(Lack Of)Female Enemies in Video Games

[Kosheh]

I see girls everywhere

Can this PLEASE be in next year's necroposticon



I've actually been thinking about this topic for days and it's killing me that I still can't really come up with much. There's actually a fair bit of female representation tho in games, though I guess I never really gave a second thought about it. I'm gonna toot this quite a bit, but Dunkel pretty much voiced most of my concerns. It's pretty difficult in Western society to constitute hitting a woman except in the instance of like - self defense. If you think about it, it's exactly why Birdo changed to a male character when the game came stateside.

Have you noticed that a lot of video games seem to be lacking in female enemies? It seems that in the world of gaming, bad girls are usually taking the role of bosses or NPCs, but not random mooks the hero can take out on the spot. When they do appear as standard enemies, they're always portrayed as dominatrices or hookers; this is particularly true in beat-em-ups, such as Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. Meanwhile, male enemies are portrayed as bikers, pirates, soldiers, 1930's gangsters, and more.

Dunkel pretty much nailed it a few posts back; most "grunt" level characters are due to space constraints and palette constraints. Things were also a little more hectic in the game industry in the 80's and 90's - most gaming companies had something good going on for them, so they censored (sometimes gratuitously) to avoid possible media outrage. That's the last thing when you're still trying to establish a foothold in the market AND keep your product family friendly. It also doesn't help that the juggernaut of the time [Nintendo] was breathing down your neck to ensure that your product fit their strict guidelines, otherwise you're risking your licensing to develop for them. That of course changed with Mortal Kombat, but that's neither here or there.

Even modern-day games have fallen victim to this gaming-gender issue. For example, in Batman: Arkham City, we have the Caped Crusader beating the shit out of countless male convicts, but the only female goons he takes out are ninjas (Which doesn't really make sense to me from a realistic standpoint; I don't recall any female ninjas in Japanese history.). Do you mean to tell me that Arkham Asylum doesn't house female convicts, save for Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn?

The other thing about some of these characters, and it's kinda lousy but even more obvious with 90's game characters - in the example of Arkham City, if you tried to create a low-class female grunt prisoner or hoodlum with a more realistic body type...you'd probably assume the character was a man anyway. From a design standpoint, it's pretty difficult to create a female grunt character that appears uniquely female to the audience that doesn't require the character to possess an idealized female figure (which is sorta the root of controversy at the moment) so the end result is usually that you end up with a character that looks like a punk or dominatrix, to show that she's definitely a bad guy and warrants a beatdown. ;P
Honestly, I feel like if you DID stick with the idealized body type for a female character, she'd appear too strong and too cool and would end up becoming the design for a boss-character anyway, which is kinda the deal with Poison Ivy or Harley Quinn, isn't it ;P

Hell! In The Last of Us, the only female enemies you ever encounter in the game are zombies, which-if you think about it-is really sad. You'd think that in a post-apocalyptic setting, standard gender roles would be demolished...unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm pretty sure if I had a realistic female hunter calling me out, trying to kill me I'd be scared absolutely shitless, but that's just me ('A`; )

Currently off of the top of my head I'm thinking about the current rebooted Tomb Raider game (prior to "Rise of") The more I think about it, there aren't really any female enemies that Lara comes across - but that might be a good thing. I feel like from my boring-ass cisgender male perspective, the male inhabitors of the island pose a threat to a character like Lara - but it's easier to make them a more cold, ruthless character you really don't want to be emotionally involved with. However, on the other hand, I feel like a female grunt character in any of those roles would actually mess with the player's head more, and you'd actually think twice about trying to stealth-kill that woman so you can progress within the story...and you'd actually have some players who couldn't actually bear upon themselves to pull a knife on said character (actually, didn't Far Cry do something like this by having you try to kill your friends, including your girlfriend for one part of the story path to progress?)

idk, I feel like if you had like, a female guerilla warfare character in fatigues that you had to candidly, stealthily kill, it'd be a lot harder for players to go through with it than some generic male character. Even if a character donning full fatigues and a gas mask uttered female guttural tones once neutralized/injured, many people would feel like kind of an asshole afterward.

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No one mentioned the greatest female antagonist of all time?

Gruntilda Winkybunion!

I'm actually really, really disappointed in you, Koopaul. Just completely shitting on the legacy of the greatest Mario antagonist that wasn't really Mario's antagonist. The antagonist that oversaw your journey from a Game Boy to a Game Man.

Just kidding I'm actually really disappointed in all of you let's talk about an antagonist who was totally oversexualized but never was because she had a fucking genie