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Analysis: Sexism In Female AI Partners
by Jeffrey Matulef [Console/PC, Exclusive]
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March 11, 2011
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[Gamasutra contributor Jeffrey Matulef investigates the role of female AI partners, comparing the likes of Enslaved's Trip, Resident Evil 4's Ashley and Half-Life 2's Alyx.]
In new console title Knights Contract, players assume the role of Heinrich, an immortal executioner tasked with protecting a witch named Gretchen. Gretchen is a powerful sorceress adept at casting devastating attack spells, yet she regains health in the most implausible of ways; being held by Heinrich.
Regenerating health while resting makes sense, but there's no reason this should only occur when cradled in his arms. This is doubly ridiculous when in later levels player's control her and she's able to convert her "witch points" into health -- an option that wasn't available previously. Buddying up with an immortal soldier is a sensible move, but this implausible mechanic gives off uncomfortable, sexist vibes.
Knights Contract is only but the most recent in a long line of games about males protecting females. When this is handled poorly, it can be annoying and offensive.
While at worst your charges are a misogynistic burden, at best they function as partners, who use their mechanics to enhance their character's relationships without being helpless.
Ninja Theory's recent Enslaved paired hunchbacked hunk, Monkey, with protecting Trip, who's grafted a slave crown on his head to ensure that he follows orders. If he doesn't, he gets shocked, and if she dies, he dies too.
This could have been a recipe for disaster leading to yet another story of a whimpering woman who can't take care of herself without a beefy protector. Rather than make her an empowered, badass warrior, Ninja Theory gives Trip other talents; notably brains.
Not only is she tech savvy and resourceful -- creating decoys and hacking doors -- she's aware of her shortcomings and does what any sensible person not trained in the art of combat would do when faced with killer robots; she hides. This way she seldom hinders the player from a gameplay perspective, nor is she a damsel in distress.
 Resident Evil 4 took a similar approach in which the player character, Leon, spent much of the time escorting the President's kidnapped daughter, Ashley.
Ashley would also run and hide, but the player had to tell her when to stay still and when to follow. While this gave the player more agency, it wasn't a welcomed addition as it meant one had to frequently dictate her actions. It also implied that she couldn't think for herself, a feeling exacerbated by her frequent and shrill cries for help.
While Enslaved and RE4's female companions choose flight, Gordon Freeman's spunky scientist pal, Alyx Vance, chooses to fight in Half-Life 2: Episode One.
Since she's handy with a gun and doesn't have a health meter, I experimented with running away to see if she could do all the fighting for me. It didn't work. She was killed, I got a game over. When I tried engaging in the fight, however, she seemed to have no problem taking care of herself. I wasn't babysitting her in the slightest and she never died, so long as I didn't go AWOL.
She's every bit Gordon's equal, though it's hard to shake the feeling that she's a fetishized dream girl. Not only does she strike up a quasi-romantic relationship with a man who never speaks (and in my case has a penchant for jumping on people's heads), but she'll shoot enemies heading towards him.
By contrast, the player needn't reciprocate the favor since she's not likely to die. She's useful for distracting enemies, and I genuinely wanted to help her. By aiding the player and being a likable character, Alyx is a fantastic AI partner and her presence makes the shootouts more emotionally charged.
 Opting for a more archetypal approach, Ico's fairy tale fantasy makes its female lead incredibly helpless. The player controls Ico, a small boy who partners up with an otherworldly teenage girl, Yorda, to escape a castle.
Yorda is incredibly defenseless and possibly blind. She can't make it very far without Ico and she certainly can't fend off the shadow spirits set on kidnapping her. She can open specific magically sealed doors though, so Ico needs her just as much as she needs him.
Much like Knight's Contract, the playable character is invincible (unless he falls from a ledge), but his companion is not. In some ways, she hampers the player. During battle, Ico must protect her by thwacking enemies with a stick -- something that goes on for too long and is arguably the game's low point.
Her presence succeeds when it forces the characters to separate, lending a sense of dread to the proceedings. I hated leaving Yorda alone, and the knot in my stomach tightened with every step I took further away from her.
There's a fine line between feeling annoyed and uneasy, but Yorda's presence leaned towards the latter as I knew I couldn't be there for her all the time. It also helped that she had no health meter. As long as I could get to her before my foes dragged her through a portal in the ground she'd be safe with no damage dealt or lasting repercussions for my negligence.
This system worked especially well in the climax -- where Yorda's captured and Ico's swarmed by shadow spirits -- as there's no way to lose. Being invincible, empowered and angry is cathartic and feels unlike anything else in the game up to that point. Yorda may be weak, but her presence certainly isn't.
Most of these games aren't particularly sexist on their own, but when taken as a whole it's hard to overlook the trend that it's almost always a male escorting a female. Through smart design and competent writing, the better games downplay their stereotypes and turn what could be vulnerable sidekicks into capable partners.
I'd love to see more games starring women in playable roles, but until that day comes it's at least nice to see women represented as people with minds of their own who can bring more to the table than eye candy.
[Jeffrey Matulef is a freelance writer whose work can be found at G4TV.com, Eurogamer, Paste, and Joystiq among other places. He's also a regular on the Big Red Potion podcast. You can contact him at jmatulef at gmail dot com.]
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and if you are doing a historic game set when weapons relied on strength more then anything else then it would make no sense to have a women be a equal of a man unless you had a good reason for doing so (this women is half orc, or she is freakishly large ect)
keep in mind that while neither gender is Superior to the other, they are NOT idenical and showing them as such is as unrealistic as showing women as stupid and unable to fight and men as all smart strong and good in a fight.
Although the arm-cradle health is kinda silly...
I get really annoyed when people come complain that females in games are being portrayed as... females!
Oh my god! They cannot use women clothes, that is too womanly! They cannot fall in love, it is too female to love a strong male. Oh, they cannot be weak, they must be ridiculously strong and dangerous as their male counterpart, because otherwise, they would be too female...
Seriously, it is kinda :/
Of course, I have nothing against well done characters (Jade from Beyond Good and Evil comes to mind). But when I see someone complaining that some game portrayed a woman in a too woman-ly manner, I find it rather whiney.
That said, there is no reason sexual dimorphism shouldn't be found in art, or even exaggerated into the ridiculous! No one complains about the exaggerated movements of a dancer. No one complains about the exaggerated lighting in a Vahn Gough painting. This is fantasy we are talking about here. Heinrich (and by extension, the player) might very well fantasise that his masculinity is so powerful that his very touch is healing.
I don't want to sound like I believe Jeff doesn't have the right to be offended by the exaggerated dimorphism here; however, I'd like it if he supported the right of the artist to offend him :) This is NOT a moral issue, but merely one of personal taste.
Your ideas about women being portrayed "as women" have a lot to do with sexist and hetero-sexist constructs.
but as is not is more physiological then anything else. people DO treat others differently because of gender. some people would do something stupid because a women was hurt and in trouble that they would not do if it was a man.
regardless of the reason, if you were to make a realistic shooter set today then you could not have women as front line marines unless you accept that you will be breaking the forth wall.
"including New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Israel, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland."
btw how weak do you think women are exactly? They have less muscle mass than men, but you seem to think they have the physical capacity of a Parakeet or something.
You want a "realistic" look at the future? How about Battlestar Galactica, which features a completely gender neutral society.
The fact is that sexist assholes posting on these comments are AFRAID of that future. They're not really clinging to realism. They're clinging to a nostalgic fantasy that was never realistic in the first place.
I mean, Starbuck for example is not a women, it is a guy with boobs...
Also, I won't argue why women are not supposed to be at front lines, I argued that before many times...
The day I'll see a man carry as much equipement as a dragon age character without any oversize backpack on him, I will accept this argument.
I AGREE to the article- Like what the article is saying, I think many developers should try to break from traditional roles of women or men. It's just that some developers don't have much bright imaginations out of the traditional roles...or that the majority of players won't really understand at first glance of what they are dealing with.
Get over yourselves!
Terrible attitude and you should be ashamed.
Partly this is because we revolve a lot of games around ridiculous violent conflict, but its also because game characters haven't matured beyond the level of cheap action films. Maybe that'll change as we start approaching more complex and mature themes, but in the meantime it'd be nice to see some more well-drawn characters on both sides of the gender divide.
Lara Croft (tomb raider)
Lighting (FFXIV)
Meryl (Metal Gear Solid 1 / 4)
Samus
that girl from perfect dark.
For every example of a woman being a woman, there are plenty out there of strong women in games, i'd actually say more examples than there are of the girl being some weak thing who burdens you.
Even in older games where you always had to rescue the heroine things have changed. Zelda becomes sheik. Princess Peach is a badass with an umbrella.
I know the author mentioned the other side of the coin, but it was a single example against numerous. If you're going to state something as a fact at least be honest about it. Next thing you know people will be complaining because there aren't enough homosexual main characters, or because not enough main characters take note of health and safety precautions.
Perfect Dark was an excellent game through and through for the time period. I mean, it was at its simplest form Goldeneye 2.0 with James Bond being replaced with a woman who was pretty much his equal in many categories.
However, while Aiden is right and has a point, I can understand the article writer's point-of-view. Even though there are a whole lot of strong female characters in today's videogames (especially when it comes to the fighting game genre), we still got a long way to go as not all games will portray female characters as strong among other things. Also, Alan Jack is right! Even some of the male characters in videogames tend to fall under a typical gender stereotype, like being all testosterone and no brain. The issues of sexism and gender portraying are not clear cut nor black and white and those issues are not going away anytime soon, even if more videogame characters start being portrayed as balanced characters.
[/sarcasm]
Dom from Gears and Alex's dad from HL2 are alright, but there's a distinct lack of fair portrayal of all minorities in games. Even eastern games have tended to have white, western, male protagonists for years now.
Someone on my Uni course pointed out during a discussion of minorities that the Irish are some of the worst represented nationalities in games. They're all either drunks or terrorists.
No force in the Universe can stop someone's quest to become offended at any and all costs.
And the fish is already dead.
It is the BIGGEST stretch to find it offensive, we're talking about lightyears of distance stretch. Clearly Jeff WANTS to be offended and is looking for any and all excuses, any window, any tiny hole or insignificant crack to ram his complaint through.
Next thing we know holding hands with a girl will become an act of Hate.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Not that is wrong to portray non-womanly woman.
It is that many people get offended by womanly woman (like some article once here in Gamasutra that ranted that those women in games keep getting kidnapped), and I find it kinda silly. Yes, today women sometimes don't look like women anymore in US society, but I defend my right, and of others, to like women that follow not only historical gender roles, but biology.
Males are 66% stronger than women, more agressive and also protective. I want then to portray women that are weaker, passive and that need to be protected.
Yes, there are exceptions, as in everything, but people should not get offended when shown the norm, at least, former norm.
I also find it sad that you want women to be weak and passive, but that's your opinion, and I'm not going to argue your opinion, you have a right to have it. But it's frustrating that when those of us actually want to see something that doesn't agree with your opinion you feel the need to get on and blast it. The portrayal you want of women isn't going to just disappear, it's not. But the kinds of portrayals that I, and at least some chunk of gamers, want has been vastly ignored by developers thus far.
(that does not mean, that women can't fight, my rival in Kung Fu school is a girl with half of my weight... but she can kick almost anyone ass, but she is certainly, not stronger than me...)
Passive I mean, not aggressive. For example, I would not like my wife (note: I am not married, this is a hypothesis) getting into fights, or joining the army.
The opinion that you say is "vastly" ignored, is not vastly ignored (read upward in the comments section, lots of examples of what you want). And even if it was, it go against the most normal (in, normality, math concept, not in normality vs. crazy) people, because evolution, made us the way we are now, thus you can't expect it to be more popular.
I only think, that many times, it is something rather hypocrite and sad, as women fight to be not-women, and men fight to be not-men. Like if being womanly and manly was wrong. Thus when a person write a piece (this is not the first here in Gamasutra, there are a couple of them here), whining that there are too much games that use historical gender roles, I must say, that it is pure whining, those gender roles, are tied to biology, and won't go away, and forcing them out of society like is being done today, is a way to make people frustated as their basic biological needs are not met, in the name of a higher theoretical common good, that is not proven to be good at all (but not proven to be bad either... although I suspect it is, at least in large scale implementation).
Link: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2868-True-Female-Chara
cters
I must agree though that the concept of regenerating health in someone's arms...seems a bit odd, regardless of gender. I wonder if this concept would work with a difference in age say with an older character or a child? Anyways, thank you for the article.
She has commented on the sexism she sees in games at times.
One comment she has made is that it seems many female game characters have hips that have the "I'm wearing stiletto heels" movement to them, or a fighting character that has massive amounts of cleavage. It's obvious why that is incorporated into games, but I've often wondered how women who work on the development of games like that feel? Do they laugh it off, do they voice their annoyance, or do they stay silent? Has there ever been a development house run by women?
I've wondered if a game had a Chippendale dancer/male model looking main character that wore tight jeans, flexed his muscles all the time in an over the top sexual maner, how many guys would play that?
While there is alot of muscle laden manly characters in games, I can't think of any male character in a recent game that can compare to the most titillating female characters.
I can think of a game that had very stereotyped gay characters, which I thought was extremely annoying embarrassing character design, infinite undiscovery.
But you can pay attention to media in general, this is many times the case, watch for example the very old show Galaxy Rangers, and you will notice the all male leads are handsome, and the female lead has big boobs.
Or the Falcon action figures (from G.I.Joe series, the Falcon were a special series of figures that had I think 3 or 4 times a normal figure size), that had almost impossible muscles (or later, max steel action figures that DO have impossible muscles).
Or, greek statues (of both males and females).
Or... seriously, in any media, the mathematic ideal is used when portraying characters (and buildings, and vehicles, and many other things...)
When we think about it, it is unrealistic, and sorta silly, but everyone do it, since several thousand years ago.
Telling the boss you are going to strip club to do "research" :P
I thought that Alyx from HL2 was really well done. She is a fighter and so it makes sense. From a design standpoint it wouldn't make sense to have her be able to support the player completely. Talk about bad gameplay.
There are plenty of games that have strong lead females and even strong female partners, but that doesn't mean that every game should have them. Their role serves a purpose most of the time. The thing I love about gaming too is that if you don't like it, you don't have to play it.
"Oh that commercial showed kids having fun but it was missing a kid of "insert minority", it is racist!"
Or articles such as this one where people "whatif" artistic and gameplay decisions with their idea of political correctness.
Alicia Diaz.
Jennifer Burke.
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/83466
The whole notion of feeling "uncomfortable" by these gender portrayals seems pretentious.
Leaders and investors are pretty much never on board with any innovative ideas about modifying theses stereotypes. While making a game marketed to girls I had to fight to include female fantasy in the games as they were not welcome. I’ve been told many times by men that “Girls don’t think like that” (Seriously.) So until men let women design their own game as they want them, I’m pretty sure it will remain a man’s perspective of what a female should be like instead of what female are.
However, we should not remove all sexual elements either. I personally love sexual tension between characters: it adds a trill that I like in a game. I just don’t like when that leaves either side helpless. A spineless follower male lover is as boring to me as a damsel in distress that does it all for her man. This leaves the character without substance which annuls all excitement in the outcome of the situations.
Making a woman badass doesn’t make her empowering to women; it just makes it another fantasy (males and females in that case, since some women wish they were really badass.)
Trying to push a game about a strong female super spy carrying a helpless handsome shirtless computer geek around to save the world without ever having a hint of sexual tension between the characters is really hard to market to an audience who is accustomed to a certain standard in game. I also believe that this kind of game would be pretty boring. It’s simply the same old pattern we’ve seen in every other game, gender swapped.
Females’ characters do no need to copy or replace existing male characters. They simply need to find their strength, which will not necessarily be physical.
Finally, we should never forget that what a woman is looking for in a game varies from one woman to another, just like it does for men.
It's interesting regarding what you are saying about romance. Bioware's games are the only games I can think of that has any romance really. It's something that all great dramatic movies have, yet it's mostly an after thought in games today. Even Bioware's games seem to be mostly about getting to the end result, rather than build up the tension you mentioned till the end of the game. There is some banter and build up, but it's never that pro-longed like a movie....
I'm curious what you tried to place in game that garnered the "girls don't think like that" response.