At their annual BlizzCon event in 2014
the wildly successful game studio
Blizzard Entertainment showed off a new
game they had in the works called Overwatch.
And from that first reveal it was clear
the appeal of Overwatch
resided in its cast of characters:
a diverse assortment of heroes, each with
unique traits and abilities.
The roster revealed at BlizzCon included
men and women,
sentient robots, and super intelligent gorillas.
However, for all
apparent variety and diversity
in the heroes Blizzard showed off at
the game's debut, there wasn't much
diversity to be seen in the body types
represented by the female heroes.
The male characters introduced that day
included the towering knight Reinhardt,
the sturdy engineer Torbjorn,
the agile archer Hanzo,
and the hulking simian scientist, Winston,
among others.
The five female characters introduced
consisted of the slender adventurer, Tracer
the slender healer, Mercy
the slender support character, Symmetra
the slender sniper, Widowmaker
and the slender but well-armored
security chief, Pharah.
Overwatch was hardly alone in
having all of its female characters
share a similar physique.
In Ultra Street Fighter IV
characters such as Dhalsim, Hakan, E. Honda
Rufus, and Vega
represent a significant range
of male body types.
Looking at the roster
of female characters, however
while some may be
a bit taller than others, or have
...slightly larger thighs, not one of
them represents a notable departure
from the slender body type that has been
established as the standard of
conventional female attractiveness.
Similiarly, when we look at the
champions on offer in the hugely popular
MOBA, League of Legends, we see the
designers employing a wonderful range of
body shapes and proportions across
dozens of male characters, from the
classic muscular warrior physique of Taric,
to the hefty beer belly of Gragas,
to the cartoonishly disproportionate
body of Dr. Mundo.
There isn't any one
male body type that is presented as the
standard default male body type, and the
value of these characters is definitely not
connected to their sexual desirability.
But when we look at the female heroes,
there is nothing approaching the
diversity we see on the male side of the roster.
There are few noteworthy variations from
the standard.
Illaoi is somewhat more muscular
than many of the female characters
Jinx has smaller breasts
and there’s the cute, gnome-like Tristana.
But the overwhelming majority of female
characters make it clear that
a slender figure with prominent breasts
is viewed as the standard
for female character design.
Likewise, in Dota 2, male heroes can be
handsome or comical
outlandish or grotesque,
while female heroes are
mostly relegated to being standard
humanoid characters with conventionally
attractive facial features.
Where are all the female rock creatures,
skeletal priests, and...
whatever this thing is?
This isn't just an issue in fighting
games, MOBAs, and other titles that give
players a range of characters to choose from.
Female characters across the board
are often limited to that same specific
body type.
"I should kill you."
"Doing all right there?"
(singing)
"Stay away from her!"
"Sure you want to let him go?"
(singing) "You are..."
"And this guy wants me to trust him..."
It's as if male characters are free to
embody whatever physique best
communicates their personality or abilities.
But when it comes to the
designs of female characters,
that kind of imagination and creativity
often doesn't seem to exist.
Rather than seeing
such an exciting range of female
characters, we mostly get the same body
type, over and over again:
one designed to be sexually appealing
to the presumed straight male player.
This reliance on the same
same body type for so many female characters
isn't just boring;
it's harmful.
It links our value as human beings
within the culture
to our desirability to men,
and it reinforces our culturally-influenced ideas
about who gets to be considered desirable
and who doesn't.
The problem is exacerbated
by the fact that when we do
see representations of women
with different body types,
they're often presented as
a joke, as in Fat Princess,
(fart noises)
or they're pathologized and presented as
a twisted transgression
of the established feminine ideal
as in the case of the
evil, lesbian, psychopath, Jo Slade
in Dead Rising.
"Let’s see just how shameless you are,
you dirty little skank!
Say hello to my little friend!”
“Oh, no.. not again!”
When the majority of the women who
populate these game worlds are designed
from the same narrow template, the problem
isn't just what we're seeing in games:
it's what we're not seeing.
The fact that fat women,
and women with different body shapes
aren't featured in these worlds,
reinforces the false notion that these
women are less valuable, and less worthy
of recognition, than those women whose
bodies come closer to matching the
cultural beauty standard.
These limitations on creativity when it comes
to female characters don't stop with
body type.
We also don't see the same
range of ages commonly represented as
we do with male characters.
It's not unheard of to see
male soldiers, fighters, and heroes
who appear to be in their 40s, 50s, and even older.
"You're right."
Playable female characters, on the other hand,
are almost always young;
and it's for the same reason
that so many of them
have the same body type.
They're intended to be sexually appealing
to straight male players.
The result is that we have
plenty of representations of male
characters who communicate that men
can continue to be active, vital, and
powerful over the course of their lives.
Meanwhile, the absence of older, playable
female characters wrongly suggests that
women's value is tied directly to their
beauty and youth, and that when they
are older, that value is all used up.
There aren't many good examples of
prominent, positive representations of
women with different body types in major
contemporary games. In Life is Strange,
there’s the minor character Alyssa, a
classmate of Max, the protagonist.
“I didn't know you were a
sci-fi geek like us.
What’s your favorite?”
In Assasin’s Creed Syndicate, there’s
Agnes MacBean, owner of the train which
becomes the heroes’ base of operations.
"And may I present to you,
Agnes and Bertha: lady and locomotive.”
And in Star Wars:
Knights of the Old Republic II,
Kreia is a great example of a capable,
powerful, older, female character.
“I am Kreia, and I am your rescuer.
As you are mine.”
Let's go back to Overwatch for a moment.
Since that initial reveal, a few female
heroes have been added to the roster.
There’s Mei and Zarya, both of whom have
body types that are notably different
from those of the originally announced
female characters.
"Ana, reporting for duty."
And more recently, Blizzard announced
the game's next hero, Ana, who is both
an older woman and a woman of color.
These characters are welcome and
encouraging additions, but really they're
just a start. Game developers need to
continue to actively working towards
creating the same range and diversity of
female body representations that we see
among male characters.
When female characters' bodies
are liberated from the need
to uphold narrow, limiting cultural
beauty standards, the resulting range
of representations can not only make
games themselves more interesting,
it can encourage us
to see all women as the
desirable, valuable, autonomous,
fully human individuals that we are.