The video game industry, just like the movie industry, the sports industry, or the industry
industry, is largely dominated by men.
Now since 2009 the amount of female developers in video games has more than doubled to 22%
which is fantastic.
However they still make up less than a quarter of the business.
Overall women make up about 14% of the people working in the entire industry.
What’s worse is that female characters star in less than 10% of all games.
Which is about the same percentage of women Joe Biden tries to scratch and sniff.
There’s a lot of reasons for this sausage fest.
Historically the field has been dominated by men which makes advancement in that framework
difficult for women (not to mention people of different gender identities).
And having only men working on a medium for generations produces some unsurprising results.
Which unfortunately creates a bit of a feedback loop because maybe people don’t want spend
years training to get into an industry that hyper sexualizes and under-represents them.
Already I can see the chain reaction.
The chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion.
Designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason.
An emotion that is already blinding you from the simple and obvious truth.
That starting a flame war in the comments section will only increase our engagement
and signal boost this video further.
But hey we can talk your language.
Are you prepared for the most in depth, brutally honest, comprehensive, exhausting and downright
beaten horse to death extreme sponsored by Mountain Dew moisturizer analysis of GAMER
GATE?
Ya us neither.
This episode isn’t here to explore gamergate, start a flame war, or even change the world.
We’re leaving all that to Charlie Kirk.
We’re here today to explore some of the first portrayals of women in video games,
and pay respect to the trailblazers who became pioneers in the industry.
After all women now make up almost 50% of all gamers, and it’s never too late for
a little herstory lesson.
Now unless we can apply sexuality to the paddles and balls in pong, the first true female protagonist
in a video game appeared in 1981’s Ladybug.
The game was a mild homage/rip off of Pacman, that featured a ladybug walking around a maze
eating up dots while avoiding contact with other insects.
What made it unique was the paddle board system that allowed you to block off paths from incoming
enemies.
What’s bizarre is that the second female protagonist in a video game is also Pac Man
related, this time in an enhancement that eventually blossomed into Ms.Pacman.
Taking an enhancement for the game called Crazy Otto, the development team changed the
sprites to feature a female protagonist.
In 1982 Pacman became one of the first commercially successful video games to be played by a majority
of women.
Stan Jarocki of Midway stated that Ms.Pac-Man was conceived in response to the original
Pac-Man being “the first commercial video game to involve large numbers of women as
players” and that it is “our way of thanking all “those lady arcaders who have played
and \enjoyed Pac-Man”.
Say what you will about female driven games not being as commercially successful, but
at the time Ms.Pacman was the best selling American made arcade game in the world.
The game was faster and more difficult than the original presenting an enhanced challenge.
It was also in the early 80’s that Carol Shaw and Dona Bailey made waves for becoming
the first female video game developers, despite the handicap of not having penises.
The footage you are watching is from a 1978 prototype called
Polo which is considered to be the first video game completely programmed by a woman.
Carol went on to create some timeless classics like Happy Trails and River Raid.
Dona would go on to co-create one of the most popular arcade games of all time ‘Centipede’.
Around the same time as Centipede’s release female protagonists began to appear in more
games.
In 1985 Sega released the first female action hero ‘Ninja Princess’.
While this was a huge step forward, a strong female hero must have broken a few people’s
brains, because she was transformed into a male character for the home console release.
Despite changing the protagonist from a woman to a man, the title became ‘Ninja Princess
Mega Ban Ninja’, perhaps becoming the first non binary video game character in the process.
While the Ninja Princess was a powerful warrior, she was unfortunately a victim of over sexualization.
Female characters, even when they’re a lead, are often sexualized.
Now don’t worry gentlemen, the left has no intention of taking any of this away from
you.
You should be free to enjoy as much digital titties as you want and frankly up to this
point your cup runneth over.
We’re just saying they shouldn’t be the only way women are portrayed.
And seeing a non hentai proportioned body type doesn’t really hurt anyone.
And while male characters often get stuck in the ‘adonis’ stereotype themselves,
they’re typically not waging war in thongs.
Other notable titles included the space warrior Baraduke and 1984’s progressive masterpiece
‘Barbie’.
In 1996 Tomb Raider was released for the Sony Playstation and featured the British protagonist
Lara Croft in what would come to be one of the most recognizable female characters in
any variety of media.
This was in large part due to a successful film adaptation starring Angelina Jolie.
Obviously her depiction was problematic from the get go, and eventually her character became
more of a pin up than a superhero.
It wasn’t until 2015 that she was redesigned to be less sexualized.
While infrequent there have been other notable female protagonists including Faith Conners
in Mirrors Edge, Clementine in the second season of the Walking Dead, and Ellie in the
Last Of Us:Left Behind.
Back to the women behind the women.
Now most of you will probably be too young to remember Sierra games or even the point
and click adventure genre, but in the mid 80’s to early 90’s it was one of the most
popular genres in video games.
And the biggest company behind it, was co-founded by a woman named Roberta Williams.
No not Robin Williams long lost twin, but rather a programming genius responsible for
some of the most beloved series of all time.
Space Quest, King’s Quest, Onion King Quest...ok that last one was fake [whispering: or was
it?].
Since their mainstream adoption the charge has been long levied that video games lack
captivating storylines or narrative driven content.
That may seem unusual today where we take for granted the emotional impact that certain
scenes can leave us with.
Point and cilck adventures games which were an evolution of early text titles for PC/DOS
were the earlier examples of story and characters being more important than gameplay or graphics.
Sierra was home to some of the most beloved franchises in the genre and a large collection
of the best selling titles were co-created by a woman.
That brings us to the most breakthrough female protagonist in the history of video games
and no I’m not talking again about Indiana Pole Dancer.
In 1986 Nintendo released Metroid for the NES.
It was a revolutionary game that featured true open world exploration that allowed gamers
to choose a quasi non-linear path to the end.
It also featured multiple endings, something that would later become a staple in the industry.
But all that being tossed aside, what it truly revolutionized was the fact that if you beat
Metroid in under 5 hours you would be rewarded with the biggest twist ending in video game
history: you had been playing as a woman the entire time.
Nowadays this scandal isn’t even enough to make Bill Cosby get out of his prison bed,
but back in the 80’s it was a shell shock.
Playing as a man the entire game seemed natural (and even the instruction booklet referred
to Samus as a ‘he’).
The hero was a space marine who was kicking ass and chewing space bubble gum.
Flipping the entire script on its head by turning the protagonist into a woman went
a long way to shattering gender stereotypes.
The developing team claimed it had been heavily influenced by the film Alien and thought it
would be a great twist to reveal the hero had been a woman the entire time.
Now nearly twenty years later there have been some positive steps in the right direction
for female characters, but there’s still a massive way to go.
And no we're not men hating eunuchs parading around as woke soyflakes.
We’re as red blooded as the next cuck.
But we can only speak for the heterosexual male population that plays these things, and
as we mentioned before nearly half of gamers are women.
That doesn’t even put into account gay or transgender players who have virtually no
representation in games at all.
And to the women who have battled to break through the glass ceiling, which in this industry
is more like a glass penis, I thank you for giving us some great gaming adventures, and
hopefully a lot more
to come.