Women in the Lead(ing role)

Existing as a woman within the broader hobby of gaming has always brought about various challenges. There are the obvious things, like open harassment every time I use voice chat in a multiplayer lobby for a given game, but, as someone who doesn’t really play many games like that, that’s never felt the most pervasive to me. The more all-encompassing, and the more insidious in my experience, have been the subtle signs of exclusion found at every layer of the hobby.

There are the overt exclusions. Video game marketing has always treated “male” as the default audience, with notable exceptions for the games deemed by publishers to be the girliest—those, of course, get marketed in pink or as “cozy” or, until recently, casual. This hasn’t really changed, though it feels to grow steadily dated by the year; it feels as though every few months, a new study is revealed that says the demographic of gamers is split nearly down the middle between men and women. Yet even so, so much of the industry seems forever stuck in marketing tactics ripped straight from the 1990s.

And then there are the anticipated players. Games, from story driven, set-character adventures to “self insert” experiences have historically very readily treated male as not just the default, but as a given. It became big news when the more mainstream video game protagonist role was shared by women; Samus being revealed to be a blonde woman in a skin tight suit rocked the world back in her heyday. Likewise, titans such as Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Ellie, and more have come and carved out their places among the cultural canon in lists titled things in the vein of “Best Women in Games” or “Strongest Female Protagonists.” 

Of course, treating them as exceptions or notable in the first place—as if their existence as women who lead a video game is an anomaly and something to be examined—is emblematic in its celebration of that which perpetuates this division in the first place.

This kind of attitude descends much deeper, and in a way that’s far too layered and multifaceted to properly get into in a brief essay for a Thought Bubble.

With that said, this year has felt different. Being the first year of a new, conservative administration and with Gen Z showing a major shift toward conservative politics themselves, I’d expected the industry to do what industries often tend to do; knee jerk reactions away from anything they deem too risqué in the zeitgeist that could lose them money.

That hasn’t happened, though. Numerous traditionally (or recently) male-led video game franchises have had sequels featuring female leads in just the last month. Silksong, Silent Hill f, Ghost of Yotei, and Hades II are all examples in this shift, and all within basically a month of each other. Resident Evil Requiem and Grand Theft Auto VI are on the horizon still, but both are poised to continue exactly this.

I find myself hesitant to make any noise about this, for fear of both internet backlash and perpetuating exactly the kind of unicorning I touched on earlier. I don’t think having women at the helm of a major franchise is something remarkable; it shouldn’t be something remarkable. This recent cluster of franchise shifts—all of which run the gamut of genre and audience—and to no major controversy in their doing so speaks to a potential shift in the winds of the industry, though. 

Or maybe not! It could all just be coincidence. Naoe, Hornet, Melinoë, Atsu, Hinako, and the many other female leads of this year are not remarkable because they are women. What’s remarkable, at least to me right now, is the industry and many (but definitely not all) audiences taking no major problem with it.