If there is anything that's really great about writing a gaming blog, it's the research. Earlier today, I decided to do some research on Dr. Mario, and determined that Mario is the worst doctor ever.
In fact, once I'm done writting this, I'll probably do more "research" on Portal 2. Look at me still blogging when there's science to do...
Believe it or not, there are more to games than just playing them. There's the industry itself; the geeky subculture; the fanbase ("Alistair looked deeply into Sten's eyes and whispered..."); and game creation. Oh, and marketing. That's important, too.
With all that in mind, I decided to conduct a very unscientific experiment.
I would like to take a moment to apologize to my professors who taught me everything I needed to know about performing a psychology experiment. Please forgive me. I'll do better next time! I'll form hypotheses and everything!
The experiment was very simple. I would walk into a game store, and ask the clerk if she or he could recommend a game for me. Then, I would explain just what kind of game I was looking for: "I'm looking for a game that has a strong female lead who's not, like, oversexualized."
Needless to say, hilarity ensued.
I feel the need to state that I live in a small city, with a population of about 30,000. There are very few locally owned businesses, most of which are restaurants. Almost everything here belongs to a chain or some sort of franchise. In short, there are no independent game stores here, making my options for pseudo-research rather limited.
This town is kind of a downer.
I came up with a quick list of games that met my criterea, which was harder than I expected:
1. Dragon Age
2. Portal/Portal 2
3. Mirror's Edge
4. Metroid
Those were the games I thought I would be recommended to me. They're by no means the only games that have heroines that are more than a pair of boobs on a stick-figure, but I was expecting these because they're not exactly obsucre. Like, say, Radiant Historia.
The first place I stopped was Target, which, to be fair, isn't solely a game store. The one in my area has a pretty decent selection of games, but they only stock new or relatively new releases. It's like the Top 40 Radio Station, but with Mario.
After hearing the clerk discuss games with another customer, I got up my nerve and stepped up to him. After double-checking to make sure he was a gamer, I asked my question.
I have never seen such a look of sheer puzzlement cross anyone's face before. He wrinkled his forehead, furrowed his brows, pursed his lips. Granted, he had probably never been asked about female leads in games before, and likely won't be asked again. He asked me which system it was for, presumably to help him figure out a good answer to the question.
When I told him "any", there were a few more seconds of awkward silence before he finally spoke again. That was obviously not the answer he was hoping to hear.
I sort of feel for this guy, actually. I used to work in a bookstore, and occassionally people would ask for things like "the book with the blue cover". Well, if you don't know the title, author, or genre, we don't either. Please be nice to your local booksellers and ask intelligent questions.
We cruised through the game aisles, and he eventually game up with two suggestion: Final Fantasy XIII-2, because the main character is a girl, and Skyrim, because you can create a female character. I thanked him, explained what I was doing, and then gave him my suggestions.
His reaction? Perhaps not overly pleased, but I wasn't asked to leave the store, either. When I told him my suggestions, he just sort of nodded and said, "Oh, right. Those games. Yeah, I think we have Metroid around somewhere."
Maybe going to Target wasn't fair, but I wanted to stop at a couple places like it. Not everyone goes into game stores, but plenty of people shop at Target. Large stores like this are the "mainstream" of gaming, if you will. What's kept in stock there is a reflection of the most popular games. You're not going to find Ace Attorney there, but you will find everything that the cool kids are playing.
"You kept shoving pills down his throat! He only had a headache!" - VGCats
In fact, once I'm done writting this, I'll probably do more "research" on Portal 2. Look at me still blogging when there's science to do...
Believe it or not, there are more to games than just playing them. There's the industry itself; the geeky subculture; the fanbase ("Alistair looked deeply into Sten's eyes and whispered..."); and game creation. Oh, and marketing. That's important, too.
With all that in mind, I decided to conduct a very unscientific experiment.
I would like to take a moment to apologize to my professors who taught me everything I needed to know about performing a psychology experiment. Please forgive me. I'll do better next time! I'll form hypotheses and everything!
The experiment was very simple. I would walk into a game store, and ask the clerk if she or he could recommend a game for me. Then, I would explain just what kind of game I was looking for: "I'm looking for a game that has a strong female lead who's not, like, oversexualized."
Needless to say, hilarity ensued.
I feel the need to state that I live in a small city, with a population of about 30,000. There are very few locally owned businesses, most of which are restaurants. Almost everything here belongs to a chain or some sort of franchise. In short, there are no independent game stores here, making my options for pseudo-research rather limited.
This town is kind of a downer.
I came up with a quick list of games that met my criterea, which was harder than I expected:
1. Dragon Age
2. Portal/Portal 2
3. Mirror's Edge
4. Metroid
Those were the games I thought I would be recommended to me. They're by no means the only games that have heroines that are more than a pair of boobs on a stick-figure, but I was expecting these because they're not exactly obsucre. Like, say, Radiant Historia.
The first place I stopped was Target, which, to be fair, isn't solely a game store. The one in my area has a pretty decent selection of games, but they only stock new or relatively new releases. It's like the Top 40 Radio Station, but with Mario.
After hearing the clerk discuss games with another customer, I got up my nerve and stepped up to him. After double-checking to make sure he was a gamer, I asked my question.
I have never seen such a look of sheer puzzlement cross anyone's face before. He wrinkled his forehead, furrowed his brows, pursed his lips. Granted, he had probably never been asked about female leads in games before, and likely won't be asked again. He asked me which system it was for, presumably to help him figure out a good answer to the question.
When I told him "any", there were a few more seconds of awkward silence before he finally spoke again. That was obviously not the answer he was hoping to hear.
I sort of feel for this guy, actually. I used to work in a bookstore, and occassionally people would ask for things like "the book with the blue cover". Well, if you don't know the title, author, or genre, we don't either. Please be nice to your local booksellers and ask intelligent questions.
We cruised through the game aisles, and he eventually game up with two suggestion: Final Fantasy XIII-2, because the main character is a girl, and Skyrim, because you can create a female character. I thanked him, explained what I was doing, and then gave him my suggestions.
His reaction? Perhaps not overly pleased, but I wasn't asked to leave the store, either. When I told him my suggestions, he just sort of nodded and said, "Oh, right. Those games. Yeah, I think we have Metroid around somewhere."
Maybe going to Target wasn't fair, but I wanted to stop at a couple places like it. Not everyone goes into game stores, but plenty of people shop at Target. Large stores like this are the "mainstream" of gaming, if you will. What's kept in stock there is a reflection of the most popular games. You're not going to find Ace Attorney there, but you will find everything that the cool kids are playing.
"Let's get out the Bro-box and play some Bro-lo!"-Gorbi and Ginger, the two most non-bro people I know.
A few days later, I marched boldly onward to a GameStop. I was a bit more hopeful about this one. If Target is the Top 40 radio station of video games, GameStop is the radio station that plays just about everything. It's sort of fun to pick through the cheap games and obscure titles that you've never heard of. (Check out Darkened Skye!)
There was one guy working, and I browsed for a minute or two while he helped another customer. I finally approached and asked my question, and I have to say, this guys' reaction was my favorite so far.
"I'm looking for a game with a strong female lead, who's not, like, oversexualized."
He laughed and walked over to the Wii and DS games. After a minute or two of contemplating--while standing right in front of two Metroid games, I might add--he finally said something that I hadn't expected to hear: "Well, there's a few, but I'm trying to think of something that's not little kiddish."
I hadn't even thought about that. I probably should have taken it into consideration, I realized, as I stared at the Tangled and Cooking Mama games. While I'm not about to argue that Cooking Mama is a character that young girls should aspire to be (She cooks! She's a Mama! Sometimes, we even let her out of the house to garden!), I really had to wonder what games young girls really were playing.
But I digress.
We moved on to the Xbox games after a minute.
GameStop Guy: Final Fantasy...eh...it could really do with a strong female lead.
That reaction really surprised me. I'd assumed that I would get a lot of recommendations for Final Fantasy games, not only because of XIII, but also because they have a giant fanbase. Just because a girl is the lead character doesn't mean that she's a good role model. You know who you are, Cinderella.
GameStop Guy: Yeah, the problem is that's how a lot of games get marketed.
Me: Yeah, and bikinis will totally protect you from energy swords.
After another minute, I came clean and explained what I was doing, and gave him my (short) list of suggestions. He said that suggesting Portal had never even occurred to him, because all the characters were robots.
Except, you know, the one you play as. But we'll get into that in a later post.
Anyway, I bought a Metroid game (Nintendo, Y U MAKE METROID FIRST PERSON?), thanked him for being a good sport...and it was time to move on to the next store.
For science, of course.
After a very frightening drive, I somehow managed to make it over to another GameStop in one piece. The guy working there was absolutely great. After a couple of minutes nonchalantly browsing shelves, I finally stepped up to the clerk and asked about leading ladies.
After a brief "hmmm", he finally said, "Have you ever played Mass Effect?"
Mass Effect! I had never even thought of Mass Effect. Bad fangirl! Bad!
He continues: "You can have a girl character, and it actually does make a difference which gender you play." He turned to see what games were behind the desk and listed a few. "Well, I'd say Tomb Raider, but Lara..."
Me: "Yeah, she's somethin' else."
GameStop Guy: "And there's Bayonetta, but...hey, do you like Final Fantasy games at all?"
I am probably being too harsh on XIII, but dammit, SquareEnix, I want a GAME, not an interactive cut scene.
I really loved this. He didn't take long to answer, and it was easy to tell that he knew what he was talking about. At the mention of Portal, he said that Chel was actually probably the best heroine out right now...too bad you never see her. After that, our conversation quickly spiraled to "Blah blah BioWare blah."
GameStop Guy #2, never quit you job.
There was just one last stop that I needed to make before this experiment could be concluded: Best Buy.
It didn't take me long to find someone to ask, and after a brief pause, he had an answer: Mirror's Edge.
I could have hugged him.
He called another employee over and asked him about games with strong female leads. The second guy responded with Metroid. And that was the moment I realized that I needed to actually go to Best Buy more often.
I was really surprised and delighted. I gave them my short list (now with Mass Effect tacked on at the end), and at the mention of Portal, their reactions were something like, "Oh, why didn't we think of that?"
As any good psychologist (or wannabe researcher) knows, you need to replicate your experiments to ensure that it wasn't just a fluke, and to test your hypotheses using other variables. I'd really like to see what would happen if I had a guy go into game stores and about female characters, or what a woman working at a game store would say. But that's another post.
It's not easy finding a game to fit those two criteria. I love that women are featured as main characters more and more, and I want to see it as a sign that the industry's changing. One study from 1998 found that, of the 33 games used in the study, 41% (13.5 games, if you want to get technical) had no female characters at all.
I can't adequately express how much I love how much this has changed. It's not just that women are present in games now, but also that they're taking an active role--no longer just damsels in distress or femme fatales.
The problem now is what I'm going to title "the Lara Conundrum". You can make female leads with good characterization, goals, an unwillingness to back down...
But you should also make sure they don't get buried underneath their boobs.
What we have now--for the most part--is a mix of empowerment and objectification. Two things I never thought would go together, and then I started writing this blog.
There was one guy working, and I browsed for a minute or two while he helped another customer. I finally approached and asked my question, and I have to say, this guys' reaction was my favorite so far.
"I'm looking for a game with a strong female lead, who's not, like, oversexualized."
He laughed and walked over to the Wii and DS games. After a minute or two of contemplating--while standing right in front of two Metroid games, I might add--he finally said something that I hadn't expected to hear: "Well, there's a few, but I'm trying to think of something that's not little kiddish."
I hadn't even thought about that. I probably should have taken it into consideration, I realized, as I stared at the Tangled and Cooking Mama games. While I'm not about to argue that Cooking Mama is a character that young girls should aspire to be (She cooks! She's a Mama! Sometimes, we even let her out of the house to garden!), I really had to wonder what games young girls really were playing.
But I digress.
We moved on to the Xbox games after a minute.
GameStop Guy: Final Fantasy...eh...it could really do with a strong female lead.
That reaction really surprised me. I'd assumed that I would get a lot of recommendations for Final Fantasy games, not only because of XIII, but also because they have a giant fanbase. Just because a girl is the lead character doesn't mean that she's a good role model. You know who you are, Cinderella.
 |
| Above: armor |
Me: Yeah, and bikinis will totally protect you from energy swords.
After another minute, I came clean and explained what I was doing, and gave him my (short) list of suggestions. He said that suggesting Portal had never even occurred to him, because all the characters were robots.
Except, you know, the one you play as. But we'll get into that in a later post.
Anyway, I bought a Metroid game (Nintendo, Y U MAKE METROID FIRST PERSON?), thanked him for being a good sport...and it was time to move on to the next store.
For science, of course.
After a very frightening drive, I somehow managed to make it over to another GameStop in one piece. The guy working there was absolutely great. After a couple of minutes nonchalantly browsing shelves, I finally stepped up to the clerk and asked about leading ladies.
After a brief "hmmm", he finally said, "Have you ever played Mass Effect?"
Mass Effect! I had never even thought of Mass Effect. Bad fangirl! Bad!
He continues: "You can have a girl character, and it actually does make a difference which gender you play." He turned to see what games were behind the desk and listed a few. "Well, I'd say Tomb Raider, but Lara..."
Me: "Yeah, she's somethin' else."
 |
| High heel gun shoes are the last thing I would want to wear when I'm fighting angels. |
I am probably being too harsh on XIII, but dammit, SquareEnix, I want a GAME, not an interactive cut scene.
I really loved this. He didn't take long to answer, and it was easy to tell that he knew what he was talking about. At the mention of Portal, he said that Chel was actually probably the best heroine out right now...too bad you never see her. After that, our conversation quickly spiraled to "Blah blah BioWare blah."
GameStop Guy #2, never quit you job.
There was just one last stop that I needed to make before this experiment could be concluded: Best Buy.
It didn't take me long to find someone to ask, and after a brief pause, he had an answer: Mirror's Edge.
I could have hugged him.
He called another employee over and asked him about games with strong female leads. The second guy responded with Metroid. And that was the moment I realized that I needed to actually go to Best Buy more often.
I was really surprised and delighted. I gave them my short list (now with Mass Effect tacked on at the end), and at the mention of Portal, their reactions were something like, "Oh, why didn't we think of that?"
As any good psychologist (or wannabe researcher) knows, you need to replicate your experiments to ensure that it wasn't just a fluke, and to test your hypotheses using other variables. I'd really like to see what would happen if I had a guy go into game stores and about female characters, or what a woman working at a game store would say. But that's another post.
It's not easy finding a game to fit those two criteria. I love that women are featured as main characters more and more, and I want to see it as a sign that the industry's changing. One study from 1998 found that, of the 33 games used in the study, 41% (13.5 games, if you want to get technical) had no female characters at all.
I can't adequately express how much I love how much this has changed. It's not just that women are present in games now, but also that they're taking an active role--no longer just damsels in distress or femme fatales.
The problem now is what I'm going to title "the Lara Conundrum". You can make female leads with good characterization, goals, an unwillingness to back down...
But you should also make sure they don't get buried underneath their boobs.
What we have now--for the most part--is a mix of empowerment and objectification. Two things I never thought would go together, and then I started writing this blog.
Objectification: Seeing a person not as a person, but as an object--in such a way that it removes the person's identity.
 |
| Sexy, sexy objectification. |
While it's usually used in terms of men objectifying women, it can go both ways.
How do we separate the two, or do they go hand-in-hand when it comes to gaming? Is it possible to make a kick-ass female character who still looks good?
I wish I had the answers for this. I wish that when I yell, "I want to be her!" I knew whether it was because that character is strong in her own way--or whether it's because I will never look that good in leather. Hooray for self-objectification! :D
Or maybe it's because I'll never get to ride around on dragons in real life. That's a downer, too.
I hope we're going in the right direction. I hope that we see more Samuses than Ivys, that Lara gets her shit together, and that girl gamers don't feel worse about themselves when they put the controller down.
Before I end, I just want to send a massive THANK YOU to the employees and Target, GameStop, and Best Buy that helped me with this. You guys are awesome, and thanks for not kicking me out of your store.
Up next: Portal 2
Image credits:
Bayonetta - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonetta
Link - http://emptyclosets.com/forum/chit-chat/53472-crushes-fictional-characters-4.html
Link - http://emptyclosets.com/forum/chit-chat/53472-crushes-fictional-characters-4.html
Work Cited
Dietz, T. L. (1998). An
examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications
for gender socialization and aggressive behavior. Sex Roles, 38(5-6), 425-442.
Sexy, sexy APA style.
Or it would be, if I could get the indent to work.
