Adventure Games for Women
I sit here after reading the adventure gamers’ Usenet group, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure,
and pondering this puzzling question: while probably a quarter of the
posters are obviously women, which means probably at least a third are
women when you factor in the “sexless” names, why are so few
adventure games geared toward women? Sometimes I get really tired of always
playing as a man and wish there was a first-person game that was truly
from a woman’s viewpoint.
Even with Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen’s games, I don’t feel like
they were written by women for women but rather by women for men. Of the
Roberta Williams games I have played (not many, to be sure), the protagonist
is either a man (as in King’s Quest 8) or a simpering, whiny kind
of woman (as in King’s Quest 7). In Jane Jensen’s The Beast
Within, you do get to play as Grace half the time. Grace is smart
and pretty, but she was also imbued with some “stereotypical”
womanly traits: she is petty and jealous (and bitchy) for an inordinately
long portion of the game (regarding Gabriel Knight, a man with whom she
does not even have a sexual relationship), and this just does not fit
well with the smart-and-pretty Grace, nor does it move the game along
in any fashion. Get real, ladies–most of us are not like that. I think
both of these women are writing with the assumption that their audiences
are all men and thus are painting their women in the colors they think
men would like to see because they think all adventure game players are
men.
Obsidian is one game where you play as a woman, but personality
is never an issue, so in my mind, it doesn’t count. The old games Ecstatica
and Alone in the Dark let you choose between playing as a woman
or a man, but the only difference is the figure you see on the screen.
Other than the ones I have mentioned, I cannot even think of a single
game that is played from a woman’s viewpoint.
You might reply, what about Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame? First
off, let me just state that I believe those are not adventure games, but
for the sake of argument, let’s say they were. Lara Croft is muscular,
aggressive, and swift (stereotypical male traits), and she has big boobs
(to give boys wet dreams)–in other words, she comes off as a transsexual
with a really good surgeon. What about her truly appeals to women?
In conclusion, I would just once like to see a game where I can play
as a woman and be able to use female traits like intuition and wiliness,
instead of male traits like strength and pure logic, to solve the puzzles
or complete the quests. Before you start your letter o’flaming response,
rest assured that I know (firsthand, seeing as how I am a supergenius)
that women are as fully capable of being logical as men, but I posit that
our thinking processes in arriving at the same result are different. I
would like to see a game written by a woman for women that includes all
of the adventure elements I love, and that men might also enjoy–quite
simply, a reverse of the usual type of game that is written for men and
that women might also enjoy.
