Mario & Sonic At The London 2012 Olympic Games – Sega
16. Skylanders Giants – Activision Blizzard
17. Battlefield 3 – Electronic Arts
18. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Activision Blizzard
19. Max Payne 3 – Rockstar Games
20. Sleeping Dogs – Square Enix
21. Resident Evil 6 – Capcom
22. London 2012 – The Official Video Game Of The Olympic Games – Sega
23. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – Ubisoft
24. Dishonored – Bethesda Softworks
25. WWE ‘13 – THQ
26. Lego The Lord Of The Rings – WB Games
27. Forza Motorsport 4 – Microsoft
28. New Super Mario Bros. 2 – Nintendo
29. Medal Of Honor: Warfighter – Electronic Arts
30. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Ubisoft
31. Just Dance 3 – Ubisoft
32. Mario Kart 7 – Nintendo
33. F1 2012 – Codemasters
34. Batman: Arkham City – WB Games
35. Football manager 2013 – Sega
36. Super Mario 3D Land – Nintendo
37. Forza Horizon – Microsoft
38. Saints Row: The Third – THQ
39. Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure – Activision Blizzard
40. Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 – WB Games
41. Sniper Elite V2 – 505 Games
42. Sonic Generations – Sega
43. Rayman Origins – Ubisoft
44. Final Fantasy XIII-2 – Square Enix
45. Dead Island Game Of The Year Edition – Koch Media
46. Zumba Fitness – 505 Games
47. The Amazing Spider-Man – Activision Blizzard
48. Moshi Monsters: Moshlings Theme Park – Mind Candy
49. Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean – Disney Interactive
50. SSX – Electronic Arts

Of course this does not include the vast sea of casual, online and free games, only high-budget retail ones.

8 sports sims with no significant characters, male bias just reflects the fact that all-male soccer etc is vastly more popular with society as a whole.
5 driving games with no or no significant characters
4 dance/casual games with no characterisation, avatars of both sexes
6 games based on book/film/comic licenses using existing characters and plot elements, if you have issues go complain to authors / Marvel / Hollywood instead

Of the remaining 27 games with (the possibility of) meaningful characters that the developers actually made;

7 are first-person shooters in a contemporary or futuristic military setting, focusing on implausibly durable and skilled super-soldiers. Demographically, presence of women in front-line combat roles is low and in special forces almost zero. Of course plausibility isn't a huge issue for most of these games, so the main question is 'do people want to see female gung-ho supersoldiers', 'does having a female-only protagonist reduce potential sales' (i.e. male gamers find it harder to fantisise about being a female soldier) and failing that 'is having selectable multiple protagonists, and making enough duplicate dialog / cutscenes to uniquely characterise them, worth the trouble'. Current assumed answers are 'no', 'yes' and 'no' based on market research; multiple protagonists in an on-rails FPS is almost never done possibly because everyone who cares is making or buying RPGs instead. To be honest I think most feminists are more concerned with 'why are so many FPS fratboy-military-fantasy games made' rather than 'there should be more female supersoldiers'.

2 games are contemporary crime shooters with no protagonist selection. Again, the demographics of violent criminals are very heavily male biased. You could have developers ignore this and make games about female assassins and organised criminals, but is there actually a demand for this?

6 games are action/RPG/open world with selectable protagonist gender and a variety of NPCs (Saints Row, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Skylanders). The writers in those games tried to include a reasonable mix of characters; I would say they're all above average writing within their genre. Certainly you can critique them but you can't pretend that no effort was made to be inclusive or that the writers could just trivially produce whatever it is you're looking for in female characters if they chose to.

4 games are based on tired 8/16-bit mascot platformer franchises. Mario, Sonic, Zelda etc have introduced or better characterised some female characters over the years but they still focus on male protagonists. What exactly do you want here? Should this franchises be dropped (not going to happen as they are such guaranteed earners)? Should characters like Princess Peach be reinterpreted / rebooted? Should new strong female characters be introduced and placed on an equal footing (e.g. selectable/playable alongside/instead of the main characters)? Essentially this is easy to do if there is minimal story/characterisation, expensive if you want extensive different cutscenes for different characters. Saying these franchises are relics of a sexist era is easy, saying how to modernise them while retaining profitability is harder (and no saying 'discontinue them' will not achieve anything).

2 Assassin's Creed games; overwhelmingly male characters due to historical setting, there just weren't that many thematically appropriate historical females (or serving in the military, for the mooks) to work with, and also very heavy character/plot integration makes choice of protagonists impossible. It isn't obvious how the writers could have done better here.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 : haven't played it, but female protagonist and AFAIK reasonable character diversity, series has certainly improved in that respect
Dead Island : good race/gender diversity in four playable characters, haven't played it but didn't see anything blatantly sexist in story or game design

So from 50 games there seem to be 4 that have a 'generic white male protagonist only' with no excusing factors;
Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, Resident Evil 6 (expect for the Ada segment), Dishonored
Those are all shooters, three of four are continuations of long-running series. Resident Evil definitely could have better character balance as it has multiple protagonists anyway. Max Payne and Far Cry 3's protagonists and plot arcs are so stereotypically male that it's not obvious (to me) how to write those plots with a female protagonist; you can either say these games should not be made (but people want them?) or you can explain how to write such a plot.

That leaves Dishonored, which has the flexibility of a fantasy world and stealth-focused gameplay that doesn't immediately call for a supersoldier bodybuilder. However it does have deep enough character relationships (well, one) that you couldn't trivially make the gender of the protagonist arbitrary as in the Fallout. So even here, how do the writers convince their publisher to spring for enough extra voice-actor / cutscene dev cash to give more protagonist options, or risk the game's profitability on a female-only protagonist (something Hollywood execs greenlighting generic action movies won't do either)? It is far from obvious.

Idiot forum trolls are just distractions from the actual issues, and raging about them isn't productive (although by all means they should be banned where possible). Most game writers are not in fact hidebound idiots with a sexism switch in their heads that can be flipped to the off position by a sufficiently heartfelt and/or snarky video. Like the rest of the entertainment industry the output of the games industry is the product of a lot of complex market, cultural, technological and even personal constraints that, for the most part, do need real innovation to overcome.

[Thanas]

Well what female protagonists are there that are any good?

Elaine Marley, Morgan LaFay (both Monkey Island), Cate Archer (No one lives forever), maybe one incarnation of Lara Croft, Jun'ko Zane (Freelancer though not a playable character) and a very few of the Bioware RPG characters. Other than that, I have a hard time remembering some.

[Starglider]

Well what female protagonists are there that are any good?

Kameo, from 'Kameo : Elements of Power'. Jade, from 'Beyond Good & Evil'. Possibly Faith from 'Mirror's Edge' although that game doesn't have much characterisation.

[Stark]

The protagonist thing is a side issue anyway; people wouldn't mind exclusively male tough guys voice by Nolan North if the games had some women who weren't useless, fawning sex objects or lying, teasing black widows. You can both satisfy juvenile power fantasies and not be demanding to women at the same time, without needing to struggle with female protagonists and the broken expectations people have around such things.

[TheFeniX]

That all means that she has no agency, she exists to support the player and for no other reason, and that includes a bit of ego massage. She is not the only character with these problems, but she is about the only one whose PR agency is determined to sell her as a positive female character.

That was a really good read and hits on something that's been basically non-existent in games for the better part of a decade and something I really miss from Baulder's Gate and other games like it: NPCs with motivations (at all really) that aren't fawning over the PC or picking a few dialog options/doing a mission to get the NPC to fawn over the PC. BW and Beth are praised for their "trust" systems, but they are stupidly simplistic to the point where you're really just setting a variable to +1.

I won't argue that Alyx is a good role-model for women, I just don't think she's a bad one.

[Covenant]

If the point was to address the culture of sexism among gamers, address the culture of sexism among gamers.

I thought the point of her videos was to address the sexist representations of women in the games themselves, as an Awareness Heightening campaign, rather than addressing the attitudes of gamers themselves. Like you say, those are two different issues.

That makes no sense. I suspect you are thinking of a tiny subset of best-selling games, fantasy/action/adventure where the main characters can be anyone.

Well, more accurately I was thinking about the kind of games that cause people to get upset about representation. My dartboard solution doesn't just apply to the player's single controlled protagonist, it applies to representation in general. Obviously, some games aren't going to work, like sports games based on real-world sports personalities or the comic book games. If the comic book/movie games are showing characters off in a sexist way backed up by the movie then I'd still ask if they HAVE to make the same decisions as the directors, but you're right in saying that the fault would lie elsewhere, within reason. We've seen source material featuring prominent female protagonists, like the Aliens debacle recently, still feature no adequate female character whatsoever.

Remember, what I'm talking about is representation. In movies it is a bit more obvious, like how in Lord of the Rings they assigned some tasks to Arwen that she didn't have in the book in order to make her less of a never-seen romance object, and how in the Hobbit they made use of Galadriel as much as they could to break up the sausage fest. It isn't always about painting with all the colors of the rainbow as much as it is looking for places to say "Hey, look, you're in this universe too!" to people. I may think such a thing is a bit silly, but I never grew up being very aware that I wasn't in the world I was watching. This is enough of a barrier for people that, given how easy it is, there's no reason not to put in the extra effort to include people of a variety of identities in a way that doesn't just leave them as stereotypes (Big Black Guy Thug) or objects (Helpless Damsel). Lemme try to clarify by going through some stuff individually.

7 are first-person shooters in a contemporary or futuristic military setting, focusing on implausibly durable and skilled super-soldiers. Demographically, presence of women in front-line combat roles is low and in special forces almost zero. Of course plausibility isn't a huge issue for most of these games, so the main question is 'do people want to see female gung-ho supersoldiers', 'does having a female-only protagonist reduce potential sales' (i.e. male gamers find it harder to fantisise about being a female soldier) and failing that 'is having selectable multiple protagonists, and making enough duplicate dialog / cutscenes to uniquely characterise them, worth the trouble'. Current assumed answers are 'no', 'yes' and 'no' based on market research; multiple protagonists in an on-rails FPS is almost never done possibly because everyone who cares is making or buying RPGs instead. To be honest I think most feminists are more concerned with 'why are so many FPS fratboy-military-fantasy games made' rather than 'there should be more female supersoldiers'.

Reality is really not an issue here, and we shouldn't replicate an extant sexist universe as a way to avoid creating Empowerment Fantasies for other people, so I agree with you there. However, the only way we'll actually know if a really great game of this genre would tank with a female protagonist is if we make one and aggressively market it. Plus, appealing to "Well, my sexist asshole community won't buy it" as a reason not to do it is not acceptable, it is just admitting that the accusations are functionally correct and that developers are choosing to ape a sexist asshole standpoint to sell games to sexist assholes. No wonder a wider demographic doesn't exist for those medias when it is being sold as functionally antagonistic to the growth market.

I think the Hunger Games gals would happily play a game where a Crysis-suited super soldier lady used arrows to blow the hell out of alien invaders, and given the popularity of such films and books, I think guys would be okay with it too. Besides, it doesn't matter if it won't sell as well, I'm not asking if someone running a Sandwich shop in 1950's Deep South will make more money or not by selling to mixed races at the same counter. The issue is "is it right" and "shouldn't we encourage this." Cowardice and sexism explain why they are NOT doing it, but it does not justify it.

2 games are contemporary crime shooters with no protagonist selection. Again, the demographics of violent criminals are very heavily male biased. You could have developers ignore this and make games about female assassins and organised criminals, but is there actually a demand for this?

I would indeed have developers ignore demographics and make games that feature a wider range of people, absolutely. If this protagonist is meant to be exceptional within the game, I see no reason why they should have to come from a specific demographic. Unless you're actually trying to make something as realistic as possible, there's really no reason to let the realism get in the way of a good story. I would protest if I played a 1920's game where I get drunk beat my wife and kids every time I come home from a day at the office, even if said thing did indeed happen. There's no reason to say "Well, this is the MOST COMMON demographic for this..." if you're trying to tell a story. Why tell the most generic story anyway? Sounds like justifying a lazy, wimpy character choice by saying "I am a terrible writer who wants to only re-do the most commonly portrayed segments of a history I plan on entirely fictionalizing by including this character."

6 games are action/RPG/open world with selectable protagonist gender and a variety of NPCs (Saints Row, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Skylanders). The writers in those games tried to include a reasonable mix of characters; I would say they're all above average writing within their genre. Certainly you can critique them but you can't pretend that no effort was made to be inclusive or that the writers could just trivially produce whatever it is you're looking for in female characters if they chose to.

I wouldn't critique them, I think they did their part. I wouldn't know exactly if there's anything I'd take exception to, but games like Skyrim and Mass Effect generally present gamers with the ability to be whatever they want and go save the world. That's kinda what's being asked for. FemShep is a good example of a character that is both widely liked amongst the fans, preferred by many to her male incarnation in fact, and showed that letting someone play a lady doesn't instantly cause the downfall of humanity. If they made a game featuring a character like femshep in a similar setting I think she'd do just fine.

4 games are based on tired 8/16-bit mascot platformer franchises. Mario, Sonic, Zelda etc have introduced or better characterised some female characters over the years but they still focus on male protagonists. What exactly do you want here? Should this franchises be dropped (not going to happen as they are such guaranteed earners)? Should characters like Princess Peach be reinterpreted / rebooted? Should new strong female characters be introduced and placed on an equal footing (e.g. selectable/playable alongside/instead of the main characters)? Essentially this is easy to do if there is minimal story/characterisation, expensive if you want extensive different cutscenes for different characters. Saying these franchises are relics of a sexist era is easy, saying how to modernise them while retaining profitability is harder (and no saying 'discontinue them' will not achieve anything).

I think you're just overstating how difficult it is to envision someone playing a game as Zelda in a Zelda game, or how hard it would be to resist encasing her in Crystal for a whole game. Afterall, we're worried about representation here, we don't need to change every protagonist to a woman. Mario and Link can be the heroes of their games, but must Peach and Zelda always be Damsels? I know there have been hand-held games in these series where the princesses aren't needing to be rescued, but in those I'm not even sure if they appear at all.

While I think gamers would absolutely be down for a chance to play Peach, if only for the novelty of it, I'm absolutely certain they'd be cool with playing as Zelda. Even in the Link-focused games so far we've seen her help against the big badguys more than once in the final battles, and from the video I watched she's gotten some more recent incarnations that included tough girl elements like that Pirate persona of hers. I can't really speak too much more on this, Nintendo games have faded from my radar and I'm very tepid on the Zelda franchise as a whole. I liked Link to the Past and Twilight Princess (on my younger brother's Wii) but hated the N64 versions, so I'm not the best source. Personally I'd be thrilled for something different in those games, which I feel are so tired that maybe featuring Zelda in a greater role would really shake things up.

I do know that in Ocarina of Time, which everyone else loves, Zelda plays through part of the story arc as a really tough kind of Arab Ninja thing. People seemed to like that, they liked everything about that game it seems, so why not a game where she shows up in similar form again? She doesn't need to be controllable for her to be portrayed in a light that a female gamer would still look up to and go "Yeah, that's pretty cool." We also saw them play with the idea of Link more than once, I know in Twilight Princess he got turned into a dog for a lot of time, so if they're willing to mess with iconic look of Link at least for parts, why not replace dog sections with Zelda sections? I would cast a little doubt on the idea that Link is a "strong character" that people keep playing the games to experience, since he seems to have the personality of vanilla pudding, but I freely admit that could be entirely my bias. I think its more the gameplay people like, that and the reassurance and nostalgia of the green hat, Master Sword, and appearance of Ganon. No reason to take Link out entirely afterall, but you could easily have Zelda feature into parts of the gameplay. Maybe even a character-switching mechanic for some interesting puzzles, maybe even Co-op puzzles. I'd be down for that.

I don't know anything about Sonic, never even played one. The only thing I really know if it and lady characters is what I saw in the video, so I know there's someone named Amy who gets captured. Why not Sonic's yellow dude instead? Why can't you want to save your bro, yo? The same era as double dragon also asked me if I was a bad enough dude to save the President from Ninjas. Heroes can rescue more than their womenfolk.

Summation for this section being: old games still can do some permutations on the way characters are portrayed. Worst case though, if Nintendo makes an effort on most of their games, I can excuse Peach being a powderpuff. Metroid would be a good example of them backsliding though, Other M was just a travesty.

2 Assassin's Creed games; overwhelmingly male characters due to historical setting, there just weren't that many thematically appropriate historical females (or serving in the military, for the mooks) to work with, and also very heavy character/plot integration makes choice of protagonists impossible. It isn't obvious how the writers could have done better here.

That's not my experience at all, I know that in Brotherhood I had a whole bunch of female assassins on my payroll, and that there were quite a few tough females portrayed in that game at least. I haven't played the most recent ones but I would surprised if the secondary characters were a total sausage fest.

I actually think the writers did a pretty good job here. Sure, it wouldn't have killed them to make one of the characters Desmond quantum-leaps into to be a female assassin, like for example in the new game's character, but overall I think these games did a lot better of a job than would have been expected. Even if the females aren't playable characters, they're pretty rarely princesses to be rescued. Even those times I do rescue a lady I swear I've bailed out my male compatriots ten times as often. This is one of those situations I'd say "Could have been better, yo" but they did make a Native American dude into the protagonist of the next game so they were doing something, just not making a female. It's not like I want to see nothing but white female protagonists either, everyone gets a shot on the dartboard.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 : haven't played it, but female protagonist and AFAIK reasonable character diversity, series has certainly improved in that respect
Dead Island : good race/gender diversity in four playable characters, haven't played it but didn't see anything blatantly sexist in story or game design

Wouldn't know about Final Fantasy, but I assume its fine. Dead Island is, I think more troublesome for their promotional mishaps than anything actually in the game. No idea though.

So from 50 games there seem to be 4 that have a 'generic white male protagonist only' with no excusing factors;
Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, Resident Evil 6 (expect for the Ada segment), Dishonored
Those are all shooters, three of four are continuations of long-running series. Resident Evil definitely could have better character balance as it has multiple protagonists anyway. Max Payne and Far Cry 3's protagonists and plot arcs are so stereotypically male that it's not obvious (to me) how to write those plots with a female protagonist; you can either say these games should not be made (but people want them?) or you can explain how to write such a plot.

Max Payne is off my radar, I wouldn't know. If I was asked to femme that game up I'd probably just throw in a useful secondary character who shows up to bail you out a few times. Lady Getaway Driver or something? No idea, never played Max Payne. Resident Evil has at least two female protagonists that have been options in the past, so you could have gone with one of them. I don't actually know anything about 6, I'm surprised it wouldn't have a female protagonist option, the ones I played usually did. The dude often had a bigger knife but the gal had more inventory space so I always played Jill.

Far Cry... isn't that the one on the island? The protagonist of that game isn't a continuing character so no reason it can't be female. I think it's stupid to say that women couldn't possibly be willing to go to extreme lengths to survive and get off a crazy island. I did a brief wiki search and I don't see anything that makes it as impossible as you say for this to be a female protagonist. Is it a bit of a masculine power fantasy to go all Tarzan on some Pirates? Well sure, but I don't see why it couldn't appeal to women who feel like killing Pirates too. My fiancee is super girly but loves stabbing badguys. Add in a plot thread about the pirates trafficing in child slaves and women will go into protector mode just fine.

That leaves Dishonored, which has the flexibility of a fantasy world and stealth-focused gameplay that doesn't immediately call for a supersoldier bodybuilder. However it does have deep enough character relationships (well, one) that you couldn't trivially make the gender of the protagonist arbitrary as in the Fallout. So even here, how do the writers convince their publisher to spring for enough extra voice-actor / cutscene dev cash to give more protagonist options, or risk the game's profitability on a female-only protagonist (something Hollywood execs greenlighting generic action movies won't do either)? It is far from obvious.

Don't make it arbitrary, just make the protagonist female. Zammo, no need for multiple voices or paths, just say "you're a girl in this game, deal with it." I still don't care about a hypothetical profit loss from female protagonist choice, not even if there was more than a hypothetical basis on which to make said thing. I understand some people are sexist and cowardly, but that's the problem, not an excuse. I can and do expect people to do better than terrible.

[Ford Prefect]

I don't actually know anything about 6, I'm surprised it wouldn't have a female protagonist option, the ones I played usually did. The dude often had a bigger knife but the gal had more inventory space so I always played Jill.

RE6 has seven playable characters, three of whom are chicks.

[Stark]

Helena and Sherry aren't put on the back seat to their male partners, either. I mean, Sherry saves Jake and all.

[Metahive]

I think you're just overstating how difficult it is to envision someone playing a game as Zelda in a Zelda game, or how hard it would be to resist encasing her in Crystal for a whole game. Afterall, we're worried about representation here, we don't need to change every protagonist to a woman. Mario and Link can be the heroes of their games, but must Peach and Zelda always be Damsels? I know there have been hand-held games in these series where the princesses aren't needing to be rescued, but in those I'm not even sure if they appear at all.

While I think gamers would absolutely be down for a chance to play Peach, if only for the novelty of it, I'm absolutely certain they'd be cool with playing as Zelda. Even in the Link-focused games so far we've seen her help against the big badguys more than once in the final battles, and from the video I watched she's gotten some more recent incarnations that included tough girl elements like that Pirate persona of hers. I can't really speak too much more on this, Nintendo games have faded from my radar and I'm very tepid on the Zelda franchise as a whole. I liked Link to the Past and Twilight Princess (on my younger brother's Wii) but hated the N64 versions, so I'm not the best source. Personally I'd be thrilled for something different in those games, which I feel are so tired that maybe featuring Zelda in a greater role would really shake things up.

Yes, they went there and Peach shows she can beat up Bowser just fine armed with a parasol. Which makes it all the more galling that he can kidnap her so easily in all the other games. I guess she just doesn't like to make Mario feel superfluous.
O yeah, and Peach's superpowers in that game were emotional outbursts. BY THE POWER OF EMO!

I don't know anything about Sonic, never even played one. The only thing I really know if it and lady characters is what I saw in the video, so I know there's someone named Amy who gets captured. Why not Sonic's yellow dude instead? Why can't you want to save your bro, yo? The same era as double dragon also asked me if I was a bad enough dude to save the President from Ninjas. Heroes can rescue more than their womenfolk.

Amy Rose has to be rescued in just one game (Sonic CD) and she's a fully playable character in several other Sonic games (Adventure, Heroes, '06 etc.). That "yellow dude" if you mean "yellow hedgehog" is actually Super Saiyajin Sonic.

[DaveJB]

The cutscenes in-between the worlds in Super Mario 3D Land actually showed Peach fighting back against her Koopa captors with some degree of success, but ultimately getting recaptured by their sheer weight of numbers.

As for the Zelda series, there actually were two games where you played as Princess Zelda, one of which you had to save both Link and Zelda's father... unfortunately, they were both on the CD-i.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think Skyward Sword also has Zelda doing some time jumping adventuring herself. I don't recall, from watching my SO play it, her just sitting around awaiting for that boy she so loves. Plus, she's a pirate in Wind Waker.

And yes, RE6 has several females you can play with or see doing stuff other than flail uselessly or act as eye candy.

[Vendetta]

I don't know anything about Sonic, never even played one. The only thing I really know if it and lady characters is what I saw in the video, so I know there's someone named Amy who gets captured. Why not Sonic's yellow dude instead? Why can't you want to save your bro, yo? The same era as double dragon also asked me if I was a bad enough dude to save the President from Ninjas. Heroes can rescue more than their womenfolk.

Amy Rose has to be rescued in just one game (Sonic CD) and she's a fully playable character in several other Sonic games (Adventure, Heroes, '06 etc.). That "yellow dude" if you mean "yellow hedgehog" is actually Super Saiyajin Sonic.

He probably meant Tails.

Sonic CD was actually created before the character of Tails was introduced in Sonic 2 (though it was released afterwards).

[Ford Prefect]

Helena and Sherry aren't put on the back seat to their male partners, either. I mean, Sherry saves Jake and all.

Amusingly it's even Sherry who makes the cliched promise to protect Jake and not the other way around.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Yes, they went there and Peach shows she can beat up Bowser just fine armed with a parasol. Which makes it all the more galling that he can kidnap her so easily in all the other games. I guess she just doesn't like to make Mario feel superfluous.
O yeah, and Peach's superpowers in that game were emotional outbursts. BY THE POWER OF EMO!

It's not about emo or anything; it's about how women are creatures of wild emotion, unlike those rational men, and aside from fitting that terrible stereotype, it's worse in another way. When they make a game where Peach is the protagonist, they don't build it around Peach's character at all but build it around generic woman powers that don't match her preexisting personality at all (since when has Peach been anything but soft-spoken, determined, or cheerful?), because "woman" is enough traits to flesh out a character, right?

[JLTucker]

And yes, RE6 has several females you can play with or see doing stuff other than flail uselessly or act as eye candy.

What about Claire Redfield? I always enjoyed the games she was in more than all of the new stuff (RE2 and Code Veronica). She seemed well developed too: loyal to her family, empathetic (Sherri, Rodrigo, Steve), can handle herself in tough situations, and not sexualized in the games I mentioned.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I guess Claire and Jill are probably some of the best examples from the nineties of how to do a strong, still attractive to play, and relatable female protagonist. They kinda dropped the ball with Sheva, though.

[DaveJB]

It's not about emo or anything; it's about how women are creatures of wild emotion, unlike those rational men

In fairness, they were doing something very similar with one of the Wario games at the same time, so I doubt it was an attempt to negatively stereotype women, even if the resulting mechanic was very clumsily executed.

Having said that, I'm surprised no-one at Nintendo seized on the obvious idea and made Super Princess Peach the spiritual successor of Super Mario Bros. 2, the other game (outside the Mario RPG/Paper Mario series) where the Princess had an active role throughout the storyline.

[Stark]

I guess Claire and Jill are probably some of the best examples from the nineties of how to do a strong, still attractive to play, and relatable female protagonist. They kinda dropped the ball with Sheva, though.

In the game where you have to grope someone's tits to save them from mind control, I think they made a mistake or two with gender issues. :V

Sherry is so choice she not only has super powers and a secret past and all that jazz, she totally takes charge immediately and (regardless of Jake's super powers) constantly works with an attitude that she has to protect him, because she's in the Secret Service. She even lectures him on feeling sorry for himself! Even if Jake is that player! Jake has much less volition in the game and plot than she does, and the whole point of their story is that Sherry shows him how to take charge of his life and define himself as a person.

Then again, this is all so advanced and complex that people on the internet actually ask WHY DOES JAKE SAY SHERRY SAVED HIM AT THE END?!?!?!?!?!!??!!?!?!?!?!