Adventure Games for Women
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.
