Female characters aren’t exactly new to video games, but the way women are portrayed in video games has changed considerably, especially in the last decade. An example of this is the success of the heroine Aloy, protagonist of the series “Horizon”, whose second title “Forbidden West” arrived on PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles last Friday (18).
Since the franchise’s debut game (“Zero Dawn”, 2017), the character, an independent, strong, intelligent and decisive young woman, has been noted for breaking standards that have long endured – and, in a way, still exist – in the representation of women in games.
With few exceptions, games released from the 1980s to the early years of the 21st century tended to fit female characters into two profiles.
They were “damsels in distress”, who needed to be saved by the protagonist (Zelda and Princess Peach are some examples), or hypersexualized characters, with few clothes and sensual bodies (as with most fighters in “Mortal Kombat” and “Street Fighter”). .
Female representation in games became a doctoral thesis in the US. Teresa Lynch, a researcher at Indiana University, analyzed the characteristics of 571 female characters playable in games released from 1989 to 2014. Two conclusions: the peak of the trend of hypersexualization of women in games occurred in 1995 and has been decreasing since then; today, there are still examples of objectification of women, especially when they occupy the position of secondary characters.
A character that makes this change of trend explicit is Lara Croft, from the series “Tomb Raider”. The “guitar body”, with a thin waist and exaggeratedly large breasts – which, according to Lynch, came about as a sexist joke by the game’s developers -, was the heroine’s hallmark from 1996 to 2013, when the series finally underwent a “reboot”. , featuring a new Lara Croft, with a look with proportions more faithful to reality and less sexualized.
One of the reasons for this change may be the greater presence of women working in the video game industry.
Female participation, despite still being low, rose from 11.5% in 2005 to 22% in 2014, reaching 30% in 2021, according to a report by the IDGA (International Association of Game Developers).
Furthermore, for Lynch, there is a recognition within and outside the video game industry that this reality needs to change. “I think people are seeing the criticism of the hypersexualization of female characters as legitimate”, says the researcher to sheet.
She also points out that “there’s a lot of good work going on in the video game industry, with smart and thoughtful researchers working in collaboration with developers to help reduce the prevalence of content that can dehumanize or demean people.”
Still, there is a long way to go for games to have proportional representation between men and women. Not only because female protagonists like Aloy, Ellie (from “The Last of Us”) and Jesse Faden (“Control”) are still a rarity, but mainly because of the difficulty women find to make themselves heard in an industry that is repeatedly news for cases of sexual harassment and misogyny.
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