Female protagonists were represented early in the video games industry, starting in the ’80s when the industry itself was still young. However, an early start does not a fair one make. Along with our hyper-macho brothers, women have had to make due with being represented in heavily stereotyped and over-sexualised ways, but there are a few noteworthy and excellent exceptions. Let’s take a look:
1981
– The world’s first female protagonist in a video game appears as Lady Bug in the arcade maze-style game of the same name. Another arcade addition a year later introduced Ms Pac-Man to the popular Pac-Man series.
1985
– In what was to be the birth of a long career playing damsel-in-distress, Princess Peach did her first castle-hopping in Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros.
1985
– Revealed as a woman at the game’s end, Toby Masuyo takes names and dishes androgynous justice in Namco’s Baraduke. Endorsing the idea that female characters are revealed as such by more than strategic holes and wardrobe mishaps, this will be crushed later with the wide-spread induction of female-specific armour (read ‘steel lingerie and patent leather stilettos’).
1996
– Sporting a cone bra and a tiny waist, Lara Croft and her penchant for rare objects came on the scene in Square Enix’s Tomb Raider. The 2013 reboot of the series proposed a far more balanced view of the female figure, however the tightly-stretched tank top remains a favourite despite the harsh-weather island setting.
1996 – present
Dungeon crawler Diablo, Massively Multiplayer Online (MMOs) games like World of Warcraft (2004) and Role Playing Games (RPGs) like the Mass Effect (2007) and Dragon Age (2009) franchises allow players to choose to play as either male or female characters. Lately, players have also been granted the opportunity to choose their sexual orientation, although these choices are still broadly limited to either ‘gay’ or ‘straight’.
2014
– Creative Director of Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Alex Amancio, cites both creative and developmental issues surrounding the exclusion of playable female characters in the game’s co-op mode, sparking critique.
