IGN bring us the worst "Top" article ever

[blaydcor]

Khuutra said:

blaydcor said:

Khuutra said:
.....Strong women characters are destroying gaming?

Jesus Christ.

I mean. I don't know what to say.

This whole article is deplorable but that one in particular, my God.

You ever take any reading comprehension tests back in middle school? I'm guessing not.

The article says "Strong female leads= Edgy, clever, and desirable"

what the writer is lamenting is that "strong" female characters are now always made: clever, edgy, but, ultimately, nothing more than eye-candy for sex-starved male gamers. Basically, in lieu of actually attempting a real, deep, developed character, female leads are simply created as leather-clad babes who are nevertheless always ready with a witty one-liner or smarmy non sequitor.

And (though I don't like the article overall, at all), I agree. Female protaganists are as cookie-cutter predictable as any other penultimate videogame archetype (like the grizzled space marine or quiet-and-young-but-determined-and-so-on-blah-blah-blah JRPG hero).

Thanks, but that doesn't make the whole point any less moot. Actually, you're a touch off-base: they never even go on to describe what's wrong with most of the characters cited, except for the fact that they are women (like Faith, who was actually decried for not being sexy enough).  Faith is no more an example of "careful marketing" than the Boss is, the Boss who they cited as being a major offender and part of the problem. You know, the best character Kojima ever created.

They aren't even just naming female leads - some of the leads they're naming aren't even in games that have come out yet (like Lightning), but others aren't leads at all. They're not offended by the women being played up as any one particular stereotype, all the characters cited are radically different from one another (mentioning the Boss and Alyx Vance and Samus in the same breath as Eidos' Lara Croft is a joke), and they've managed to pigeonhole all of them just owing to the fact that they have vaginas.

That's a boys' club mentality, and yes, you are perpetuating it in the defense of their outlandish hogwash.

 

Cutting through the articles amateurish bullshit, his basic point is valid. That no matter how many quirks are tacked on to Female leads, no matter how much their character is 'developed', they are still defined by (stealing a line from Seinfeld here) being incredibly well endowed with the varioius traits prized by superficial gamers. Female leads are predominantly cast as such simply to serve as eye-candy for gamers. Very few games with female leads employ them for legitimate purposes. When creating Lighting, Nomura was told to 'create a female cloud'. If Sheva was really written into RE 5 just to be Chris's female counterpart, why is she perfectly preportioned and clad in a scanty tank top?

SOME (Final Fantasy 6) games cast their leads as women for good reasons--for narrative purpose, etc. But by-and-large, female protaganists exist just becaue it's more fun to stare at a hot girl than an overmuscled guy for twenty plus hours. It is this problem that the author legitimately addresses.

EDIT: Word, kabhold. You beat me to my point while I was typing this up.