Women in Action-Adventure and Adventure Games: Sexism to the Max

By Adam Rodman

"I swear! You Americans are so obsessed with sex!"
--Jane Leeves (as Daphne), NBC's Frasier

Disclaimer: Note that this is an editorial and does not necessarily represent the views of the staff of Just Adventure +. Also note that the author, Adam Rodman, is not a woman, so his views on the feminist side of gaming may be a bit inaccurate. If you are easily insulted (I'm talking to men here, not women) by a controversial attitude that tells, basically, the cold hard truth, press the back button on your browser now. If not, continue on ...

I'm surprised that feminist groups haven't stormed the offices of Eidos, Psygnosis, and their ilk. Why? Look at the way they portray women in action-adventure games! Take Lara Croft for example. Not only does she wear clothing five times too small for her, she must wear around a 40 DD. Also, her breasts seem to grow in size with every passing game. If this keeps up at the current rate (if Eidos decides to go above Tomb Raider 4) she'd need a shopping cart to get around by Tomb Raider 10. And if there actually were a woman with this body shape, she wouldn't be out searching for the lost treasures of the world, she'd be starving herself to death in a large mansion somewhere in California awaiting her next photo shoot. After Tomb Raider's success with a scantily (and tightly) clothed female main character, other companies cloned the idea (cloning seems to be very popular in the computer gaming business). Out came Space Bunnies Must Die! with its trailer-trash lead, Allison Huxter. Of course, Space Bunnies Must Die! stank so much even I don't think it's worth mentioning all of the sexist things in that game.

And then came a decent Tomb Raider look-alike (I hesitate to call it a clone because it was quite unique), Drakan, with its buxom female hero, Rynn. Recently reviewed on Just Adventure+ by Randy Sluganski, it received an A. He describes Rynn: "She is supposed to be a young lady in her late teens or early twenties. ..." I go to a school with young women in their late teens, and trust me, none of them have a body like Rynn. In fact, for a woman of any age to have a body like hers, she would have to have a serious eating disorder and have had a major chest augmentation. So why all of the Barbie-doll shaped women in action-adventure games? Curious, I asked one of my friends, and he came up with the best answer to this consuming question I have yet to hear. "[The women in action-adventure games look like that] 'cause of all the losers who'll never get some in real life like fantasizing about them. ..." Of course, he did finish that sentence with, "Like you, Adam," but I know that's not true. ... So, to recap, action-adventure games sport vastly unproportional women because a bunch of pitiful guys have a little too much testosterone in their system.

Women are treated much more fairly in true-blue adventure games (excluding the Leisure Suit Larry series, of course). The first adventure where I played as a woman (in the game, not real life ... sicko) was Kings Quest 4 playing as Princess Rosella. Rosella was on a mission to recover a magic fruit that had the power to save her dying father's life. She (gasp) actually looked like a real young woman, despite the pixels, and was a strong, independent woman. Of course, when Rosella came back as a lead character in Kings Quest 7, she suffered from a rare disease known as ditz-amonia, which caused her to act quite clueless. Alas, there aren't too many games that put players into the shoes of women, but the few that do are the Kings Quest series, the Gabriel Knight series, the Laura Bow series, Phantasmagoria, and Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill. I guess Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle count also. I'm sure I missed a few, but those are the only ones I can think of. ... Is it a coincidence that four of these games are published by Sierra? That all of those Sierra games had at least one woman as a producer?

Action-adventures starring women as their main characters are obviously targeted toward guys with a testosterone overload, while adventures with women heroes are targeted toward members of both genders. Will the sexism in the action-adventure ever stop? Probably not, unless all men are required to become eunuchs (which I for one sincerely hope does not happen).