IGP = (4A+3B+2C+D)/N Siendo

When they do appear in games, female characters are frequently hypersexualized, a trend many interviewees commented on. More specifically, female characters are often given skimpy clothing and exaggerated body types, and they can also be heavily objectified in terms of

appearance, in-game role, and treatment by the gaming community. For example, Angela related an anecdote about playing a female character who, even though she embodied the same role as similar male characters, had a very different appearance. She said, “I remember playing Persona

3 and getting an awesome armor piece that worked for the female character on my team which,

27 _{Players also face the same limitations in terms of sexuality or race, where games often presume a player is} heterosexual, cisgendered, or white. These assumptions have provided interesting opportunities for players to deliberately queer games (unfortunately not a focus of this project), but they also demonstrate how narrowly “gamers” are defined by most developers.

28 _{Two spin-off games in the Assassin’s Creed universe have contained playable female characters— Assassin’s} Creed: Liberation, which was originally released for the PlayStation Vita (a handheld system) and later made available as a downloadable PC and console game, and Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, which was released for PC and console in April 2015. The recently released Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (Oct. 2015) is the first main- storyline game to feature a female character, although she is one of two protagonists, alongside her twin brother.

126

when equipped, basically looked like a bikini. Which was irritating, because it’s cool to have that option, but to have the equipment with the better stats pretty much default to bikini is very… limiting, I guess”. The same armor, when equipped on a male character, was not revealing. Rather, it appeared to be a normal suit of armor, covering essential body parts to protect the wearer in battle. Many other participants discussed experiences like this, where the same

equipment was portrayed very differently on male and female characters despite similar abilities. Body type was also a concern, in that the majority of female characters, participants argued, were similarly built. As one interviewee said, female characters were almost always “the big-breasted, scantily-clad, tall, tiny-waisted woman” (Spinach). This meant that participants, if they wanted to play as a female character, were required to play as a specific type of character, one with which they often did not identify. Participant Feather expressed this clearly, and with evident frustration, when she said, “I would like it if there were more variation in characters especially for female characters. Female body-types upset me because I do not fit very many… I’m a curvy, sort of short girl, and there are very few video game characters that look like me that aren’t hobbits and trolls and squat, gangly things. Maybe I’m a squat, gangly thing but I’m a pretty, squat, gangly thing. […] Why can’t we have more than the set 5’10”, 200 pounds, non- realistic, big-boobed anime girl?” In her opinion, women were limited to playing overly

sexualized, model-pretty characters or deliberately ugly characters, with few options in between. Helix made a similar argument, stating that if the only female options were characters she could not identify with, she would often pick a male character instead. “For example, in Diablo III, there’s a vast plethora of gear for the wizards and demon hunters. But all the female wizard gear shows the ‘panties’ portion and all the demon hunter gear has high heels. In situations like that, I’d often consider playing a male character instead, because the kinds of women that are in

127

the game don’t have enough in common with ME for me to strongly identify with them”. When players did seek identification with characters while gaming, the limited body types female characters possessed and the hypersexualized personas they demonstrated often made this identification difficult for women who did not share or desire these characteristics.

Finally, participants recognized that women’s roles in games were often limited, with many being damsels in distress and others represented as “hot side objects” (Emily) for male players to admire or sleep with. When Caddie played Star War: Knights of the Old Republic 2 (KOTOR 2) as a male character, for instance, she found that, “as soon as you meet every single female character, they’re throwing themselves at your feet. Which, I suppose I could see why, if you were a male playing that, it would be nice, but as a female playing as a main character, you’re just like, ‘This is weird. Women would never do this.’” Although she argued that other games allow women to take on empowering roles as the main character, games like KOTOR 2 objectify them by presenting them as prizes. This is another clear instance where the game interpellates the player as if they are a heterosexual male. Game designers are making the assumption first that players identify as male and second that men would appreciate having female characters pay them attention and appear sexually available, drawing on patriarchal masculinity’s notions of men as sexually voracious (Lotz, 2014, p. 35). Ensuing development choices then encourage players to embody a masculine subject-position, as game narratives and content make the most sense from this perspective. Although players could avoid this, doing so put them in conflict with the game they are engaging with.

Feather described a similar situation she encountered when playing Dynasty Warriors, a game series where the player controls different individuals in China’s dynastic history and engages in nationalistic wars to advance the goals of the empire. As the series has progressed,

128

each game has added new characters, with the most recent installment Dynasty Warriors 8 featuring 82 separate offerings. Of these, the majority are male, at a ratio of approximately six to one.

In addition to that, Feather argued, the characters’ motivations differed systematically according to their gender. She said, “I hate that there are seven girls to choose from and all of their ending stories involved them being in love with their husbands, because that’s what all of them are. It’s like, ‘Oh husband, I love you and you’re dying.’ Pretty much because most of these guys died in war. So it’s like, ‘Oh, I will support my husband. Oh husband, I love you! Dadah dadah…’ instead of all of these other guys are like, ‘Oh yeah, I fought a really great battle, the land is now at peace.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh I will support my husband, as he rules this land.’” While the male characters were leaders who took control of the country at the end of the game, Feather felt that the female characters were relegated to side roles after the fighting was done. They served as support for the male characters rather than taking action on their own. Furthermore, any action they did take seemed to be externally motivated by the male characters around them, rather than intrinsically motivated by their personalities, morals, or beliefs. This frustrated Feather, who wanted her female characters to be as interesting and complex as their male counterparts, but found they often fell short of this.

Thinking about these limitations on female characters from the perspective of “core”, it is clear that they work to maintain gaming culture as masculine. Games primarily present

masculinized subject-positions for players to embody, expecting them to admire scantily-clad characters, to enjoy rescuing damsels in distress, and to desire attention from female

companions. Because these expectations rely on stereotypical conceptions of masculinity, female players can clearly identify see that game content does not mean to interpellate them. When they

129

choose to engage with games anyway, women are forced to make concessions.

Overall, women are given only three options for identification. They can embody the male subject position, engaging with games on the terms that they offer while minimizing their identification with their own chosen gender identity. They can inhabit a female subject position that is passive and deferential to men, where men take action while women wait to be rescued. Or they can take on a powerful, active female persona, but must expect that at least some of this power is due to hypersexuality and the character’s ability to control men through their

objectification of her. Drawing on Douglas’ (2010) concept of enlightened sexism, this third subject position posits that “it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power” (p. 10).

Although female characters often have the same strength or skill with weapons that male characters have, the emphasis games place on their bodies implies that sexuality is an

inextricable part of female strength. Participants struggled with these limited positions, desiring greater diversity and the ability to take on less traditional gender roles, ones that allowed them to have power both as male and female characters and that did not necessarily rely on sexuality as a means to achieve their goals. Because such a position was a rarity, they frequently found game narratives off-putting. Identifying simultaneously as both female and gamer is made inherently contradictory by many aspects of characterization and representation.

Obviously, given interviewees’ self-defined status as gamers, these issues were not enough to stop them from playing games entirely. But many did find their choices of games or their role in the gaming community constrained as a result of these design choices and the

assumptions they reveal about the industry. In other words, content itself was not enough to drive women away from gaming, at least not entirely. However, it did interact with other factors in the

130

overall gaming environment, limiting how other players perceived female gamers and how important they felt they were to the gaming industry as a whole.