(Lack Of)Female Enemies in Video Games

[Neon Streak]

First off, I apologize if anyone on this site started a discussion similar to this one, but I wanted to get this out of my system because it's been bugging me for a while.

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.

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?

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.

So long story short, why do most video games have no female enemies?

[psychospacecow]

If you're talking about a game based on a set period in time, that's probably its justification. Everything in Double Dragon was stylized to the point of absurdity intentionally. Heck, Poison ends up becoming a professional wrestling manager in Street Fighter. The same absurdity can be said of Batman. Its based around a comic that started a century ago.
Another thing you have to consider is controversy. There will always be an outspoken controversy to things in games. Street Fighter V's beta was censored because R. Mika has a wrestling character personality and likes to showboat in the most over the top fashion possible, like wrestlers do for the crowd. People were raging about Resident Evil 5 being racist for having the characters kill black zombies in AFRICA.

[Koh]

You know, honestly, I'm tired of seeing all the bitching about stuff like this in games. It won't change anything; people make the games how they want. If you want to see more games that feature X type of people, or do Y with certain people, it's up to you to create games that have that. You can't expect someone else to change their work to be more inclusive, or representative, or whatever else. If you want it, make it. "Put up, or shut up," as the classic saying goes.

And this isn't directed at anyone in particular here. Just people in general who keep bitching about aspects of games like this. It's been going on for years now, and they still haven't seen the light. YOU must make it, if you want it.

[Kriven]

I remember with Poison, there was concern that American audiences would not accept a "Generic Female" villain, and other games of that time period would even alter female bosses into male bosses. Heroes don't hit women, right? That's the idea, anyway...

Some people will call this sexism, but it was actually an attempt at avoiding it. The developers thought that having musclebound men beating on women would be considered sexist, so they cut or altered that content. I assume some portion of that mentality still exists in the industry. And it's not wrong... Which one of these is the PC choice:

1: Depicting Violence Against Women Is Wrong
2: Depicting a Diverse and Realistic Universe Includes Evil Women Who Should Be Treated Equally When Compared To Their Male Counterparts

Some feminists will say that the first option is the correct one... and others will say the second one. And no matter which choice you go with, some feminists will rally their troops to call you out on it. It's a zero-sum game. Developers often choose simply to not include women in these types of roles.

But that brings them ire as well.

[Gors]

As to develop Kriven's points,

Since there's two possibilities of upsetting feminists (that's to say, depicting violence against women and equality between evil women and men) the safe ways to include females in gaming were:

1- Make the female a main character;
2- Make female NPCs;
3- Make the female a boss, because she will be generally stronger than the player and feminists like it when women are stronger than men.

Which would boil down to what OP said.

I'm not saying this is correct or that I agree with this, but lately, devs have been really aware of feminists criticising their games. I guess this is why they always play it safe - no one wants to be called a bigot.

[Koopaul]

The Shantae games have a lot of female enemies. Not bosses, just regular enemies. I thought that was pretty cool.

[Kriven]

The Shantae games have a lot of female enemies. Not bosses, just regular enemies. I thought that was pretty cool.

I get the feeling the rules bend a little when your protagonist is a woman.

[Koh]

Isn't that usually what happens anyway? In a good number of female-protagonist games, most of the antagonists, including the mooks, are female. Things in the same vein as Touhou, especially, where it's like 90% girls and 10% guys.

Or another common thing, there will be common female enemies if they're not human. Feminists seem to not get their jimmies as rustled when things happen to female non-humans.

[Gors]

no, you're wrong

it's a ratio of 3 boys to 130 girls

also let's not forget that these boys are like tertiary characters with no relevance at all

[Dolphman]

Actually there were female ninjas in ancient Japan called the Kunoichi. (Pronounced koo-no-ee-chee) Seriously, look it up.
They used espionage to take down their enemies and shit. And don't forget to read about Chiyome Mochizuki.

If I were developing a game and needed enemies, I would and will have both male and female versions of the same type of occupation.
We're all for equality. But there are some feminist, who are super retarded, that think it's all about gender superiority.

Though it is getting annoying with every dumbass thinking this and that is sexist over the littlest and stupidest things.
And there's also the problem when it comes to female rapists and pedophiles, as they often get away with what they do.

[Kriven]

Or another common thing, there will be common female enemies if they're not human.  Feminists seem to not get their jimmies as rustled when things happen to female non-humans.

I noticed female non-humans don't count towards "Female Characters in Gaming" unless they're sufficiently sexed up (in other words: they have obviously human tits) and are bipedal. Characters like Jigglypuff and Cynder don't count for some reason.

[Gors]

Funfact: Kunoichi is a transliteration of the letters く (ku), ノ (no) and 一 (ichi). While they have no meaning together, they "spell out" the strokes that make up the kanji 女, which means "woman".

[Gors]

this is an useless post. avoid making posts that don't add anything to the discussion.

Warned.

[AuraLancer]

Another thing to take into account is that it's another model to deal with, which is time and money. This goes for female only enemies without male counterparts as well.

[Dunkelschwamm]

I've certainly seen a lot more female enemies in modern games, especially sandbox games. Saints Row, Fallout, Oblivion all seem to have a really even distribution of enemy genders.

It seems particularly unfair to target any sprite-based games for an unequal front due to the difficulty/space limitations of doubling the sprite work just to include equal opportunity cannon fodder.

I think that guys are usually first to be thought of as such cannon fodder due to some fairly ingrained social concepts about not directing violence towards women. This is a pretty big part of society right now, and I myself really wouldn't feel comfortable hitting a woman in real life (not that I really feel all that comfortable hitting a man either). This can be seen as a misogynistic double standard, but it's prevalent enough that popular media risks more outrage if there is lots of woman killing than if there were a lot more men being killed than women.

Besides that, in classical character tropes there is a lot of precedent for burly men thugs/brigands/soldiers, meaning that establishing such characters will immediately have a bit of a subconscious effect that brings tidbits of recollection about these previous characters, giving context to simple and underdeveloped characters where there would be none at all. Many old tropes of women have them as assassins, giant monsters/deities in mythology, or particularly frightening foes when encountered in battle. As such, the carried over context of fighting a woman designed a certain way in a game may indicate feelings of knowledge of Medusa, Scylla, Athena, Lilith, etc. This can be seen as gender dividing if looked at from one angle, but from another angle you can see it as using every part of the beast (or in this case, character) to indicate everything that you want to portray about them. From the clothing, to the weapon that they use, to the way that they style their hair, to the color of their eyes, to the contents of their pants- every part of a character is there for a reason. Where there is little depth of character, that reason may be shallow. Where there is no reason, there is only randomness which is synonymous with insanity.

But it's certainly an interesting discussion that's going on in the gaming world that may lead to some greater variety in games if people stop trying to force certain games being made in the name of equality. If you want true equality the best thing you can do is let people make games and let it be known that there are certain games that you would especially like to pay for.

Now I'm going to go back to stomping on gender neutral goombas.