If Gamers Want More Powerful Women Then Stop Being Afraid Of Them
If Gamers Want More Powerful Women Then Stop Being Afraid Of Them
Lae'zel and Shadowheart can be mean sometimes, and it's okay to embrace women in video games like them.
Lae'zel and Shadowheart can be mean sometimes, and it's okay to embrace women in video games like them.
Nobody's afraid of them. This article created its own problem to complain about.
Lae’zel and Shadowheart
This feels a lot more like the author is upset by the way these two were done, and is in turn projecting that upon "other gamers".
You never met one of those capital G Gamers who have never seen a woman that's not their mom? The ones that get mad if there are black/gay/trans people in their videogames because of "muh escapism"?
Sure, but I've also just read about a black gay Trump voter. Extremes exist, it is upon the one presenting a theory to show the extend of the problem.
I'll readily believe that focus testing and the safety-only design of companies such as Ubisoft augments any problem massively but it's still easy to accept "Oh it's because gamers are too afraid of powerful women in their games!" as a rhetoric without having anything indicating it's actually happening.
those gamers wouldn’t be the ones who want powerful women in the first place. The article is imagining gamers who want powerful women AND are afraid of them.
Thankfully, I only know those gaymurrs from youtube videos that are brightly titled as
[game] IS WOKE PROPAGANDA, so it's easy to avoid them.
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Yeah, "people don't like the racist authoritarian because she's a woman" sure is a hot take.
What...? This isn't a real issue
The least important part of a character is their sex.
Well that’s not true at all. Men and women have different life experiences and that often is what drives a narrative.
Maybe to you.
Minthara, a companion who could previously only be recruited by joining her side and more or less committing genocide on a grove full of tieflings, can now simply be knocked out and talked to at a later point in the game where all of that drama can be ignored.
Minthara was being mind-controlled. When she's free, she's still evil but not that evil - she even asks the player character what his excuse for killing the tieflings is, since he wasn't mind-controlled.
(Knocking her out still doesn't make sense, but mostly because at that point in the game the player has no in-character reason to think that she's special aside from the fact that all the other enemies are goblins and she's a
Forgotten Realms BDSM sex symboldrow.)Nice... A big old spoiler
Yeah, I blew her the fuck up. I didn't think she was a companion until I looted her and she had underwear and a backpack. Strangely only companions wear underwear in BG3. I don't know what's up with that.
I would add another thing to this I wish the author would talk about instead of immediately projecting onto their own prejudices: People generally prefer the "good" option in games.
And I don't even necessarily mean whatever the game calls Paragon-vs-Renegade. I mean the fact that for a game where you recruit characters to your "camp", naturally losing characters feels like a fail state. Like you messed something up. As a result, players will intuitively lean to options that present the least "bad outcome", in this context meaning the less often NPCs leave your camp the better. Recruiting someone is a victory, someone leaving is a defeat. The games present it as such, so it's no wonder players err towards wanting everyone there.
I know it's very hard for me to care about Mass Effect 1 Ashley Williams.
I know she's supposed to turn good (maybe?) in sequels, but, hey, you've got to sacrifice someone, because cheap emotional engagement trick.
May as well send the one-dimensional specist asshole with absolutely no other character trait.
the one-dimensional specist asshole with absolutely no other character trait.
I used to think that about Ashley until I did what I nicknamed my Asshole Run. I was an Adept, so I usually had Ashley and Tali around me. I ended up listening to their elevator conversations, and Ashley treated Tali a lot differently than she did Wrex or Garrus (the ones she saw as a military threat) - she warmed up to her and treated Tali like a little sister. So when Tali died in that run on 3, Ashley was gutted and was crying when you go talk to her afterwards. Seeing her actually have a character arc made me like her a lot more.
I know she’s supposed to turn good (maybe?) in sequels, but, hey, you’ve got to sacrifice someone at the end of 1, because cheap emotional engagement trick.
Yeah but that's the other thing, that's how you get gamers to let somebody from their group go: You force an obvious "One or the other"-pick. I can totally see how we as consumers can more readily accept that than we can accept the very understandable part of Karlach leaving as that was not presented right in the moment you made the choice. It didn't feel like there should not be any Option C at all.
Look, I'm a lesbian, all hot girls intimidate me.
Do people actually have a problem with them?
I'm
arousedimpressed by strong women, physically and emotionally. And in a world that can do better by them, this is balancing the scales.I also want to say that as we saw with Legend of Korra, if they're interesting characters and are 'cool' nobody will care about gender.