I Feel Like a Woman

For several years feminist blogs have been fighting with sexism in video games - for example, the feminists won an apology from Techland for a skill called "feminist whore" in Dead Island and from Deep Silver for Riptide Collector's Edition.In my opinion chauvinism in not the main problem in this case, though.

There was supposed to be a picture of Elizabeth on the cover of BioShock Infinite, but as market research showed - game wouldn't have high sales level if there was a woman on the cover. So there is a Guy With a Huge Gun instead. Well, there could be as well Ms. Croft or a long-legged elf female with armor that doesn't cover any specific part of the body, but for sure not dark-haired, innocent girl. EVEN with such a neckline as Elizabeth has.

Naughty Dog had similar problem with The Last of Us. They had to fight to put Ellie next to Joel because the publisher wanted to put there only... a Guy With a Huge Gun. And no matter how absurd it sounds, it is not the worst part. It turns out that cyberpunky Remember Me couldn't find any publisher because of simple reason - the main character is female.

All because of one scene in which Nilin isn't jumping and climbing as videogame character should but she is showing some emotions and - watch out - is kissing a man! "You can't require the player to kiss another guy! Even if they take on the role of a woman!" - this is how publishers accounted their decision. At this point we are on the edge of paranoia that should never took place.

For some reasons in the world of Allmighty Publishers all gamers are stereotyped as kids with complexes and the only allowed way to show females is an emotionless 3d model with strange lump on its chest. Oh, come on!

And the result – we run around as a white Guy With a Huge Gun. You may say that in many rpg games you can create female characters but that's not the point - giving player possibility to choose sex of character is just avoiding problem, not solving it.

With such an attitude of the publishers games as media will never grow up. It's weird since stories with female main character have been well accepted in books and Hollywood for years, but games?

Are we really such miserable creatures that would avoid "Amelia" (movie that earned 174.000.000$) just because there is a girl on the poster? If we do not buy a game because there is a female character on the cover (as it was with first Bioshock that lost customers because the cover looked like "game about a girl and a robot") that means that there is something wrong with us.

And what is yours opinion?