When I was a wee lass, I grew up as player 2. That means I actually only rarely got to play the games we had in the house, them being primarily single player and also usually played by my brother. I do remember my favorite game was Turtles in Time, in part because two people could play it at once. Even when we'd play something like Super Mario World, turns swapped when someone died. I died a lot. My brother rarely did. I didn't get to play much.
In a way, this led me to analyze games more. Analysis led to me wanting to make them. It also lead me to something else, though.
In any of the games I've played, I've never found a mirror. It's a well known fact that there are differences between how men and women are portrayed - And I realize that even as the butt of some jokes, I make out lucky in being portrayed at ALL in a positive light on occasions. Even then it's my gender that gets portrayed. Not my body type, except as a joke, or my sexuality, which might as well not EXIST. Even then? I'm lucky.
So I plan to go into what portrayals I do see. Some of them may be kind of terrible. I'll put warnings at the beginning of those, and will still watch my language.
At least with my game backlog, I have PLENTY of material.
I was thinking of all the years I grew up as a gamer and all the video games I played, and you're right. It's surprising the idea of how gender is exposed in videogames. I'm also trying to think of the first time I found a playable female character in a game... Super Mario 3 for NES with Princess Peach maybe? Or Street Fighter with the fast Chun-Li...? And I'm not even mentioning their appearance, behave or powers yet. I guess video games began targeted for a male sector based on somewhat kind of stereotype. In addition, characters in video games had to appeal to that public. Obviously, market has changed a lot nowadays! And I expect to see and talk about it here on your coming posts!
ReplyDeleteNice thoughtful compelling idea! Can't wait to see your reflections on your every week posts. Let's see with what you surprise us this time!
In my case, it was Toadstool in Mario 2. Though I also remember many times playing Super Metroid (which I was terrible at). I was actually shocked to discover Samus was female! Which is problematic in itself, really. And yeah the market is a lot broader than people think. 50% of the people buying and playing games are women. Ooooh this shall be such a fun bed of thorns!
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