I like good characters, but I hate the lazy state in which female characters often find themselves in games. When I say good characters, I mean believable people with a variety of traits that work in such a way to make someone that is interesting. If a character makes me reflect on myself, then I tend to like them. These are traits often lacking in female characters in games.
The first problem is the way strong female characters are executed in games. All the character in the world doesn't matter when they're looked at as not a person but as a statement. When one sits down thinks, "Today I shall make a strong female character," one has just made a terrible mistake. That character ceases to matter outside the context of their strength. All their traits go towards that one goal. It's a noble cause, but I feel it is the wrong way to go about it. It would be, in my opinion, a better option to make a character that is believable.
My second issue is the traits given to women and what it implies. Let me provide two examples: Peach in the old Mario games and Samus before Other M. Peach does nothing in the game except get kidnapped. That's the point of the game, you go from castle to castle looking for this woman. Samus is some bounty hunter that goes around kicking ass. If one were to ask which is the strong character, most gamers rooting for strong girls would pick Samus. Why? Does a female have to reject all traits we consider feminine to be strong? Does this mean that femininity is weakness and masculinity is strength? I'm not saying every girl should be some damsel in distress, but how is it less insulting when the girls we hold up as symbols of strength have nothing that marks them as girl besides breasts? To give an example of a strong female character that is actually a woman done right, look at Lady Kaede in Akira Kurosawa's 1985 film, Ran. This woman is a ***** and she brings an entire clan to ruin, and even her husband, a tough as nails samurai, would piss himself if he thought about crossing her.
Third, I don't like that girls are all treated as some barometer of the progressiveness of games. Ivy is bad because she dresses like a whore. Alyx is good because she isn't so much a whore. The world of games seems so hung up on this that I feel it suffocates attempts at making good characters. If girls aren't perfect, they suddenly drag the entire gender down? Putting girls under scrutiny to find out whether they're positive or negative really undermines them. Their will always be girls in games like Ivy, there will always be female Shepards, but there are far, far more people in between who are far more interesting.
