But the presentation here, that Aloy is the gold standard, both discounts decades of beloved women in games and simultaneously demonizes “attractiveness” in characters that everyone, even women (often especially women) love in their games. And there have indeed been female characters created entirely within a male gaze. The industry has massive, massive problems with retaining women employees and treating them well within gamedev. Reducing all these women in all these games to “Is she too sexy? Is she not sexy enough?” does a disservice to the entire concept of women in games. It includes Kassandra, Aloy and Ellie and Abby from The Last of Us.
That includes anime women of Genshin Impact (ironically, a game which Aloy appears as a guest star), it includes Bayonetta, Lady Dimitrescu and Chun-Li. Moving into present day, what’s become clear is that there is room for all types of female characters in games. For many women, Lara Croft remains an icon and again, it was a big deal to have a character like her leading her own game when she debuted. For many male players, whether they found her attractive or not, she represented the first time they were playing as a woman in a game without being hidden in a massive suit of armor (the article also ignores Samus Aran). While it’s true that Croft’s original design was sexualized in a way to appeal to young men, it’s also true that she’s a part of gaming history and a great female protagonist in her own right. Lara Croft, star of Tomb Raider, has been the poster child for this entire issue in gaming, and again, shows that this is a complicated issue. Second, Kim is ignoring 20-30 years of gaming history where Aloy was far from the first great, strong, cool, beloved female gaming protagonist.īayonetta, the example he cites, sparked this whole debate around a decade ago about whether her unapologetic sexuality was empowering or degrading (most seemed to land on empowering).
The issue is larger than just Aloy, however, and a core problem with Kim’s take on this is that even as a “gaming enthusiast,” he seems to be missing two key points: The idea that his entire argument feels straight out of 2009, and the idea that women can only look a certain way or must be presented completely covered up in games feels pretty dated at this point, even for most ultra-liberals.
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