ISS 210 Society, the Individual, & Video Games (W4)
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Playing as a Woman as a Woman as if a Man
Gabriela T. Richard New York University
82 Washington Square East, 6 th
Floor
New York, NY 10003
gabriela@nyu.edu
Introduction
It’s a chilly weekend day, the kind of day I love because I
can rationalize not doing anything I know I should be doing, like
going to the gym or running errands; instead, it’s the perfect day
to pop out of bed, run to the Xbox 360 and play one of my favorite
RPG 1 titles, or finally get to one of the single-player campaigns I
glossed over in favor of competitive multiplayer. While I am a
scholar during my work hours, I am also a female competitive
online gamer in a female-oriented clan during my leisurely
weekday hours where I spend time playing online team-oriented
competitive games. However, the weekends and, especially,
long holiday breaks, are reserved for lone immersion in
fantasylands, particularly those that allow me to play as my
personified self in relation to that world.
This pastime can be traced back to my childhood years
when I got my first Nintendo game system and spent countless
hours playing through, and replaying, Zelda II: the Adventure of
Link. I had figured out that if I spent hours running around in the
grass and fighting bits and bots, I could overpower my character
enough to take down most of the bosses with little effort.
However, it was later that I discovered the original Legend of
Zelda, and other fascinating RPGs, like Final Fantasy and
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Dragon Warrior, which extended my imagination, and within
which I could spend countless hours solving puzzles, talking to
non-playable characters and ultimately slaying enemies in order
to save the world… and the princess.
Saving the princess was always an interesting
conundrum for me: on the one hand, growing up with
feminist-leaning parents made me acutely aware of the
problematic stance this took on, but, on the other hand, classic
fantasy books, 1980s movies and other media almost made it
seem like the natural order of fantasy-themed fiction. While I
played my fair share of action adventure games, and later
competitive fighting games in arcades, it was always the
immersion of the RPG that encouraged my exploration and
creativity, and, ultimately, allowed me to transcend reality, in a
pleasurable way, at least for a little while. In the early days of
gaming, whether it was Dragon’s Lair in the arcade or Final
Fantasy at home, playing in a man’s narrative was an explicit part
of the experience, and playing a man’s narrative as a girl felt
revolutionary. Not only was I playing through as a girl, but I was
making it my own, and defying what others thought I should play,
or should be interested in. In essence, exceptionalism was my
symbolic defiance of static gender norms. And this sense of
defiance was generational: even though I was one of the only
girls I knew who played video games frequently and took
pleasure in invading boy’s spaces, like the arcade and the comic
book store, popular expression encouraged this sense of
tomboyish reclamation. In particular, the riot grrrl movement
was in full swing in the late-80s and early 90s, and it was
incredibly common to see women and girls finding empowerment
through the rejection of gender norms and the redefinition of
gender-based expression. I came to love the empowerment that
video games, particularly RPGs, gave me, and spending an
afternoon in an open world where I could express that
empowerment became part of my escape from the gendered
expectations constantly imposed upon me.
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These days, that escapism has been primarily reserved
for Bethesda 2 RPG titles, like Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas or
Skyrim. For whatever reason, Bethesda has figured out how to
recapture the kind of giddy enthusiasm I once reserved for the
Christmas mornings of childhood. While I have never quite
figured out why journeying through an open wasteland or mythic
Nordic countryside has captured my imagination like no other,
Bethesda’s recent titles have managed to make me spend hours
tirelessly exploring, pursuing, and reflecting on who I am in
relation to the fantasy world, my character and my real life
presence, particularly through explicit and ambiguous moral
choices. Maybe this is also precisely why I sometimes feel my
fantasy bubble burst when I encounter the popular artifacts
around these games: after spending 200+ hours as Rogue, or
Myst, or Kitanya (the names I gave each of my characters in
Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim, respectively)
journeying through the wasteland or the countryside with my
companions (who I carefully protected and made sure had the
appropriate amount of stimpacks or weapons), I would spiral
back into the real world when I looked at the back cover of my
game case, or experienced a game sequence that didn’t quite fit
my character, or looked up artwork online, or even walked into a
GameStop and saw the character I was supposed to be playing
in the way “he” was conceived by whatever powers that be. It is
during these moments that I become aware of my “womanness”
playing a story about a man as a woman.
Playing In the Backdrop of the Vault Dweller, the Courier and the Dragonborn
To be fair, most of the newer Bethesda RPG titles have
probably offered one of the most authentic experiences of playing
as the gender or race of your choice to date, when compared to
most games that let you vary those characteristics in your game
experience (which I will discuss in more depth later). Fallout 3
and Fallout New Vegas are set in a post-apocalyptic retro-future
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American world resulting from a nuclear holocaust that happened
in an alternate 2077. Even though Fallout 3 is a continuation of a
classic PC post-apocalyptic RPG, it stands out as an almost
complete reimagining of the original series, and can be thought of
as the first in a new series 3 . Both games have 1950s-era
architecture, design, nostalgia and anti-communist themes,
symbolizing references to A Boy and His Dog 4 and providing the
backdrop of an alternate futuristic world that branched off from
our actual US history circa 1950-60s. Within this world, you can
freely roam and explore, and you can choose most of your
characteristics down to the detail, including your sex,
race/ethnicity, eye color, skin color, hairstyle and color, as well as
your personality attributes.
Fallout 3 gives you the unique perspective of
experiencing your own birth in a vault 5 (and your mother’s
subsequent death during birth), going through your toddler years
(where you choose your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes 6 from a child’s
book), and experiencing your childhood and teenage years, all
while bonding with your widowed, scientist father, and fellow vault
dwellers. Your early interactions with your father and fellow vault
dwellers, as well as being immersed in the first person
perspective and experience of your early years, helps to weave
you into the story of the person you will become and why (though
how you become morally good, evil or neutral in relation to this
narrative is up to you and your game choices). In essence, you
can make an equally skilled young or old, Black, White, Asian or
Hispanic, male or female character.
Fallout New Vegas allows for the same level of character
customization but without a significant back-story (and in many
ways allows you to assume you are continuing where the original
vault dweller of Fallout 3 left off). The game begins with you, a
mail courier, being shot in the head by a 1940s or 50s-era looking
gangster named Benny in the future Las Vegas Mojave
Wasteland desert. You are saved by a mysterious robot and
healed by a doctor, where you are able to reestablish your traits
(by assigning your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes in his office). While
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you do not have early memories or attachments to non-playable
characters (NPCs) 7 to ground your morality, like in Fallout 3, it
works with the game’s focus on a less rigid ethical character
system (there are less clear cut “good” and “evil” characters and
an overall more ambiguous moral game play). Furthermore, the
game allows you to craft closer relationships with possible
companion characters that come into play later on.
In Skyrim, you can choose the gender and fantasy race
of your character (i.e., Wood Elf, Nord, Redguard, Argonian,
etc.). Some of these races actually correlate to modern racial
constructs: for example, if you play as a Nord, you will personify a
White Nordic character, which corresponds with the racial
background of the people of Skyrim, whereas if you choose to
play as a Redguard, you will look racially Black with an interesting
racial back-story. In fact, the game has a strong theme related
to race, and while you can also play as a Khajit (a beast race of
cats) or an Argonian (a beast race of reptiles), as well as elves,
playing as a character other than a Nord will often be met with
hostility by some Nord characters, as the game is set against the
backdrop of a xenophobic rebellion against an empire that has
seemingly sided with dark elves in order to reach a treaty.
Given its complexity, a discussion of race in Skyrim would be its
own essay. However, reflecting on themes of ethnocentrism,
racism, and xenophobia in the context of a fantasy world in
turmoil over attacking dragons and rebellions in and of itself
offered a fascinating reflection, and only furthered my
engagement within this complex open-world. In a similar vein as
Fallout 3 and New Vegas, you could create equally skilled
characters regardless of sex (and subsequent in-game gender
expression), though there were some variations by race 8 .
The narrative entry points of all three games, overall,
offer an open world, full of varying forms of conflict, and morality,
which aid in aligning the player to the game. Fallout 3, in
particular, draws the player into the narrative by aligning the
character with his or her family and friends within the backdrop of
the struggle in the post-apocalyptic world. Skyrim, in particular,
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draws you into the narrative through a dragon attack and an
ideological rebellion, which can be compelling in its moral
complexity. In this sense, all three games successfully
introduce playing as the gender and race of your choice in the
opening sequence. However, nuances in the ways encounters
are experienced by the sex you have chosen or the narrative
choices of developers create interesting fodder for determining
individual authenticity in the space.
Gendered Experience in an Open World Game: Sex, Love and Combat
Fallout 3 and its sequel, Fallout New Vegas, offer
interesting experiences that vary by gender. In Fallout 3, for
example, your choices do come with corresponding experiences
related to the gender of the character you created. For instance,
choosing to play as a female will get you called “Bitch!” by raiders
in combat, which is realistic to me as a woman playing a game
about a harsh post-apocalyptic world. However, glitches often
had the unfortunate effect of reminding you that you were playing
in an intended male narrative. For example, game glitches would
occasionally have your character referred to as a man (or
referred to as “he”) and one of my ending sequence animations
featured a male version of my character.
Three early relationships during Fallout 3’s game
narrative help to influence the kind of character you eventually
create: your father, a loving yet mysterious scientist whose
disappearance sets off your escape from the vault; Butch, a male
bully with whom your initial interactions help you understand the
consequences of moral in-game choices; and your female “best
friend” Amata, with whom there appears to be a bond bordering
on something more (though this never materializes, especially if
you play as woman). However, while Butch serves as a constant
potential physical threat in the vault, and Amata has to be
rescued from harassment by him and his friends, you don’t really
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have the chance to engage in meaningful romantic relationships
with the characters that define your early life. Moreover, while a
case can be made for male bullying of women, particularly
through sexual harassment, I often didn’t find the kind of physical
intimidation and rivalry Butch provided relatable to a female
experience. Furthermore, sex seems to almost have no role in
the game (which is a bit farfetched in a post-apocalyptic world in
a rated mature game, especially one so otherwise strongly tied
with A Boy and His Dog 9 ). The developers seem to have
chosen to drop sex mostly from the narrative (possibly to alleviate
complication involved in developing dual-gender play, or as a
deliberate attempt to avoid controversial subject matter), though
very early on in the first town you visit, you meet a female
prostitute named Nova, who you can choose to have paid sex
with, whether you play as female or male.
Interestingly, the developers do allow you the option of
taking on a unique perk called “Black Widow” if you play as a
female character in Fallout 3 or New Vegas, which allows you to
do additional damage to male opponents in combat and opens
unique dialogue choices with some key male NPCs (while it’s
optional to choose any perk, this perk’s strong leverage in game
play, and its early availability in the game almost makes it a
required perk to play with). While male characters have the
option of a “Lady Killer” perk (which is roughly the same as “Black
Widow” except allows these advantages over non-playable
female characters), there are fewer female foes one encounters
in combat in the game, and less key female NPCs to manipulate.
“Black Widow/Lady Killer” is the only perk that has strikingly
different effects depending on the gender you play as. For
example, in both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the “Black Widow”
perk can be used as a means of manipulating male NPCs in
important or main story quests and consequently ending those
quests without as much complication. In Fallout 3, for example,
one of the first towns you visit is Megaton, which has the
possibility of being your home base. You are offered the
challenging “Power of the Atom” quest, where you can either
disarm the bomb that has never detonated in the center of the
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town, as requested by the town sheriff, or you can blow it up, as
requested by a mysterious man named Burke (on behalf of, you
eventually will learn, an evil character). If you choose to
detonate the bomb, it will result in a huge karma hit, the loss of
key NPCs, and an almost inevitable evil moral game experience.
If you choose not to detonate the bomb, you can still play as good
or evil, but you can retain the ability to have Megaton be your
home base. However, with the “Black Widow” perk, you can
convince Burke not to be concerned with the bomb, which
substantially alleviates quest hassles, including killing Burke or
dealing with pesky hit men who constantly attempt to kill you (if
you refuse detonating the bomb), having Burke involved in killing
the sheriff (if you report Burke), as well as several other complex
options that have a strong impact on the rest of your game play.
The “Black Widow” perk serves an even greater purpose
in Fallout New Vegas, where you have the option of seducing
Benny, a main character you are pursuing throughout your main
quest, in an attempt to find the crucial platinum chip, and discover
why you were left for dead by him at the beginning of the game.
Ultimately, many of the choices in obtaining the chip from Benny
involve additional hassle or additional time, like having the entire
casino he is affiliated with turn hostile against you (resulting in a
standoff with dozens of armed men, and the loss of several
potential side quests), or having to pursue him further in the
wasteland. However, the “Black Widow” perk gives you the
ability to not only seduce Benny in his private quarters, but quietly
remove him from the equation, saving you much time and hassle
on a main story quest, and also giving you the option of obtaining
some of key valuables, including the chip. Depending on how
you play the game, it can also significantly speed up the
completion of the main storyline.
While Fallout 3 mostly avoids experiences that involve
sex or love (beyond a few peripheral references), Fallout New
Vegas offers interesting narrative around sexuality and
relationships 10
. New Vegas offers you the opportunity to meet an
array of NPC companions, who all have their own set of perks,
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skills and even side quests (if you pursue them). While there
isn’t enough room to talk about all of the characters, their
corresponding abilities and storylines at length, Veronica, Cass
and Boone are three potential companions with whom you can
have incredibly interesting interactions. Veronica is a member of
the Brotherhood of Steel 11
, who is not completely sold on their
isolationist, xenophobic and technology-worshipping ways. In
some sense, her disillusionment may have started as a result of
her sexuality: she had a romantic relationship with another
female Brotherhood member (who appears in a later DLC 12
),
which was discouraged and subsequently severed, due to the
isolated Brotherhood’s insistence on procreation. Her lover left
the Brotherhood due to their narrow-minded ways, though
Veronica’s relationship becomes personal (at least for me) when
you meet her former lover in a later DLC. Cass is a brass and
sassy former-caravan owner and driver, who can be found in a
NCR 13
bar, drinking incessantly. If she becomes a companion,
she will openly express distaste for the misogynistic nature of
Caesar’s legion, a band of mostly evil slavers who attempt to take
over the Mojave wasteland. Cass gave my character comfort
during a difficult quest: Caesar’s Legion is downright hostile to
women, using them solely for sex slavery, yet, as a female
character, I am the only woman to freely walk in Legion territory
due to Caesar’s need for my potential assistance. Legion
soldiers make sure that I am aware I am a woman they would
freely and violently have their way with if not for Caesar’s orders,
and Cass’ companionship and witty commentary actually served
as solace as she accompanied me through an often difficult path
in meeting Caesar. Finally, Boone is a hardened yet sad former
NCR military sharp-shooter, who lost his wife to Caesar’s Legion
and a complex tragedy he is not willing to initially reveal. You
can spend a significant amount of time interacting with Boone,
eventually learning about his wife and healing his past wounds
related to her, and his actions during the war, but, once again,
companions are limited to combat-based companionship, even
while divulging their deepest secrets.
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Each of the NPCs offer you a glimpse into the complexity
of relationships in the post-apocalyptic world, even taking you on
incredibly intimate quests or storylines, but this level of familiarity
is shut down just as quickly as it’s introduced, which is a bit
disheartening. For the most part, once their key storyline or
quest is over, dialogue is limited, though they can continue to
fight by your side. Veronica’s story openly discusses an intimate
homosexual relationship, though exploring one yourself with her
seems off-limits, even playing as a woman. Of particular
frustration was the inability to talk to her lover about her in a later
DLC, even though I had developed close relationships with both
of them as companions. Cass’ witty assurance and banter
about handling her men, and her consoling presence during my
harrowing journey amongst slavers and rapists, made her seem
like a potential best friend. Furthermore, I appreciated her
dialogue, which echoed my resistance and provided depth to the
female experience in the wasteland, though beyond being a
fighting companion who occasionally asks for whiskey, she
doesn’t pursue a deeper friendship. And, even though you
spend a significant amount of time unraveling and healing Boone,
who has been widowed for quite a while, you are not offered the
ability to pursue anything more with him, whether it be a possible
romance, or a very close friendship.
In juxtaposition, however, you can have sexual exploits
out of gained admiration with women who admire and are grateful
for your assistance, but with whom you otherwise share no level
of close companionship, like the kind you fostered with those that
fought by your side and revealed their lives to you. Fallout New
Vegas features two possible NPCs that you can have sex with
after going on mini-quests for items they require. Red Lucy is a
strong, confident character who runs an underground fighting pit
called The Thorn, where people can bet on gladiator-like fights
featuring men and beasts from the wasteland. After finding
various beast eggs for her as part of a side-quest, she will give
you the honor of being her “hunter” and offer to sleep with you out
of admiration whenever you request. Sarah Weintraub, who runs
Vault 21 (now being used as a less expensive hotel on the New
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Vegas strip), will sleep with you if you gather enough vault
jumpsuits from nearby vaults for her giftshop and pass a speech
option. While both women are intriguing characters to a certain
extent, you never learn much about them, nor are you allowed to
develop a level of social intimacy, as with your companions.
New Vegas further expanded the perk options by
allowing males to have the “Confirmed Bachelor” perk, which
enables someone playing as male to do additional damage to
same-sex opponents in combat and opens dialogue choices with
the same-sex (females had a similar perk called “Cherchez La
Femme”). While it had the potential of being just as powerful as
“Black Widow,” it was limited in that it didn’t offer the same
interactions with key male NPCs (though it did open up newer
options with more extraneous NPCs 14
). Furthermore, while
there are many more prostitutes in New Vegas than in Fallout 3
(including an entire hotel devoted to the practice), paid sex is still
primarily reserved with women. In the hotel, you are only
offered the option to have sex with two female prostitutes,
regardless of gender, despite the variety of male and female
homosexual and heterosexual prostitutes. One extraneous,
optional side-quest called “Wang Tang Atomic Tango” allows the
player to recruit a sex-bot, a female ghoul (who dresses like a
dominatrix), and a “smooth talker” male prostitute. However,
only one of the men you can potentially recruit will have sex with
the player, regardless of gender.
Consequently, sexuality is used in both Fallout 3 and
New Vegas as a means of manipulating men, if and only if, you
play as a woman, while unpaid sex for pleasure without
manipulation is reserved only with women. Fallout New Vegas
begins to open up avenues that explore sexuality, with the
addition homosexual characters, and the potential for male
homosexual interaction, though limited. As a heterosexual
woman, having sex with a woman as a woman within the fantasy
space doesn’t turn me off or cause me to be uncomfortable, but it
does remind me that I am operating in the fantasy of a man.
While a case can also be made for operating in the fantasy of a
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homosexual or bisexual woman, the use of femme characters
(with essentially interchangeable sexuality) reinforces a male
perspective. As Ciasullo points out in her analysis of lesbian
bodies in popular media, the popularity of the femme lesbian (and
the consequential absence of the “butch” or otherwise not femme
lesbian) is partly due to her ability to be “de-lesbianized”
(Ciasullo, 2001). In other words, the women you sleep with in
Fallout can be lesbian or straight, but ultimately will be pleasing to
male attraction, as well as attainable and consumable by men.
Skyrim on the other hand works in many ways as a
continuation on the theme of gender and sexuality in role-playing,
even though it branches from another game series. Skyrim
allows you to play as the gender and race of your choice,
resulting in equally skilled characters regardless of race or
gender (for the most part). Additionally, there are several more
possible companions you can interact with, as well as a dizzying
amount of other NPCs involved in a dizzying amount of quests,
which I don’t have time to discuss at length here. However, the
developers make sure to include a wide array of NPCs that cover
all possible gender and race combinations, and female NPCs are
prominently featured as strong, capable and equally skilled at
taking on any job a man could do, including being a blacksmith or
“housecarl” (Skyrim’s word for bodyguard). One of the earliest
potential companions afforded through gameplay is a tough,
capable female Nord named Uthgerd the Unbroken, who appears
in a tavern in Whiterun, the first major city you venture to in the
game. If you speak to her, she will challenge you to a fistfight,
and if you win, she will offer to fight at your side through the
game. What I found particularly fascinating was her fearless
nature and her butch demeanor. Despite her disposition, a male
or female can marry her.
While your companions don’t have significant
back-stories or side-quests, as they do in the Fallout games, you
do have the option of marrying your companions, who can later
continue to fight by your side or tend the household. This option
is extended to you by wearing an “Amulet of Mara” and having
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people recognize it and proposition you. Despite whom you
eventually marry, most interactions with your spouse will be the
same. For the most part, Skyrim attempts to give the player a
fair and mostly authentic playing experience whether you are
playing as male or female, despite your sexuality. There appear
to be both heterosexual and homosexual options for marriage
and a variety of capable choices. Since there isn’t a significant
back-story associated with potential spouses, I didn’t feel a
strong sense of being shafted by not being able to choose
someone I came to grow closer to through their story. However,
it should be noted that marriage serves more of an economical
than intimate purpose in Skyrim: while your spouse will open a
store and generate revenue, you never get the option to share
the marriage bed.
Inauthenticity was mostly a problem when it came to the
race you played, as one of the main storylines involves fighting
for or against a xenophobic Nordic cause, though one could
make the case that fighting against this cause could resonate
with one playing as a different race (this was the case for me).
However, the presence of this plot device, along with popular
representations of the game, brought up interesting dilemmas
related to being able to choose your own character. In
particular, I often wondered whether my experience was
authentic when I confronted popular imagery and representations
around my game, which didn’t include my in-game experience.
Popular Representation of Your Character…“as if a Man”
While each of these games isn’t built upon a static
character linked to the narrative (like the male hero, “Link,” in
Legend of Zelda) or a named character that personifies the
franchise (like “Sheppard,” who can be male or female, in Mass
Effect), there appears to be external pressure to personify the
character as if it defined the game. Each of the titles tried their
best to hide any association with a static character: Fallout 3 and
New Vegas’ covers both had fully armored individuals who could
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be claimed to be male or female (though I will later argue that as
an entry point, the male would be assumed). Skyrim’s cover
only contained the symbol of the dragonborn (or “Dovahkiin”),
which the main character is referred to throughout the game,
despite the race (i.e., fantasy race associated with Skyrim) or
gender chosen. However, a careful examination of the back
covers of all three games erodes the fantasy: each of the titles
features a male player in action (even though each game’s
default play style is first person, meaning that they didn’t have to
show gender at all to demonstrate game play). Further, the
popular representation of Skyrim’s dragonborn is a very
pronounced Nord male character, as if reinforcing the default
option of playing as a Nord. This version of the Dovahkin is
present in all forms of media used to promote the game, including
popular game magazines, fan websites, and a promotional
memorabilia. Since you are often spoken to and treated as if
you are a Nord throughout the game anyway, it serves to erode
the authenticity of your experience if you played as another race.
And, while gender doesn’t seem to matter either way in game
play, the use of the male Nord in marketing and imagery erodes
the authenticity of choosing to play as female. More importantly,
it limits the entry point into the game for many players that
wouldn’t otherwise see themselves enjoying this kind of storyline,
even though the ability to customize your experience would
actually make it enjoyable to a wider audience.
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Figure 1: Fallout 3 images. Left: Front and back cover of the Fallout 3 game. Photo Credit: Bethesda Softworks. Right: close-up of your main character, as a male, reinforcing associations with A Boy and His Dog. Photo Credit: Bethesda
Softworks, http://fallout.bethsoft.com/
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Figure 2: Left: Front and back cover of Fallout New Vegas. Right: Close-up of a back cover photo of your character, as a man, in action. Just as with Fallout 3, the use of a fully-armored and gender ambiguous character on the front cover allows one to maintain the illusion of playing as the gender of your choice, while the use of action pictures of your character as a male on the back cover can assist in eroding that illusion. Photo Credit: Bethesda Softworks.
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Figure 3: Front and Back cover of the Skyrim game. Note that the front cover doesn’t reinforce a static character. Photo Credit: Bethesda Softworks.
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Figure 4: Popular representation of the Dragonborn (“Dovahkiin”). Left: image associated with the game, which was promoted in Game Informer, a popular gaming magazine. Photo Credit: Game Informer. Center: The cover of a game magazine promoted in Europe. Photo Credit: Bethesda Blog, http://www.bethblog.com/. Right: Human-scale promotional statue of the dragonborn: dozens were shipped as collectables and featured in many game retail stores. Photo Credit: Bethesda Blog, http://www.bethblog.com/.
The Evolution of Choosing Your Gender
In recent years, it appears that developers and game
companies are becoming progressively more sensitive to
gamers’ desires to develop their own unique characters, with
gender and race being increasingly offered as characteristics that
can be individualized. For example, two other major RPG titles
have allowed you the ability to choose whether you want to play
as male or female: Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 and Fable 2 and 3.
Interestingly enough, the shift for most major titles seems to have
occurred around 2007-2008. The original Fable game, released
in 2004, would only allow you to play as male, though this
changed for Fable 2, which allowed one to play as a male or
female character, and was released in 2008. Mass Effect 1 was
released in late 2007, and featured the ability to play as the male
or female captain Sheppard; the later titles of Mass Effect 2 and 3
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were released in 2010 and 2012 respectively, and had expanded
options for sexuality in relation to the gender chosen. Similarly,
Fallout 3 was released in 2008, Fallout NV in 2010, and Skyrim in
late-2011.
I chose to limit this narrative to the Fallout series and
Skyrim because, unlike Mass Effect, they allow you to fully
customize your character down to the name, in addition to race
and gender. Mass Effect primarily enforced playing as “Captain
Sheppard,” a male default character who could be customized to
be female. While in the first game, this seemed tacked on, later
titles allowed for enhanced experiences playing with the gender
of your choice. Furthermore, Mass Effect mirrors similar
progressions in playing as the gender or sexuality of your choice
by increasing the amount of characters you could be intimate
with: in the original Mass Effect, there were only three characters
which you could be intimate with, which included a male NPC if
you were playing as a woman, a female NPC if you were playing
as a man, and a female alien NPC which either could be intimate
with, reinforcing the heterosexual male experience. Later titles,
particularly Mass Effect 3, created more variation. Fable 2, on
the other hand, attempted early on to create a female experience
that was equal to that of a man, allowing female characters to get
as large and bulky as male characters as they grew stronger.
While there was a lot of controversy around allowing females to
play with what would come to look like a masculine-defined
female body, I felt more personally disconnected from the types
of sexual interactions allowed in the game: the men with whom
you could marry often came across as rather effeminate in their
demeanor and interaction, which wasn’t appealing to me as a
heterosexual woman. In other words, in an attempt to create
equality, the developers (perhaps mistakenly) allowed you to play
essentially as the female version of a man, complete with an
eventually masculine-looking body, and feminine-acting male
lovers. However, the use of more inclusive gender and sexuality
options in recent years, particularly in 2011 and 2012 is
encouraging, though the marketing around these games can be a
barrier to entry points for gamers and non-gamers alike.
89
Entry Points to the Narrative Game World
The industry and popular media continue to assume that
women are not playing games as much as men are, and it is
implied that there are barriers to this participation that include the
ways characters are portrayed, or the kinds of content in games -
in this sense, entry points are crucial. If we are starting to see
more games that allow players to craft a dialogue that relates to
them and the way they want to experience gender and race in
relation to that particular game world and quest line, I find it also
crucial for individuals to know what those games are about.
Entry points are the points at which potential players become
familiar with the game: but if the marketing and the memorabilia
are not consistent with the game possibilities, then there is a
potential population being missed.
Recently, I was explaining the experiences I had in
Skyrim to other gamers and non-gamers alike: what was striking
was that there were just as many hardcore male and female
gamers as non-gamers that were initially uninterested in playing
Skyrim. Its use of the male Nord, while appealing to some
gamers, was completely alienating to others, particularly many
black and Latino male gamers, in addition to female gamers.
One lifelong Latino male gamer confided in me that he loved
Bethesda titles, but couldn’t get into that “bow and arrow and
dragon-related mythological playing,” which, to me, speaks to a
larger cultural disconnect. However, many of us were Bethesda
supporters, having played Fallout 3 and New Vegas, which
ultimately led us to experiment with the game, and others
eventually followed once they became aware of the array of
options. Nevertheless, the entry point was limiting in the sense
that a potential population would have been missed, especially
for non-gamers, who I often speak with related to my own
research.
90
The Unique Experience of Female Gamers
As females occupying the gaming spaces, we are often
thrilled to have new choices in interaction so much so that we
may miss the other nuance of our experiences within the context
of playing as a woman. Part of what drew me to video games was
my rejection of static notions of female experience and
expression: I liked power and violence in how it allowed me to
define myself outside of traditional female roles. One of my
earliest movie icons was Ripley from Aliens, who was, in many
ways, the 80s personification of Rosie the Riveter. Growing up
with feminist parents probably furthered my association with
Ripley who was as capable as a man, but was also in touch with
her femininity as a mother figure and a love interest. She could
be strong and powerful, sexy and brave, dependent and
dependable: she could save all of the men and children and still
be the sexual interest of a respected, strong and capable man.
However, we didn’t get to play as Ripley – we got to play
as a man as we imagined being her. Our games didn’t pass the
Bechdel test 15
; in fact, they didn’t come close. As women’s
presence in gaming spaces is increasing, video game companies
are beginning to allow for a variety of gendered experiences, at
least as long as they relate to a narrative that often starts around
a man. However, the move toward increased sexual expression
and equal capability despite gender, suggests that the gendered
nature of the narrative is breaking down. The last barrier, it
appears, is increasing the access to that narrative and that
expression: the longer that games continued to be marketed as
boy’s spaces, the less likely those that don’t see themselves
inhabiting those spaces will take part in that narrative. While I
love the Skyrim male Nord, I also love my female wood elf, who
bravely fought against a xenophobic cause, saved Skyrim from
dragons and dark elves, and married a male mage who cooks her
a home cooked meal once a day. I want her story on the cover
of Game Informer too.