First I want to make a distinction in the verbiage that I am choosing to use. Technically, as far as the genre goes, a "first person shooter" game style is any game where you are looking through the eyes of your character and your main weapon is a firearm. With that said, there are a few games that deserve a shout-out for the inclusion of strong females. Zoey in Valve's hit series "Left for Dead" is one great example. Zoey's main weapon is a shotgun. She is a very well-rounded female character who mixes a tough tomboyish personality with a very caring heart. She will take out zombies just as brutally as any male character, but is unafraid to show emotion when a friend or teammate dies or is injured. Plus she wears Converse (I have a fondness for any fellow Converse girl). Also, "Borderlands" and "Borderlands 2", by Gearbox, are chock full of some great playable female characters. The spunky Mechromansor is by far my favorite female in the Borderlands series. Being a geek of small stature myself, I like the idea that so much power and strength can come in such a small package. Proves that just because we are fun sized, some of us girly geeks can still carry a big punch :).
With that said, the void that I spoke of is overall very apparent when we take the time to look at the war-themed first person shooters. This genre of games is one of the top selling in the world with blockbuster games like Activision's "Call of Duty", EA's "Battlefield", and Bungie's "Halo" games leading the way. Each of these games make the top selling lists with every new release and none of them have a single (make sure you understand that...not a single one!) playable female character. With the pure number of women gamers out there, I find this very hard to fathom—so I spent some time looking into the reasons behind this.
There is a very interesting discussion on IGN that addressed the lack of women in the upcoming title "Call of Duty: Ghost" (scheduled for this November on current and next gen systems), entitled "Call of Duty Ghosts: Discussing Lack of Women". The link to this video is listed below, and I highly recommend watching the full discussion. For my purposes here, I am going to point out a few of the important points that were made. The main argument in this discussion, against women in a FPS situation, is that people will protest against the use of violence against women. Cali, the only woman present in the discussion, points out that "the idea that women are too fragile to get shot in the face is sexist in itself". This I agree with. Why are we still living in a world where women are treated with kid gloves, like we are to sit around waiting for our knight in shining armor? In America we send thousands of women into battle everyday. We have brave women serving our country actually facing death and proudly representing us on the battlefield. But in these war-based FPS games the developers seem so afraid that someone will protest the violent acts against women that they are, in my opinion, diminishing the important role that female combatants play in our military. This is true even more now that America has changed the rules regarding women being unable to fight in the front lines. Cali, in the video, goes as far as to point out how proud Activision is that they have included dogs in the new COD, but can't make a single female playable character. Come on guys… really? Any time social norms are pushed in any form of media, someone is going to be upset. My question to the big blockbuster game developers: are you really so afraid of a little backlash about women characters that you will sacrifice your supposed 'realistic portrayal of war'? All three of the big games developers mentioned above brag on a regular basis about the realism of their games. If you are so focused on a realistic representation of war… then I call your bluff, and say sorry fellas, but where are the ladies?
The other main argument supporting the lack of women in the classic FPS is the lack of women who play this genre, which brought up some questions for me. Is the lack of women in FPS really because women don't play them, or do fewer women play them because they have no playable character to relate to? In my quest to answer this question I found a very good article by Lori May entitled "Female Gamers and FPS Genre: Ladies Speak up". In this article Lori spoke to six different women gamers regarding their thoughts on playing FPS games, and found that most of the women avoided the FPS genre. This seems to support the idea that the lack of women could be because of the lack of women players. Lori found that the women she spoke to avoided the genre mainly because of the first person camera angle causing them headaches and motion sickness. They also stated that they often experienced negative reactions from fellow gamers. This being in the form of rude people on the mics regarding there being woman playing multi player along with the boys. Lori quotes one of her interviewed ladies as saying "When I indulge in an online FPS title I receive far more shocked responses to my obviously female voice than in any MMO or other Coop/competitive online style of video games.". Now we do have to of course recognize that she asked 6 people which is no where near a representation of all women gamers as a whole.
Lori's article was written in 2011. I decided to do my own poll of 6 female gamers to see if I came up with a similar result. I asked 5 girl gamers whom I respect greatly on Twitter and counted myself as my 6th person (because it's my blog and I can do what I want ). The gals I polled regarding this are a lot of fun to follow and I highly recommend you do so. Their handles are found below in the link section. When talking to my group of 6 lovely ladies I also found that most of them choose to stay away from war based FPS games. Though almost all of us will play a first person view game if the story is good enough. Of those of us that do not play the war games our reasoning tended to fall more into the lack of story not the lack of female playable characters. Most stated that the first person view causes them problems, but they are willing to play a first person view game if the story and characters are worth it. Some of the ladies I asked do play the online war based shooters. To this group I asked the follow up question, based on Lori's discoveries, of whether they receive any negativity on the servers when they sign on as a female. None who I asked this question thought they ever really got negative reactions from their fellow players. So at least this leads me to believe that in 3 years our fellow guy players have finally gotten used to hearing a lady's voice on the mic in multi-player. That is a great thing in my opinion. So once again this seems to support the idea that they lack of female playable characters could be do to the lack of females who play the games.
Well I looked into a lot of the reasons people blame for the lack of females in the war based shooters, but don't think I came up with any definitive answers to the cause or blame for this. I do have to say that I personally still think that the big blockbuster companies are doing a disserves to the industry and to their fans by not at least including a female in their games. To these companies I say whatever your reasoning for not including this female character you are not showing an accurate representation of our society or our military. I think the controversy that may come about by including a female military figure would be greatly overshadowed by the good that proper representation of society within your games would do . As always all my sources are listed in my link section. I would love to hear your comments and feedback. Until next time geeks...may the force be with you.
Follow me on Twitter @JessicaRocco
Links
Valve
Gearbox
Activision
Electronic Arts: EA Games
Bungie
IGN "Call of Duty: Ghosts' Discussing Lack of Women"
Lori May article
Follow these ladies on Twitter:
@Sephrin
@HarleyQuinn_N7
@CmdrButtface
@SarahJLA
@ReflectiveStrip
