When Lego's new Lego Friends series was released, I was upset, to say the least. My sister sent me some videos about Lego Friends by feminist Media Critic, Anita Sarkeesian, that summed up exactly how I felt about the new sets.
I discovered later that Anita was working on a new project, Tropes vs Women in Video Games. As a feminist video game player myself, I was interested in keeping up with her new project. I think I might have noticed the lack of female characters when I was younger more so than I do now. In my younger years I remember wanting more female characters, always disappointed that there weren't characters I could identify with very well. Of course there were always female characters in stories, but there tended to be less of them and they were typically side characters that were there only to assist in the movement of the story. I can't deny that there are some great games with female protagonists, but the amount of games with female protagonists seems ridiculous compared to the amount of games out there lacking decent female roles altogether.
After watching Anita's first two videos, Damsel in Distress, I was appalled to see the amount of gamers verbally attacking and threatening her on YouTube, twitter, and other social networking sites. There was a video response from a young man saying that she had not even mentioned games with great female protagonists and hadn't done any decent research, and many other videos basically saying the same thing. It drives me nuts to realize that people can't pay attention and realize the amount of research she has done. First of all, the only two videos she has released are only addressing the Damsel in Distress trope, she didn't say anything about female protagonists being non-existent. Second, like I said earlier, just because there are some great games with female protagonists, they're still out-numbered by the amount of games lacking female characters altogether. Third, she's a media critic, that's her job, to analyze and critique how things are working in the media. You may not always agree with a critic, but usually they're more advanced in their area and have spent a lot more time researching the things you think you have an expert opinion on.
I also have to address the amount of comments saying that "if more women played video games they would start making more video games with female characters." Seriously? Or even one comment basically stating there are more male characters because it's "almost like they wanted relatable main characters." Again, seriously? Let's address these last few comments.
According to a 2012 report by the ESA, 47% of video game players are female. ORLY NAO? So if 3% more gamers were female, we would have an even amount of male to female player ratio and we would suddenly start having more games created with leading female characters that aren't put into stereotypical sexist roles? I didn't think so either. Moving from that to "relatable main characters," if 3% puts males in the lead of video game players, technically it must be true that male characters are more relatable to male players because there is 3% more male players. I couldn't seem to find any newer studies, but according to a 2007 study, male characters were 5 times more likely to appear as a main character than a female character. Five times. That's definitely more than that 3% margin of players. Even a 2005-2006 study stated that females only made up 15% of characters in video games.
I'm tired of seeing female characters, main or side, being thrown into sexist roles where players digest this information and start to associate these things as normal behavior for how women act and look and even how others should treat women. According to this 2009 study women who played video games with overly sexualized female character had a decreased sense of self esteem after playing the game. We need better portrayals of women in video games. I'd like to see more strong female models as lead characters. I'm tired of the typical damsel in distress, half-naked fighters, and the overly large breasted sexualized lead. I want a strong female character showing that she can be just as tough as any male and that she doesn't need someone else to take care of her.
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