120°

Potrayal of Women in Video Games: Will There be a Change

Women have always tended to be unrecognized, unappreciated, and unaccepted in all types of media, with an exception, I would say, in movies and television. The world of video games is no exception to the truth. Women have been marginalized in all types of media, and I have especially seen this in the world of video games.

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gamingnews01.com
Kurt Russell4303d ago

I hope not, I really don't fancy fat lager lout slags in my games as well as my town.

Xof4303d ago

It's not an issue of being fat or ugly... in many cases it's not an issue of appearence, at all, it's an issue of personality and depiction.

E.g. most women are represented in games as sexual objects. Instances where female characters are portrayed as, well, characters are pretty goddamned rare. For every one Uncharted, there are sixty-thousand Devil May Crys.

GuyThatPlaysGames4303d ago

No. Because women are objects in reality so in games they will remain the same.

sjaakiejj4303d ago

Hey look, another White Knight in Shining Armor, here to protect and rescue women from the evils from the games industry!

"Crystal Dynamics has said that sexual violence is not a theme covered in the game. However, whether the scene is or is not a rape scene, there is slight sexual undertones to it, and to an extent, viewers can see this as an attempted sexual assault. On top of all this, whenever Laura Croft gets hurt in the game, her pains sound more like sexual moans than anything else. It’s just another way to sexualize and marginalize women in video games."

lol

Run_bare4303d ago

"Women have always tended to be unrecognized, unappreciated, and unaccepted in all types of media"

He must be joking, the women in gaming are very recognisable cause most of gamers are still males. When there are more women as gamers, then the men will take more of centre place.

There is nothing wrong with sexuality, it's normal as we all human as long as it's mutual consent and not harming anyone.

goldwyncq4303d ago

We have enough articles like this, we don't really need another one.

OmniSlashPT4303d ago

All men characters in SF and fighting games are muscular and freaking beasts showing all their abs, but that's ok. Oh, but it has a female with boobs and showing a little skin? how disgusting!

srls

Tameel14303d ago (Edited 4303d ago )

The difference is that the muscle bound hulks are rarely created to appeal to women. They are created to appeal to male gamers. They're represented as the "ideal male", not the ideal sexual fantasy for a woman. Let's face it, characters like Marcus Fenix or Kratos aren't exactly the gaming equivalent of Brad Pitt or George Clooney or (forgive the example) Edward Cullen. The sexiest examples of male characters I can think of in mainstream games are either Solid Snake or Leon Kennedy and neither or them are particularly sexualized. At least not to the extent that many female game characters are.

Male characters aren't just power fantasies, though. Video games in general have the "movie problem": almost all background and side characters are male, with a variety of ages and body types, with one generic sexy woman character and maybe another woman as the sexy scientist, if you're lucky.

Those female characters, however, generally do not represent the power fantasies of other women, but the sexual fantasies of men. They have big jiggling boobs because it's sexy, not because it's realistic or because it represents a strength. They're scantily clad because it's sexy, not because it provides any particular advantage to their bodies or their movement. When they show up in posters or concept art, they are rarely posing in "powerful" or "strong" positions; instead, they are showing off their assets to the male audience. Nothing throws me out of a game more than seeing a game where the men are muscular, armored and ready for battle while the women are skinny rakes with large exposed breasts who look like they belong in a strip joint instead of the battle field.

Not that I have a problem with either depiction of men or women. But I wish it was more equal on both ends. If a female character is scantily clad, why not give the player the option to make a male character just as scantily clad? If a female character has jiggling boobs, why not give a male character a bulge or something equally sexualized? If a male character is a big hulking beast, why not create an equally hulking muscular woman? If it makes sense in context of the game, then it should certainly be equal.

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90°

6 Friendliest Characters in Games

GF365: "Oftentimes, video games have characters who are antagonistic and really not very pleasant. Here are some of the friendliest characters in games where you might not otherwise expect to find them."

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gamefreaks365.com
thorstein245d ago

Dogmeat: *bark!*

Translation: you are dead to me.

JSONEHUNDRED244d ago

You can probably add Karlach to this from BG3

30°

Tomb Raider’s Risky 2013 Reboot Revived a '90s Gaming Icon

Crystal Dynamics' daring reboot of Tomb Raider brought Lara Croft back into the spotlight.

Godmars290403d ago

An attempt at a reboot with no momentum for continuance. Just a torture-porn trilogy about a poor rich girl with daddy issues reluctantly being pulling into a world of violence, versus say the adventures of a quipping Brit treasure hunter who solves ancient puzzles while gunning down rare and extinct animals that it originally was?

Honestly, don't have all that killing. If the devs had been truly clever, not focused on mangling a message about the senselessness of killing which was seemingly and quickly forgotten, they could have worked, if not bloodlessly then not directly by Laura's hand, dealing with enemies as part of the puzzle solving - they didn't have in the game in the first place...

badz149402d ago

"Revived a '90s Gaming Icon"

LOL

the only thing similar between the 2 is the name of the protagonist. if they would have given the game a different name, NONE would even think that it was somehow a resurrected Tomb Raider IP. the last game with the real Tomb Raider DNA was TR Underworld.

250°

The Tomb Raider Survivor Trilogy's Take on Lara Croft Deserved More Recognition

The Survivor Trilogy was a drastic reimagining of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, and it provokes changes for the character that are truly fantastic.

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gamerant.com
isarai467d ago (Edited 467d ago )

Deserves less IMO, i think the 1st in the new trilogy was a perfect 1st step for the new direction. The next 2 games were half steps at best. Not only that, every character in the series including Lara is just annoying and doesn't make sense in terms of motive, like yes they have a motive, but none of it seems proportional to the lengths they are willing to go through for it. The most annoying thing is every one of the games say "become the Tomb Raider" yet 3 games later and we're still not there? No thanks. Then there's the mess of the 3rd game, massive skill tree that serves almost no purpose as there's literally only like 3-4 short encounters in the whole game, and they took till the 3rd game to finally manage some decent puzzles even remotely close to previous games in the series. Nah, the trilogy infuriated me to no end as a long time fan of the series, i hope we get better going forward cause that crap sucked.

Army_of_Darkness465d ago

The first in the trilogy was my favorite. I thought they were going into the right direction with that one until the second one came out and seemed like a graphical downgrade but the gameplay was okay. As for the Third, Graphics were really nice but it was kinda boring me to death with its non-stop platforming and exploring with not enough action! Well, for me anyway...

DeathTouch465d ago

Graphics on the 3rd one were abysmal. It’s more colorful and has more variety, but everything else was a noticeable downgrade.

The more open world with NPC quests was also handled very poorly, to the point I missed Angel of Darkness.

thesoftware730465d ago

I know it is your opinion, but she did progress as a character in each game, she even got more muscular and seasoned.

That is the thing, people first complained that there was not enough platforming and actual tomb raiding in the first and second games. Shadow remedied that and kept the combat elements.

3-4 encounters? huh? did we play the same game? there was plenty of combat and, the skill tree did matter, like being able to hang enemies from trees, set explosives traps on bodies, being able to counter, and that are just a few of the combat skills. The skill tree also had things like being able to hold your breath underwater longer, crafting upgrades, zipline upgrade, and climbing upgrades that all changed how you can approach situations.

Not knocking your opinion, but we definitely had different experiences. I had 98% completion on the shadow.

SoulWarrior465d ago (Edited 465d ago )

Sorry but i'm with him about the low number of encounters, the game throws loads of weapons and skills you're way with a comparatively low amount of places to actually use them, so they felt under utilised.

-Foxtrot466d ago

Yeah...no

It was awful, for THREE GAMES it was "become the Tomb Raider" where she went back to square one after each game. Not to mention after a huge reaction of killing someone for the first time she then becomes Rambo straight after and goes on a slaughter spree without a single other reaction. Her development was all over the place.

She was whiney, weak and in later game a little arrogant and selfish

Oh and the voice actress compared to the previous ones was not as good

Lara Croft deserved better and while they are decent games as they are, we deserved actual Tomb Raider games, we could have had better survival games if they just stuck with the original Lara Crofts origin about her plane going down. Surviving 2 weeks in the Himalayas...I'd have liked to seen that, who knows what mystical threat she could have faced in the mountains or underground some secret concealed cave.

Tacoboto465d ago

I thought Shadow of the Tomb Raider had better gameplay than Rise, but it annoyed me the most of the trilogy when I stopped to think about the story.

It's like they deliberately decided to make her unlikeable and did nothing to make the character you're playing as likeable or have even one sign of humility.

SoulWarrior466d ago

2013 I thought was a fine entry, but Rise and especially Shadow were painfully mediocre follow ups imo, I really didn't like how selfish and angry her character was in those two.

Terry_B465d ago

No. Please forget the crap completely.

northpaws465d ago

First one was decent, played through it twice.
Second one was okay, played through it once.
Third one was really bad, tried twice a year apart, still can't get through the first two hours, it is just really bad.

thesoftware730465d ago

Honest question, what did you find bad about it? the opening 2 hrs of Shadow were fantastic imo.

The opening was very similar to the first 2, what did you find really bad?

Not looking for an argument, just an honest question.

Starman69465d ago

3rd one just didn't feel like a tomb raider game. Possibly because the development was passed to another development team. Big mistake! Microsoft killed tomb raider making the first game a timed exclusive. Never recovered after that.

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