So, yesterday was International Women’s Day! A day that celebrates the fight against sexism, a fight for equal rights. We think this is an interesting moment to talk about something we considered when designing the protagonist of our game, Tomoe.
It’s the matter of women representation in media, especially in games. At first, they were presented as damsels in distress, to be rescued like a prize. Peach and Zelda, in their first appearances, are a good example. (To those who follow those franchises: has that changed?)
Samus, of the Metroid Games, and Lara Croft, from Tomb Raider, were turning points in the industry standard of only men as protagonists. With Samus, they did it by hiding her gender until the end of the game. With Lara, they greatly exaggerated her sex appeal, turning the player into a voyeur.
But the important thing was that the character was well received. Throughout the years, however, sexualizing the characters more and more became the rule, in order to make them more extreme than the preceding ones. In the first game of the Metroid series, seeing Samus with little clothing was already a prize to those who beat the game fast games (shorter times, less clothes). The tradition was maintained for many games. The character shrank (according to data about her height in the first games and the most recent ones) and starts to appear without her armor more frequently, adopting the Zero Suit, a second skin (or maybe body paint?).
Lara Croft is an interesting case. After many games, the most recent one (launched this week) brings us a more realistic Lara, rebooting the series. With Rhianna Prattet writing the game, seeking to turn her in a more complete character, this changes seems to be a sign of the times.
There are other more recent characters that didn’t have to be a sexual object to be a protagonist in successful games, such as Faith in Mirror’s Edge and Chell in Portal. But the fact that those are first person games may have been a factor in that.
This a result of a lot of things. More women in game development. More female players meeting in the internet and working towards more diversity, more space. And this is important: these characters inspire and motivate the next generation.
But just to be clear: sexy characters aren’t the problem. “What do you mean?!”, you ask me. “What IS the problem, then?”.
There are many. Female characters reduced to prizes is one of them.
Another is when the character design makes no sense for that character.
Isabela, from Dragon Age II, is a pirate who has fun flirting and seducing others. It makes complete sense for her to dress sexy.
There is another Isabela, from another game, who is an english countess from the 16th century. She doesn’t have much contact with other, is focused on alchemy and search for knowledge. She is Isabela Valentine, better known as Ivy, from the game Soul Calibur. Her clothes are a bikini, some leather straps, gloves and high-heeled boots. Meanwhile Raphael, another noble from the same game, has just his head uncovered.
There is space for games like these. The real problem is when this is the rule. The problem isn’t the sexy characters. There is space for every kind of game, even the most extreme cases. The problem is the lack of diversity.
When we created Tomoe, we were creating characters that blended cyberpunk with a more traditional Japanese look. She was, then, a cyborg samurai. Her name comes from Tomoe Gozen, a great warrior of Japan, and an onna bugeisha, the female equivalent of samurai. And as for being a black samurai, considering that she is also a cyborg in a cyberpunk world we saw no reason to limit what race she could be.
When design her, we decided that strength would be a main factor. She still is a pretty woman. But the focus of the character isn’t on that. It’s on strength, which is not an exclusively male characteristic. Be it the strength to fight for equal right, to follow your dreams or to run 1400 meters destroying colorful obstacles that appear in front of you. Those are things we can all understand, regardless of our genders.
P.S.: That part about the colorful obstacles may be easier to understand looking at the screenshots below!
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Stormfree 
Amazing article! I am really looking forward to your game, cause I like to see a game with a cool female maincharacter 🙂
Zelda has had a few different variations. In Ocarina of Time her adult version was a masked warrior who carried a harp and saved Link when he reawakens. Much like Samus her gender is hidden until the end when she reverts to her damsel in distress role. It’s done well enough that she seems in control even while being “helpless.” At the game’s conclusion when she rewards Link by allowing him to relive his childhood there’s something distinctly regal about her.
In WindWaker she is radically different, abandoning her royal persona and adopting one of a very disgruntled and demanding pirate voyaging across the seas. She’s never really depicted as a damsel in distress and is even seen later yelling at her shipmates (including a young Link asleep while on post) in the game’s sequel when they retell the story with her in the traditional Zelda role.
In Skyward Sword she’s once again inactive but her character is much more developed. She’s a childhood friend of Link and you see a real connection between the two besides the hero and rescued princess we saw in the original.
She’s also distinctly aware of the sexism in society bluntly telling Bethany (who is sorta her foil) “The world’s a bad place for women, kitten.” when the younger woman (girl? I think Bethany is around 17 at this point) expresses shock at a bitter comment by Isabella.
If you play as a femHawk, Isabella points out to you (with no small disdain) “You’re [a woman] all tits and ass to these men.” She’s a really fun character and a good example of how to do a fanservice style woman in games while giving her her own mind and personality.
Good luck with the game and thank you for the read!
…couldn’t Tomoe just be a black woman who happened to be raised in Japan? There are black Japanese people, you know…
You’re right, she could! It’s just unusual for a samurai to be a black woman. It would be more unusual if it was a historic setting, but in a cyberpunk setting it’s a non-issue.
Hey there!
A nice read though I’d like to point out a minor thing. While Chell is by not sexualized by any stretch of the imagination, they pretty-fied her significantly in Portal II.
I love this!!! Tomoe seems amazing.
Wow, Tomoe looks amazing! She’s great to look at, but not because somebody went “let’s make her look like a sex toy.” She looks good because she’s strong, practical, and athletic. That is a refreshing change from “capable only until we need a damsel in distress”* and “one-dimensional Playboy bunny,” which seem to be the main roles for female characters in video games. As a female gamer, I greatly appreciate your efforts to give us female characters who actually dress and act like real people in their culture would.
* This is what Zelda’s like in the newer games. She fights a little as a sort of sidekick and helps you out, but she’s still imprisoned at some point in the games. SMB2 is the only game in the main Mario series in which Peach (or another female character) does not get kidnapped (usually by Bowser).
This was really refreshing to read and good to hear that developers are trying to encourage diversity 🙂
I really like the article, but there are a lot of typos that make it a bit hard to read. I found myself stumbling over several sentences. I would hate for someone to stop reading this because of grammar when the message is such a good one!
Sorry about that! It seems part of the problem was that the text was first written in portuguese and then translated to english in a document in Word, which “corrected” automatically parts of the text. But that’s no excuse, we should have revised the text better. I think the article is typo-free now, but if you find one please let me know!
And thanks for the feedback! =]
I am writing just to express my admiration and gratitude at your efforts to develop a round character avoiding the common stereotypes. I think your work has great importance, since it offers an alternative to the mainstream model and I hope things like that will become more and more common in the near future.
Thanks!