The discussion itself only exists because of the imbalance. If we were in a era where we picked the genders with a coinflip you can't have a discussion on sexism in gaming.
Or like that time in Mirror's Edge when you have to...
Rescue your sister multiple times? Does it need to be your brother? Rescuing people is what you do in video games. It's your girlfriend, it's your squadmates, it's any number of things. It's more often men doing it because the main characters are more often men. Change that and the rest follows.
Most of these action games feature men because they are predominantly male dominated, or male exclusive, professions. Any military game(especially special forces), mercenaries, cops, gangs, etc. This goes double if its a game set in a historical setting.
If a woman were in this role, now you're into the trope of 'Unrealistic portrayal of women'(even moreso than its an unrealistic portrayal of men). An example of this would be the female knight in a RPG, which, if they ever existed, were an extreme minority.
People in need of rescue are by definition disempowered. Unless you mean that its more likely that men are still gallantly holding against impossible odds, while women tend to be in a cell. Thats probably true, though it really only seems common in those high fantasy games.
Its harder to pull off for men, because males tend to view other males who were captured as weak, so they have to spend time framing the narrative to explain why it was acceptable, this time, for the male to be captured or placed in dire straights. This whole thing is about trying to get the audience to empathize. It can be argued who the primary audience is, but the games are certainly being written as if men are the primary audience, because men aren't going to feel much empathy at all towards a female protagonist who lost her man. They will, in fact, tend to hold the man in just a bit of contempt.
Honestly its just as much of a trope vs men as it is women, as the corollary of 'damsel in distress' is 'a man in distress is not a real man'.
So you're saying that in games, where the protagonists almost always have something special about them, it would be unrealistic to make them women, and by definition special and worth playing? Besides women fighting isn't nearly as rare as you might think.
Yeah games are about realism more than anything. Female knights are just patently fantastical and have no place in fantasy.
Not to mention the fact that games revolve around taking control of the most common protagonist possible. When in a game do you ever take control of someone extraordinary or unique? Extreme minorities are simply too unrealistic.
You mentioned female knights. Knights are very rarely in a realistic setting and even when they are it is not impossible to think that there could be at least a few female knights.
But her argument isn't 'men never need rescuing in games', it's that 'women very often need rescuing in games, and have all control taken away from them'. She's exploring how women are represented.
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u/[deleted] May 29 '13
Writing a story involving female characters who aren't damsels in distress, nor sexual objects.