Female Protagonists In Gaming

So, I'm playing the new Tomb Raider (awesome game by the way) and it suddenly dawns on me that this is the only game in my collection where the female is the main protagonist, sure I have Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 but Lara seems to be the only female game character with her own successful franchise.

off the top of my head I can't list more than 5 main characters who are female within video game.

Dude there are plenty of female main character leads.

The only question is, where are the good female main character leads.

At the top of my head Samus and Bayonetta- although Bayonetta doesn't have enough games under her belt to be a franchise she's definitely a game icon. Nariko from Heavenly Sword is the same to a lesser extent. There's Portal but Chell doesn't really make an impact there. There's Jade from Beyond Good and Evil and that um... horror game, Fatal Frame?

ehhHHhhHhh, most of the games I am thinking about are games with balanced casts. Final Fantasy might have most of their main characters as men but I still think the women are just as iconic and carry just as much significance. RE is like this as well, except recently they are adamant about trudging out Leon and Chris for everything.

Fighting games are a duh but that's more for necessity, and I think DOA is the only game where the woman is a flagship/marketing character, take that as you will. Then there's Mass Effect/Dragon Age where the cast is split is also balanced and you get to make your own protagonist (I don't care if maleshep is the main character, femshep is canon in my head).

I also think in Fighting Games there should be more middle aged and elderly women fighters.I know some women who are at that age and can still fight.I mean I have seen a lot of fighting games with elderly and middle aged men fighting so why not older women.

Zeeeeeldaaaaaaa. Seriously, even though you play as Link, it's really all about her. There's no franchise without her. There's no story without her. And she's no slouch, either. She's probably the most iconic female character in video games aside from Lara herself, and her image as a female icon has evolved with the times. fucking love me some princess zelda \o/

Let's see, there's also Silent Hill 3, with Heather. And while I'm sure it's easy to discount because of the over the top, tongue in cheek nature -- Lollipop Chainsaw. (Juliet Starling is the shit thank u very much.) There's Faith from Mirror's Edge, and Remember Me is coming out soon, which has female lead who's also a minority.

Splintered said:

RE is like this as well, except recently they are adamant about trudging out Leon and Chris for everything.

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yeah, which is weird because the most popular and badass characters are all female -- Ada, Jill, Claire, hell even Rebecca.

Lollypop Chainsaw! Character is modelled on Jessica Nigri: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Jessica_Nigri.jpg/220px-Jessica_Nigri.jpg

While I have the utmost respect (and a bit of adoration) for Suda51's utterly batshit ways, imo his female protagonists have done little to help improve the state of character writing, and from what I gather much of his local audience misses the point of his tongue and cheek humour.

The (supposed) damsel-in-distress act he wrote for Shadows of the Damned didn't help things either. =P

Fighting games are alright on that front, although there's plenty of fanservice to go around and over the years there's been some quite frankly alarming characters designed, lolol.

There's this game I played aaaages ago, where you're a black female cop, who fights crime and things get supernatural as the game progresses. I want to know the name of that game, argh. I think it was a PS1 game. What disappointed me was there was only that game. They didn't make a sequel or anything, but I recall it being really good, though I didn't finish it, since it got hard at the end, and I got frustrated , that and I was only hiring the game.

Those are the only two that really spring to mind (that haven't been mentioned already). I don't know how popular Summoner 2 was but that was a really fun game.

Kudos to your point though - there aren't as many as there are male lead protagonists. But that's kind of the same across all visual media these days.

I would totally dig a modern Zelda game where she is the actual bonefide lead. She could easily carry a title and deserves more than a shitty CD-I role reversal.

And in general I really like the sentiment that a balanced cast with great characters all around is more important than going for gender parity, although I would like to play as a badass female more often for a change of pace.

Of course I mean well written badass female that doesn't fall into one of my unholy trinity of peeves:

- Confusing "strong woman" with horrible overcompensating bitch
- Faking a genius with by writing an above-average intelligent guy and making everyone else stupid (Orson Scott Card)
- "Magic" minorities and other offensive stunts meant to appeal to a demographic (i.e. Spanish that is both unrealistic and terribly pronounced, i.e. James Vega)

Zee said:

yeah, which is weird because the most popular and badass characters are all female -- Ada, Jill, Claire, hell even Rebecca.

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Can I just say how much I love the ladies of RE? They're games suck now but the girls are still amazing especially Jill, I fucking love Jill.

It should even out on its own once they realize that women are an equally big market for "AAA" games.

You might not like the Twilight-the-game they'll make to go along side your Lara Croft though.

I know games tend to use male protagonists and a sexy female icon for marketing but I tend to look into the game itself rather than the marketing strategy.

Fanservicy it might be, Tekken is pretty good with it female characters with them having their own rivalries and stories apart from liking a male character. Nina and Anna, Lily and Asuka for example. I can even say they're more popular than the male characters. Xiaoyu and Alisa even had their own movie.

Guilty Gear has two main male leads, but it's the first fighting game I know who featured a female boss and has consistently done so in all its main titles. Blazblue followed this trend.

As for Starcraft, I've always found Kerrigan to be the most popular character and I love her.

Basically I just think male leads are more abundant in action or adventure genres due to the fact that most soldiers, adventurers, fighters etc are men. Of course we're gonna change that, but for example, if you set a game realistically in the medieval period, a female knight is very unlikely.

Good thing we always find a way to bend reality so what bothers me are universes where physical strength isn't really needed but women still end up much weaker *cough* Naruto *cough.*

The fact that visual novel games (particularly shoujo ones) where female leads are abundant aren't that popular outside Japan might also explain the skew. I think if VN games are regarded the same way as othe popular genres, we'd have more female protagonists.

(Rule of Rose)





Survival horror games seem better for female protagonists (Rule of Rose's cast is mostly female with some minor male characters). I don't know how much of that is playing into 'scared, powerless woman' tropes (although horror games do that with males characters too). The Forbidden Siren series has a lot of important females characters, NPC and playable, though the main 'viewpoint' characters tend to be male.

(this is also a list of games i need to finish/find)

Survival horror deliberately exploits vulnerability to amplify the sense of danger.

I still kinda of want more female main protagonists for RPG games and platform games.I kinda of want a game that targets girls but is able to have guys enjoy it as well.

http://news.yahoo.com/father-hacks-donkey-kong-let-daughter-play-girl-220300138.html

Speaking of which look what this dad did for his daughter.I think its so sweet of him and at the same time brilliant as well.

My Shepard.

Survival horror games seem better for female protagonists (Rule of Rose's cast is mostly female with some minor male characters).

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one of the many reasons i want survival horror to make a comeback

I'm female, I can honestly say I prefer playing male leads, as opposed to female leads. Most of this has to do with how female leads are protrayed less realistically then the guys are to the point that it detracts from the gameplay. I get that people like their girls to look sexy, but when game designers push that over making it look like the leads are wearing actual armor/have gear.... yeah no, it really doesn't work for me. Which is probably why I really like what they've done with the latest Tomb Raider game...

I find it really funny that no one has mentioned the Metroid games yet...

Splintered said:

At the top of my head Samus

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third post

i don't know about how realistic male protagonists are, i can't say i can relate to the likes of solid snake or leon/chris or most characters on a basic level.

siren is probably the most relatable game in terms of thinking 'yeah, i can see myself in this situation'. as cool as it might be, i can't say the same for characters who are running around firing off guns with one hand and doing backflips everywhere. but that's because unlike most games where the heroes have some great talent or skill for fighting and what have you, most of siren's cast (less so in siren 2, i'm not sure about three but the demo seem a bit less so as well) aren't really that extraordinary. which was the point of it, you surviving as regular people.

which to make another point (idk what my point is here), i don't get the whole 'i can't relate to female characters because i'm a dude'. if you can relate to fantasy knights killing dragons or space marines shooting up aliens or guys with super powers, i don't see why it's a massive issue to get emotionally invested in a female protagonist's story.

The horror genre is really interesting in a multi-genre way, just because there does tend to be a historical emphasis on female protagonists. Especially in video games, since in movies and stuff there tends to be primary focus on the monster/villain/whatever as the big draw.

I don't know if this counts, but how about NiGHTS?



And aren't we forgetting about dear Terra Branford?

Agreed there are a lot more female protagonists, even more than I thought. But, not all of them have had a long running series besides Lara and Samus, Male protagonists Like Drake (Uncharted), Cole (InFamous), Nathan Hale (Resistance).

So there isn't that many long running females in gaming. xD

ForceStealer said:

My Shepard.

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Femshep is one of the best examples for me. She's a great character, a huge badass, in story she's treated in the same way as if you were playing maleshep and she's a much better character than maleshep. She's can be extremely attractive but is never oversexualized.

Amaterasu from Okami, is a female.

It is interesting that if one googles "female protagonist in games", there are actually quite a bunch, probably less in quantity and less memorable compared to the amount of games with male leads, yes, but still.

She's not a protagonist (yet *crosses fingers*), but The Boss would make an awesome and believeable female lead, which Hideo Kojima will probably eventually explore, as he has wanted to in the past. Instead we got Raiden, hurrhurrhurr.