Digital reflection on the Video Game presentation.

According to the data presented in the video game groups project, female characters are scarce in video games. Honestly I was a bit shocked by the statistics provided as I know many games (even very old Dreamcast, 64, psx games) that have female leads. Now, many games have you creating your own character so you can be female if you want. Perhaps they were looking solely at American games rather than Japanese ones?

Another issue was race and the lack of non-white characters. Well *points to the brown main character in my featured image I feel as though most games try to be relevant. Granted it may be racists, I really can’t imagine having a white female main in a game like Grand Theft Auto, can you? It’s the same way I couldn’t imagine anyone but white males in adventure or war games (American made ones anyway). It’s also important to note that in JRPG’s, most characters are white because white is seen as beautiful in Asian countries. You can see it in manga as well. How many Japanese manga characters actually look Japanese? They, according to the anime and manga class I took, try to make their characters look as white as possible; big eyes, western clothes, light hair, etc. As we exotify Asian culture and romanticize it all, they do the same to French and American culture.

There is nothing Asian about these blonde haired, blue eyed women and it’s so popular in Japan that is has been adapted into Takarazuka Revue musicals (all female Japanese Broadway pretty much).

Rose of Versailles

Back to the topic of games, Tomb Raider was one of my very first video games with human characters for Playstation (another being Dino Crisis, a game with a female lead so again, not sure where the data came from). I’m sure we all know Tomb Raider as the games are still coming out for new consoles and there have been a few movie adaptations. Obviously Lara is a female and for the most part is the only character in this game. A few other games to note are Perfect Dark for the 64, Parasite Eve for psx, Resident Evil for Dreamcast (movies also have a female lead), and the Atelier series running from GBC to PS4, most have female leads with male side-characters.

Another important series to note are the “Tales of” games. Granted the main character is male, you can control any member of the party and have that character be displayed instead. Specifically to Tales of Legendia, each character has a character story after the main story where they are the main character for about a few hours each. Honestly, I kind of hate the main character in most of the Tales games so I’ve never once beaten the game while in control of the main character but I wasn’t playing as a female even with the option to, I don’t judge games like that. As a female gamer and I don’t mean to offend other female gamers or whatever, I just want to play as the hottest dude. It was brought up that females want to play as females but I find them very annoying…it could just be crappy american voice acting (or general annoying af Japanese female voices) but I would rather put most female characters so far behind me that all anyone sees is the bad ass hot dude character I chose to play as. Sometimes you have to go into a boss fight solo, just too much work to keep reviving your party NPC’s. I played the entire game as the character on the far right in the video.

Might also be good to note the main character isn’t even in this party… Same with me though, he’s not that good ^^”