Equal Opportunity for Love: Video Game Romances with Female Protagonists

ARTICLE TOOLS

Editor's note: Allen's investigation into how female protagonists deal with romance in games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age is absolutely fascinating. Who knew video games were so forward-thinking in this regard? -Brett

The new female protagonist of Persona 3

When Atlus announced Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable, I was excited to read about a new addition to the game: You could now play as a girl. Now, playing as a female isn't a novel concept -- after all, Metroid's Samus Aran is 24 this year -- but changing the gender of the protagonist in Persona 3 changes the entire dating-sim dynamic of the game.

Persona 3 mashes up the traditional Japanese dating sim with the traditional JRPG. One day you'll be fighting a giant monster shaped like Hulk Hogan, and the next day you'll be taking the student council president out on a date to the local burger joint. As you can imagine, the gender of the protagonist drastically alters how the dating-sim aspect of the game plays out.

Given my reading of Persona 4, I was curious to see how they would rewrite the game with a female protagonist in mind. For example, in the original Persona 3 you could play the male protagonist as a horn dog who chatted up all the girls. Could you do the same if you chose to play as the female protagonist? Certainly we know that a double standard exists in American society when it comes to promiscuity and gender, but how would Japanese writers deal with that situation?

While I was thinking of how to address this question, a line from Andrew Fitch’s 1UP review of Persona 3 Portable stuck in my mind: “Women are a huge portion of the dating-sim/life-sim target market, so it’s interesting that Atlus hasn’t really made a concerted effort to directly target them with the modern Persona releases until now.” Certainly the PS2 Persona games would be the perfect JRPG to directly target male and female audiences.

Then that I realized that the dating-sim/RPG genre that targeted both men and women had already been covered by another venerable RPG developer: BioWare!

We don’t think of Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins as dating sims, of course, because they exist in a vacuum in the American game market. Sure, Fable 2 pushes the life sim further by allowing you to have a family, but developer Lionhead certainly didn’t have winning moments in their game like this one:

Garrus' trying to set the mood

At this point that I realized that not only is there a market for romances in games targeted directly at women, but that these romances have substantial followings. While the female characters from Dragon Age and Mass Effect have their fans, Alistair and Garrus are the only ones who could inspire thousand-page threads on the official BioWare forums. Certainly BioWare has hit a nerve with these romances -- and there’s every indication that Persona 3 Portable will garner the same reaction if YouTube comments are anything to go by.

For a bit of perspective, chilyn, a blogger on the Dragon Age blog Grey Wardens, asked women why they love Alistair, and many explained their infatuation in the comments. Although examining why women identify with these specific characters could be a rich line of inquiry, I want to analyze the very nature of interactive romances themselves and show that virtual interactive relationships are easy to identify with because they provide a safe space for a positive representation of female desire. I’ll do this by looking at how game romances work and by comparing them to romances from noninteractive forms of fiction.

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Mason van Dyk

July 20, 2010 23:40

While I really liked your piece I feel the need to bring up one point that I see over and over again that really bugs me.

"I’ll be the first to admit that games still unnecessarily sexualize, trivialize, and objectify women"

While this may be true alot of the time it gets on my nerves. Yes, female characters are often overly sexualized male fantasies with giant knockers and submissive behavior but can the same not often be said for male characters? How many guys do you know that look like Kratos? Odds are pretty good that there's few to none. Media, especially a media in which you're meant to feel like the character you're seeing, will always play to people fantasies, male or female. We shouldn't expect people to live up to this fictionalizations, and I hope that more people can see this from both sides.

Anyway, great read. :)

Allen Kwan

July 21, 2010 05:39

First, thanks for reading. :)

On to your point though, I do think there are male characters written for women, if not even designed to be appealing to women. David Gaider writes for women and Alistair is a perfect example of a character who is an idealization of both the male physical form and the male personality designed to appeal to Dragon Age's female fans. From a game outside this particular genre, Nathan Drake (excusing the fact that he murders hundreds of innocent Russian mercenaries who just want to feed their families!) is another good example of a character that is designed to be appealing to both genders.

But more often than not, male characters are designed to fit into male wishfulfillment fantasies and we project the desires of men onto women. I would argue that Kratos is an ideal man for a man. Yes, he is physically attractive, but his almost parodic virility and his penchant for gratuitous violence are male power fantasies. Add in the fact that the God of War games constantly rely on the male gaze to project Kratos' desires onto the player - usually during the sex scenes - but that there is not corresponding 'female gaze' shot to reflect how his impending sexual conquests might find him attractive, and I think that Kratos is designed as a male fantasy first.

I'm sure in the design docs of most games, very few male characters are designed to be objectified by women. At least I find it hard to imagine that a group of men designing Marcus Fenix suggested that Fenix have "tight ass" in order to make him look sexy for the straight female gamers who might play Gears of War.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying women don't find these characters physically attractive, it's just that this is a happy accident rather than authorial intent. But if you move beyond appearances, you'll find that these characters are usually devoid of any real personality that could be appealing to women because they are simply filled with thoughts of violence and revenge.

That's where I'm coming from when I wrote that sentence anyway. I hope that makes sense!

Chris Chung

July 22, 2010 04:48

I think the term dating-sim is quite heavily ridiculed among gamers. I can't see how dating-sims couldn't find its place in our market. In fact, it is a joke that the books industry and the movies industry has been selling romance for so many years and in video gaming we are only just encroaching on this turf. This genre will most likely become incredibly mainstream in the near future, enough so that it will spawn its own game and not have to piggyback off some other RPG system. But people don't talk enough about it, that's for sure. Keep writing!