Gaming Companies: We Need Better Female Characters
The gaming industry has some issues, but one issue they could fix easily is how some female characters are portrayed and treated.
From the young and innocent age of three years old, I have been exposed — or played — video games. Video games are a huge part of my life. To this day I would consider myself a gamer despite in recent years I only play a handful of games. You only have to look at how many hours I’ve played The Binding Of Issac Afterbirth+ and Slay The Spire to see that — which is, by the way, almost 2300 hours and 571 hours respectively.
The fact remains that I’ve seen — and played — plenty of games over the past two decades of my life. And thinking back to everything that I’ve been exposed to gaming-wise, I’ve noticed a few things.
Specifically with female characters and their development over the years.
From a consumer standpoint, there aren’t many prominent females characters. At least when you compare them to the number of male prominent characters.
This isn’t to deny that there are no female characters at all. There are great characters in Samus Aran, Lara Croft, Tifa Lockheart, Jill Valentine, and Princess Zelda, amongst many others.
But when you think about those characters from those particular series, in most cases, you’ll find multiple male characters who have just as much recognition.
Cloud, Barrett, Cid, Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, Link, and Ganondorf.
Even in Metroid — the first game starring Samus Aran — most people thought Samus was a “he”. Even the instruction manual implied this only to shock gamers back in the day if they finished the game fast enough.
Sure, there are a lot of male characters over female characters in gaming. Why does this matter?
Part of it is to do with the growing market. It’s also worth looking a little more at the quality of the characters in general.
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