Skip to main content

Perspective of A.S, a feminist media critic

  As you can see from the video, "Tropes vs Women In Video Games", I have analyzed how female characters have been treated in video games throughout the history. In part 1, I talked about the Damsel in Distress cliché, which is a plot of a female character being in danger and must be rescued by a hero.

 This Damsel in Distress cliché is used in many famous video game franchises such as Mario and Zelda, but what's bad about Damsel in Distress trope is that it disempowers female characters and steal their heroic role. The good example is the Krystal from "Dinosaur Planet". Krystal is a female fox with a magical staff and she was designed as a playable protagonist character in the game "Dinosaur Planet". However, the game was never released and instead it was redesigned as one title of the "Starfox" franchise. In Starfox, Krystal was removed from her protagonist role and became a Damsel in Distress character. As you can see, female characters in video games often become Damsel in Distress character and they won't have a chance to become heroes in the story.

 Another point I want to say about Krystal is that she was given a sexualized outfit in the game. We can see many female characters in games wearing a costumes that expose their skin to make them look attractive to men. 

 These evidences shows that many of the female characters in game are designed to become a Damsel in Distress and look attractive so that it could empower the male  protagonist in order to sell more games to young straight boys and men. 


I grew up with video games and I love them. I am not criticizing the games themselves but we should think about those games' attitudes towards women. The number and percentage of women playing video games is increasing these days. Video games are now not only for men. I am hoping that there will be a change in video game industries leading female characters to become the protagonist of their own adventures.


Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games. (2013, March 7). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why is PC being criticized?/What is "Social Justice Warrior" aka "SJW"?/ Why is "SJW" being criticized?/Is certain people becoming too aggressive trying to push and conform people to their ideology?

 Social Justice Warriors, aka SJWs, use political correctness as a weapon to criticize what they think is "politically incorrect". Social justice warrior (SJW) is a term used for an individual who promotes socially progressive and liberal views, including feminism, civil rights, gay and transgender rights. Most of the time, saying somebody is a SJW means that they are pursuing his/her personal validation rather than the actual "liberal" way of thinking.  So basically, it is not the political correctness itself that are being criticized but the SWJs, people who are using it as a weapon are instead. Boghossian, P., & Lindsay, J. (2019, October 12). Social-Justice Warriors Won’t Listen, but You Should. WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-justice-warriors-wont-listen-but-you-should-11570832255
Post a Comment
Read more

Is being equal a good thing?/Is being different a good thing?

  As I said, diversity is important. It will make your perspectives and life experience richer, less discrimination in the world and many more benefits.  However, us humans liked discrimination. That is because of our instinct, we needed make that decision in order to live back in the old days. The nature of discrimination has been with us until now, and that is why bullying and racism occurs.   All of us know that discrimination isn't a good thing. Being equal to all kinds of people is important, but doing that too much is different. Dragging somebody down from a position of power to make it "equal" is too extreme.   As I said, being too radical and extreme is not "correct". See it from the both perspectives and then think how we can solve the problem.
Post a Comment
Read more

Which is important; quality or diversity?/Is being historically accurate offensive to some people?/Is putting race and sexism into every discussion, media and art is "politically correct"?

  In my personal opinion, both of them are very important. Recently, the video game industry has become more diverse than ever. Not only the women's social progress, people from all over the country has been supporting video game industry.   Games that has many characters such as Apex Legends and Overwatch, all of them are from different country, has different sex, religions and it is very diverse. Of course the diversity in gaming is a good thing, but not everything is good.  A good example is Witcher 3 incident. The game was criticized because all the character in the game was white. However, the Witcher 3 is set in Poland, created by Polish man and it is based on Polish mythology and European Folklore. So criticizing that there is no Black or Asian character in Witcher is an mistake because that is the culture and the demographic in the game. You don't have to put colored skinned character in the game if it doesn't make sense. Putting race and sexism into eve...
Post a Comment
Read more