Article Watch: The Invisible Women of War
Posted by ASandoval on December 15, 2009 under Games | 
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My girlfriend has written an excellent piece at her (usually art related) blog. It’s commentary on two other articles about the lack of female representation in video games, particularly war games, and its connection to an article about the general lack of understanding toward female veterans.
As a designer myself, I don’t try to look at gender as a demographic to pander to. If a story calls for a character of a particular sex, then that’s what I’ll use to the best of my ability without being stock or stereotypical on my reasons why. It’s a simple approach, but one that I feel would help greatly toward fixing the problem while still equally representing both groups.
Either way, it’s a great read and you should check it out at the link below.
Source: The Invisible Women of War (Scattered Showers)
furrykef said,
I think I have a stronger general tendency towards female characters than most writers do. For instance, SatAM:TYL basically revolves around Sally (albeit with her often serving as the “straight man” to the others’ antics), my graphic novel obviously revolves around Sammie, Energy Crisis has the female mad scientist, etc.
I think this might be because I tend to approach characters somewhat differently than many writers do, although it’s hard to describe in what way. I guess partly it’s how I make personality the driving force behind all my character designs. A character’s backstory, personal goals, etc. don’t matter as much. The other major part is what kind of personalities I find interesting. For instance, a young female mad scientist has a certain humorous dissonance.
Sammie’s gender is important because both her place in society (a warrior) and many aspects of her personality (particularly her aggression) are typically masculine. Yet she does somehow retain a lot of femininity to balance it out, I think.
As for SatAM:TYL, I’m not sure how Sally’s femininity plays into it… in this case the gender may actually be a coincidence, particularly considering I obviously didn’t design the original versions of these characters. But female characters do tend to be a “voice of reason” in modern comedy (unless the female is a ditz), so Sally’s probably continuing that tradition in both the original SatAM and in SatAM:TYL (though in somewhat different ways, I think).
All this isn’t to say that I think gender roles (whether we follow or subvert the stereotypes) need to be a primary consideration in deciding whether to have a male or female character… but they’ll probably end up being an inextricable part of the character anyway. Suppose you have a male cat, but he has a coat pattern that could belong to either gender. After you’ve lived with that cat for some time, he’ll always just “look male” to you. (I certainly get this sort of thing with all my pets.) Yet if you didn’t already know he was male, you’d have no way of knowing unless you took a peek. Gender roles can — and probably will — shape how you perceive your cat, even though in reality they’re irrelevant!
If I were to make a war game, would I have a prominent female character? Probably. But it probably wouldn’t be because I felt the need to shoehorn a woman into a male cast; it’d probably be more because it wouldn’t really occur to me not to put in a female character. I mean, why wouldn’t I put one in? They’re too interesting.
- Kef
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