So I really do think that 'gaming' as a whole – both as industry and hobby- are deserving of a feminist once over. Gaming is a huge, huge industry, and I really do believe that its on its way to being the next form of 'modern' entertainment – replacing movies or novel reading as a forum for critical discussion. While its unlikely we'll ever see “Oprah's Game Club: Bioshock 4”, I do think that within 20 years we'll ebe seeing a greater deal of interaction and creativity within the scale of the medium of video games.

We're already seeing this, on a smaller scale, by being invited by the developers into increasingly complicated universes on a smaller scale. When reading reviews for the video game Bioshock, some of the key words that will jump out at you are 'immersion', 'detail', 'environment's, all praising the world that you are placed in.

And the reason I believe that this is relevant to feminism is that these worlds are mostly directed towards certain audiences, lived in by certain human beings, deal with certain customs.

When you go back to the thesis that games are going to become a huge way for people to communicate and spread ideas on the level that a well done movie can do now... it's disturbing to think that this is a movement that women are being locked out of. The message is clear when you play a game with an incredible narrative, well done world, moral options, and 2D flat women characters: that we're sort of alien and we don't belong.

There are game companies who are bucking this trend, and then there are game companies who go about half way there and then pass these ideas by play testers. For instance:

I'm sure you've all heard of the game “Portal”, which I've mentioned earlier in this blog. In Portal, you play a test subject. You wake up in your tiny little cell, obtain a portal gun, and solve puzzles while a creepy voice gives you disturbing messages over the speakers. In Portal, you play a woman, an orphan named Chell. There is only one word of dialog that Chell speaks in the entire game, and it's a phone recording that the AI plays back at you to mock you. “Hellloooo!” “That's you! That's how DUMB you sound!”

Chell is also a very real looking woman. She wears a baggy orange jump suit, seems to be around average weight, and has strong features that are distinctive but not exaggerated. She looks tired, and a bit haggard. It makes sense.

The antagonist of the game is the AI, and she mocks and taunts you during the entire game. She's an AI designed by a man with heavy mercury poisoning during his last crazed years, and she taunts you constantly up to the games conclusion. You find out during the credits that the GLADOS, the AI, was simply lonely.

This is astonishing, and astonishing that it is astonishing, that there is a game with two well developed, distinctively female characters who make no apologies in being female and do not play into tired stereotypes. Portal has been a resounding success, scoring several Game of the Year Awards and becoming a meme across the web. There has been no complaints over the characters, or their interactions. And in Valve's other series, Half-Life, which takes place in the same universe, there are several women who help you out but are self sufficient, have their own personalities and ideals, clash with the male main characters but not in a way that leads to the inevitable conclusion of them being seduced by their charms, and so on and so forth. Valve is one of the feminist companies out there on the front lines of the game industry simply because their games are gender-balanced and amazingly written.

Another company, Blizzard, is almost there to the same point where Valve is. Blizzard is hugely successful, with one of their games reaching the status of national sport in North Korea. Stadiums are rented out, and people will play this real time strategy. This game has been out for over ten years, and the skill ceiling has not been reached. In the RTS games, there are women characters with real motivations, etc, but disappointingly they are often killed or traitorous. Sarah Kerrigan, the Zerg Queen, is well fleshed out but the main antagonist of the series and she is the only main character who is female. The only other named campaign female is an alien elder who turns out to be brainwashed and murdered after you discover her treachery. There are countless female units on the field (succubuses, Valkyries, medics, drop ships, etc.) but they do not play any part in the campaign besides providing the pew pew you so desperately need to down your foes. Blizzard's sexism in the hallmark series that is currently earning them $Texas, World of Warcraft, is also apparent – I am attempting to document it in the series on this blog Sexism in the World of Warcraft.

Then you start to slide a little more on the scale. Capcom, the makers of such games as Resident Evil and Megaman have strong female protagonists such as Jill Valentine, DELTA team member and the survivor of the doomed, zombie infested Raccoon City after joining the police force of S.T.A.R.S., is a very strong feminist character at her core. But it seems like Capcom decided that being a strong woman who can hold her own just isn't sexy enough, and so pleads with the player to believe that someone who has been on the DELTA force for years (there has never been a woman on the DELTA force before, so this is a notable achievement that is merely glossed over in her biography) can be a mere twenty two years old, and is delegated to the assignment of 'master of lockpicking' on the team.

So either the leadership of S.T.A.R.S is functionally unable to do his job, because this is a woman who obviously lied on her resume that she was part of such an elite team as the first of her kind at the age of eighteen and he believed the entire story but was still so unimpressed he put her on lockpicking duty, or Capcom desperately wants its players to find Jill attractive – c'mon guys! She's young! She's not THAT much smarter than any one of you! If she were real, you could tap that! To add insult to injury, Jill replaces her beret, shoulderpads, long pants and t-shirt from Resident Evil 1 with a tubetop and a tight skirt in Resident Evil 3, with lots of promo shots of her walking through the flames with a sultry look on her face. Then Capcom just rubs in the salt with their game The Umbrella Chronicles, where Jill grabs onto a metal gutter, pulls herself up, wraps her legs around a zombie's head and seductively wriggles and writhes before cracking its neck. Finding herself surrounded, she sobs, before the big strong mercenary comes and saves her and they trade witty banter. In the original game, Jill saved the mercenaries, but that was clearly far too manly for such a cute little woman like Jill. She is now relegated to Sexpot in Distress duty.

DEAR LORD, CAPCOM.

This isn't even the bottom of the barrel. Ubisoft has an organization in their company made up of HOT gamergirls with HOT names like Vixyn and Valkyrie and they have a b log where they post about how they're HOT gamer girls who are soHOT as they GAME at Halo in a HOT fashion and post cartoons with 1cm waists cracking controller cords like whips in a HOT fashion because they're GIRLS who play video games and isn't that HOT? By the way, let me remind you that they're girls. Isn't that so HOT?

I can't hate on the Frag Dolls, as they call themselves, as people. Jinx used to post on a forum I went to that was very mainstream, and despite a sig with their logo and a “FD” at the end of her username she was very quiet about being a Frag Doll, never brought it up unless it was relevant to the conversation, did a lot of tournaments for charity, and was all around a stand up poster. On the other hand, Valkyrie came to the same message board and posted a topic called “YOU GUYS WANT TO SEE SOME GIRL ON GIRL ACTION?” and posted about an all-girl Halo tournament being held in Montreal. Good concept, bad execution – which pretty sums up the entirety of the Frag Dolls. I have no doubt that they're picked for looks first and skill at a controller second, and that the quality of their character has very little to do with the fact that they are a Frag Doll, but it's such an abhorent concept that I could forgive if it was more “Let's get women into gaming and show them just fun it can be” instead of some male executives going “You know, I bet more men would buy our games if we showed that they could meet girls that way.”

Which leads into the whole Jade Raymond controversy that happened a while back – more or less, a new Ubisoft game called Assassin's Creed was coming out and a large part of the project was being lead by developer Jade Raymond. Which is all well and good, congratulations, but Ubisoft decided to use her as the face of the campaign. She answered questions intelligently, and the whole politics and assassinating Christian leaders part of the games seemed very interesting, but the whole campaign seemed less “This is a very intelligent woman who has lead up a great game, let's give her a hand and buy Assassin's Creed in support!” and more “Hey! Look at THIS fox. Eh? Eh? And look at her – she can make games! Wow! Beauty and brains? Ha ha, how crazy is that?”

Which is more irksome than any other offense listed by any other games company on this blog because it was so stubbornly intentional and Ubisoft refuses to see anything wrong with such things. These are large, multimillion dollar companies too – they aren't a bunch of guys working out of a basement. If games are going to become – worst case scenario – a new multibillion dollar industry that reaches to all social classes, can't we make sure that companies include women in this movement too?