Where are all the female antagonists?

[Ygrez]

One thing I'm noticing, there's lots of female big-bads, but mooks that you regularly fight over the course of most games/stories... are 99% male (and I'm just exaggerating a little with that) unless they are some quirky all female squad (but then they're bosses and not just generic mooks)

 

[ABLb0y]

The Game of Thrones game has Cersei Lannister, who despite her usual characterization is never seen using her sexuality as a weapon.

Wait, what?

She literally does nothing BUT use her sexuality as a weapon, her tenure as regent is literally just her sleeping with one strategically placed man after another in exchange for protection and political favors. The only difference from the most genuinely sexist versions of the trope is that this strategy fails to yield any real results even before it backfires horribly, but that's because she's comically incompetent, not because she isn't trying to play temptress.

Yes, in the TV series/books, hence the words 'despite her usual characterization'. She's not seen using it in the game, where she sends you on a suicide mission with your sadistic baseborn brother and doesn't do much else.

 

[happyninja42]

For the most part, I think we don't see them, because of the social hangup of having a man do violence to a woman. Most movies, if they have a female villain, and there's going to be a fight, they pair them off with a female protagonist more often than not. In fact, one of the ways they usually convey to the audience that the badguy is actually a bad guy is to show him inflicting violence on a woman. It lets the crowd feel more justified in cheering for the violence that's going to happen to him.

It's sort of the same hangup that causes movies and tv shows to not actually show a child being killed. They'll cut to a shot of a burned baby doll or something, or a charred stroller or crib, or some other obvious symbol for a child, and show it destroyed to convey the death of the child. Because, for the most part, our culture (in the US anyway), doesn't really like showing/endorsing that stuff. Of course there are exceptions, but on average, it seems to be something that just doesn't get shown in games/movies/tv. Games I think gets a bit more flexibility, given the open nature of their design.

But yeah, movies and tvs just don't really show that kind of stuff, the general public doesn't dig it very much.

 

[KennardKId5]

The Lady of Pain from Planescape springs to mind. She's not exactly a villain, but she definitely isn't a good person.

 

[Kerethos]

Is this the place where I won't get judged for saying that I'm all for equality, and would like to kill everyone; regardless for age, race, gender or even species?

No...? Okay

OT: I can't actually think of any good female main villains right now. I always seem to end up against a male villain in the end, outside of GLADOS... but she's technically only female because she's got a female voice. And of the female villains I can think of most are either mothers, psychotic girlfriends, mind controlled, forced to be villains or some mix of the previous. Also you don't often kill them, and should do so you are meant feel bad about it.

Even just female generic enemies seem fairly rare, at least outside of Skyrim. A game which no one seems to be in a moral panic over, even though you can decapitate women and put their head up... places. [footnote]Nothing says "owned" like making a corpse sit on it's own head - it's just the natural evolution of teabagging, if you ask me. Like a little monument to the phrase "fuck you".[/footnote]

 

[Ygrez]

For the most part, I think we don't see them, because of the social hangup of having a man do violence to a woman. Most movies, if they have a female villain, and there's going to be a fight, they pair them off with a female protagonist more often than not. In fact, one of the ways they usually convey to the audience that the badguy is actually a bad guy is to show him inflicting violence on a woman. It lets the crowd feel more justified in cheering for the violence that's going to happen to him.

But yeah, movies and tvs just don't really show that kind of stuff, the general public doesn't dig it very much.

That's something I noticed in the Avatar movie, at the start you see that some of the soldiers are women, but during the big fight at the end, you only see are guys fighting and getting killed by the Na'vi on the ground.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

For the most part, I think we don't see them

Have you read any of the preceding 80 posts or played any of the games mentioned in them?

 

[Malbourne]

For my two cents, I'd say Leorina from Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil. Yeah, she's not technically the final boss, but she is the main antagonist for most of the game. She has her own selfish motivation, doesn't act overly dramatic, and generally downplays her own villainy. Cept when she flies away in her evil battleship and tries to destroy Lunatea.

 

[renegade7]

Princess Azula anyone? I know, not a video game villainess, but I honestly cannot see how one can say "female villain" and not immediately think of Azula.

I also remember Karst from Golden Sun TLA. Just because TLA had the big reveal that the "villains" in the first part of the story were just trying to save their people (as well as the entire world), and the scene where Felix comforts her as she dies after being tricked by the Wise One into killing her was just amazingly sad, finally aware of what she (and her counterpart Agatio, as well as Menardi and Saturos in the first game) was trying to do and why she and her comrades were pushed to such extreme measures. You just feel bad for her at the end.

Sarah Kerrigan wasn't bad either but SC2 kinda ruined it a little.

 

[Weaver]

My favourite female antagonist is probably SHODAN. Probably cause she's a great antagonist before she's female, if that makes sense.

But really, I'm not sure why everyone is just listing games. People do that in every "where's all the female protagonists?" and staunch critics all find some way or reason to dismiss every female character listed. Either they aren't a good representation, not in a popular enough video game, all indie games don't count for some reason, or whatever. I'm sure they keep those same standards to antagonists too.

Though I think female antagonists are less important than protagonists the antagonist is not who people are playing in the game (well, usually).

I'm really more concerned there aren't many female grunts. It's almost 100% men, save for Bioshock really, who throw their lives at the PC to die for no reason.

I actually came to this thread to say SHODAN, but the more I think about it, the more she doesn't qualify. It's not that she's an AI...GLaDOS is an AI, but was built off the personality of an actual woman, and is fully voiced by a woman, so it's more than fair to call "her" a "she". SHODAN was actually referred to as an "it" or a "he" in the first game, and only a "she" in the 2nd. SHODAN's voice is several overlapping voices, one of them male. And unlike GLaDOS, we are never given to understand that SHODAN's personality is a reflection of a living human being...it's just an AI gone mad. SHODAN is probably technically an "it".

But yeah I think of SHODAN as a girl too.

SHODAN confirmed first gender fluid antagonist in gaming.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

My favourite female antagonist is probably SHODAN. Probably cause she's a great antagonist before she's female, if that makes sense.

But really, I'm not sure why everyone is just listing games. People do that in every "where's all the female protagonists?" and staunch critics all find some way or reason to dismiss every female character listed. Either they aren't a good representation, not in a popular enough video game, all indie games don't count for some reason, or whatever. I'm sure they keep those same standards to antagonists too.

I think it's because people would rather just prefer to feel like they are being attacked or oppressed in some way, seeing as how people still keep saying " They really don't ever have female protagonist, even though people just listed like 100 examples.)

 

[krazykidd]

The issue of female protagonists in videogames has been done to death. Even as I type this, there's probably five posts on the front page about how there aren't enough, how there are enough, how the number isn't important, etc. But much less of a debate is raised about the female villains in videogames. There's hardly any - or certainly less than male antagonists. This is perhaps a more real problem with gender stereotypes, because while a man probably won't have qualms about playing as a woman, he might mind killing one.

Think about this: how many games in recent memory had a female antagonist? Portal, and the sequel even switched that out for a while. The expansion to StarCraft 2, where the Swarm decided to manifest itself as a pretty lady for obvious reasons (because she was the mother of all the swarmlings, of course). Nothing else that comes to my mind right now.

How's this for a double standard: when there is a female on the villain's roster, she's usually the one the protagonist (male) doesn't want to kill. They might try to convince them to stop their evil ways, might leave them alive, might pull off the mind-controlling bug that is for some reason strapped to their chest, or might be forced to watch as they commit suicide. A particular highlight for me is Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, where the female antagonist interacts with the story in three ways:
1. Is carried around a castle, nonlethally, not even to be used as a human shield, but just to show that Ezio's a good guy for not stabbing her,
2. Gets slapped around by the villain (just in case you couldn't tell he was the villain) while he tries to retrieve the McGuffin, and
3. Tells said location to Ezio while she's sobbing over a broken heart.

Just lovely. And when's the last time there was more than one female on the villain's side? 10,000 mooks and one Smurfette? That makes no sense! And don't even get me started on typecasting. How come every female villain has to use their sexuality to win fights, or else fight sexily? Can't we have one that just uses a grenade launcher like everyone else?

Look, if we're going to talk about gender equality in videogames, we should address all sides of the issue. This one doesn't seem to get that much coverage, but I feel it should.

Other examples include:

Assassin's Creed I, where the main payoff of Altair's story arc is that he doesn't kill a woman - even though she's still on the villain's team. There is then an entire spinoff game dedicated to 'winning her over to the good side,' which is eventually successful.

Metal Gear Solid 3, where a woman is the final boss but NOT the main villain, and the player is immediately made to feel remorseful for killing her.

Batman: Arkham City, where the only female villain you ever fight, Harley Quinn, can only be punched once before disappearing behind a wall of armed male mooks. You later find her tied up and gagged by your sexy ninja friend, because girl-on-girl bondage is hawt.

God of War, where the three female goddesses receive special treatment: Athena is only killed by accident, and Kratos is immediately remorseful, Hera is killed after no battle and in an anomalously bloodless manner, and Aphrodite gets to live because of tits (and whose cut death scene was also completely bloodless).

DMCevil May Cry, where Dante, as soon as he captures Mundus' lover, immediately demands they return her in a hostage exchange. Virgil, who soon reaches comical levels of villainy, is the only one who sees the tactical benefit of killing her, and he is heavily scolded for it.

I made a thread similar about 3 years ago. Here is 11 pages of female vilainy goodness.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.309709-Are-there-any-video-game-with-a-female-as-the-MAIN-villain

Way before the gender wars were cool.

Do i win?

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I would say that the lack of female antagonists is because developers are afraid that there would a huge moral outcry if she was killed in any kind of "violent" manner (and they'd very likely be right). I noticed a fairly exhaustive list of female antagonists being made in this topic, but here's the thing: Go down that list and consider how the character was dealt with. If the character was killed in any kind of violent manner, it was likely another antagonist doing the killing in order to take her place as the "Villain we can have players attack without sparking unwanted controversy". Otherwise if the player kills her directly, it's usually in something like an RPG where the character just kinda vanishes from the screen when the battle is over, or in a game that doesn't really have graphic violence (think Mario jumping on Wendy Koopa).

I'm sure people will be able to list a few examples of female antagonists who were killed in graphic and violent ways by the player, but I don't doubt that they are very-much the exception to the rule.