I recently received Morning’s Wrath to review for Game Tunnel. I won’t talk about it much here, but I will say that it may be the first game I’ve played in which I had to take on the role of a female character.
If anything, it led to some interesting conversations. I was telling a friend of mine about the peculiar way non-player characters give you items. Someone overheard the following statements:
“So my boyfriend has locked himself in a room, and he’s casting a spell to let the Ashidians invade the castle. So I go to the Royal Engineer to get the key to the room, and he says that he is giving me the key. I start to walk away when I notice the key on the ground. For some reason, people don’t give you items. They throw them on the ground as if to say, ‘Hah! Go get it!’
I’m thinking, ‘You can’t treat me like this! I’m a princess!’”
I got a strange look from a nearby friend who walked into that part of the conversation.
On a more serious note, I find it interesting that I’ve never played a female protagonist until now. Specifically, I’ve never played a game in which the story revolved around being a heroine. Immediately, I’m introduced to my secret lover, and my character has a secret tryst with him to discuss their plans for the future together.
Wacky!
It reminded me of an article I read. In a past issue of The Escapist, Julianne Greer wrote about playing Dragon Warrior and her encounter with Princess Gwaelin. If you don’t know about that part of the game, you save the princess, and when you talk to her in the throne room, she asks if you love her. If you say no, she says the famous line, “But thou must!” and repeats the question. There is no getting out of it. You must love her. Fanfare plays. In fact, Gwaelin’s Love is actually an item you can use to communicate with her no matter where you are in the world.
When I played it, I didn’t even blink. When a heterosexual woman played the role of the hero, however, the response can be a bit different and awkward.
Now, I realize that videogames have been traditionally created for males. That has been the bread and butter demographic for games. But, with instances like the above, isn’t it a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Yes, girls like romance and love and all that gooey stuff, but can’t there be a “Female Hero” button? Where you rescue Prince Gunther?
Playing the role of a female in Morning’s Wrath is interesting. It’s different. It was a new experience. It was fun.
But if all of the games I played required me to be a female, I can imagine being frustrated and unwanted. Clearly games wouldn’t be meant for me.
I remember as a child coming up with a game in which you can pick any of a number of characters to start out with, and depending upon who you picked, you would start your adventure in a different part of the world. Eventually, no matter who you picked, you would end up involved in the main story arc of the game. You would just do so from different points of view. You can start out as a thief in a big city or a poor farmer living with your parents. The thief may hear about some strange activities in a nearby village involving guild members getting shaken down. The farmer may just live too close for comfort to those same activities. Either way, the character you pick is now personally involved in the story, and throughout the game, the game caters to your chosen role.
Are there any games that already do what my childish creativity imagined years ago? If not, wouldn’t it be rather simple to make a game with a “Male Hero” and “Female Hero” button?
That could very well be one of (if not The one) the major reasons why so few females play games. As you said, imagine the frustration of having 99.9% of the games out there with a male hero and the female element only involved in the emotional aspect of the story or as assisting characters; that is if it has a story to begin with of course.
If TV can be considered a form of comparison, when I think of what kind of shows my girlfriend likes to watch; it immediately jumps to my attention that most of her favorite shows are either led by females or have a very high, if not equal, female participation. She is by far not the “romance and love and all that gooey stuff” kind, in fact most of her favorite shows are police shows and action stuff.
So, we practically watch the same kind of TV shows, we spend equal amounts of time in front of the computer, yet I’m a gameaholic while “Spider Solitaire” is her favorite game!
I have often wondered about this and tried to get her to play some of the games I play, but when I think about it I can’t find a reason why she would! For me, one of the main reasons I play and like a game is the story involvement and the “connection” with the character; but I don’t think I would have connected that much with all the games I play if all of them had female heroines (no sexism here, it’s purely a matter of identity, gender included).
I love Tomb Raider, and if I think harder I could probably find a few more titles with female lead that I totally adored, but I can’t imagine how it would’ve been like if ALL the available titles were like this. I don’t think I would’ve liked games that much either…
The “female hero button” idea sounds like a good solution, but I doubt that it would that easy to build into an “action” game that has a preset story that you play through. It’s not as simple as a gender reversal, it would mean a fundamental story change because, naturally, males and females think in different ways and do things and react to things differently. It would (and does) work for certain types of games, such as RPGs, which also hold a great resemblance to your childhood idea.
One game that I have played from the genre of third-person action and which also had a slight resemblance to this idea was “Fahrenheit” (aka “Indigo Prophecy”). Although the main plot line “hero” was a male, there were parts of the game you had to play as other characters. One of these characters was the lead female character, the police inspector, who had an important, and rather large, part of the story to her side.
Another game I just recalled with a very obvious “male/female hero” choice was Resident Evil 2, which enabled you to either play as the male cop or the female survivor, and whichever side you chose the storyline proceeds in the same direction, although you get to see it from different angles. The obvious effect this had was adding playability; as soon as you finished the game as one character you would wanna play it again as the other character to see the difference. I can’t be sure whether this also encouraged any female players to play it or like it, but the fact that it was a horror game full of gore doesn’t give me high hopes. The following sequel, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; enjoyable as it was, was led by none other than the female heroine Jill Valentine. Needless to say, it was one of my favorite games.
The conclusion from all this is, we certainly do need more female-oriented games if females are to be a part of the game audience. We also need some significant amount of creativity to make more games with a “male/female hero button” that still makes both sides want to play it. It’s not easy, sure, but is anything worth doing ever easy?
(P.S.: Sorry if the comment was too long, it actually feels like an article of its own *blush*. For a moment I thought of publishing it on my own blog, and maybe I will; but for the time being it seemed more in-context here…)
Left by Islam Ossama on May 17th, 2007