Naughty Dog and Gender Diversity

I've discussed this subject before, more or less, can't remember if it was in both blog and vlog form or just a vlog. Regardless, the subject I intend to talk about is gender diversity in games and how it can be handled better by even those who see themselves as shining beacons of hope for those wanting to see more lead women, as an example. 

A recent video interview where Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog interviewed Hermen Hulst of Guerrilla Games is what sparked this topic. They were discussing female protagonists in a segment of the interview where Druckmann took a jab at people unable to relate to a female protagonist but can relate to murderers. Now there's a lot to discuss in this so lets get started.

First off, I wanted to address the fact that anyone who thinks you can't relate to a character simply because of different gender or race is ignorant. Not completely wrong but still ignorant if that's a deal breaker for them. A character is made up of many different things, among those things is gender and race, those being different than your own can set up a barrier for sure but it's something you quickly get over once you give them a chance. It's just how we're wired in the end, we get along better and quicker with others like us while getting along with different people takes more of an effort. That said, as a straight man I get how it can be weird to play as a woman and in the game have male characters hit on you, the player.

Aloy, relatable despite being a woman.

Moving on, I wanted to touch upon the subject of relating to a murderer. I want to touch more upon that another time but I did wanna point out that it's not really a thing that games do these days. Most often the enemy is a purely evil entity, either zombies, aliens or mercenaries with one goal and that goal is to be as evil as possible. They're faceless, and they go out of their way to show that whatever emotions they have it's about how they enjoy torturing puppies. Putting those kinds of enemies in your path, most often putting you in the seat that you have no choice but to kill them in self defense, isn't putting the player in the boots of a murderer. As an example, Aloy from Horizon is a killer, but no murderer. She doesn't kill innocent people and the enemies are overly barbaric with no redeemable qualities. You're not going to feel bad about killing monsters in self defense, but you might feel uncomfortable when every single character in the game seem to have the hots for you. Understandably so.

I'll have to get around to the murder-mindset and games later on as it's an interesting topic to me, but alas it's time to get to my main point. The reason I put Naughty Dog in the title. As a disclaimer, I have no problems with female protagonists, in fact they often turn out really badass because devs seem to make more of an effort when writing them and badass women are great. For that matter I'm not going to sit here and say we need less women in games, no I'm here to say, we need more.

What I mean with that.. Let me ask you a question, how many badass females can you remember from recent games? Really give it some thought, I can remember Ellie, Tess and Marlene (TLoU), Elena, Chloe and Nadine (Uncharted), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), Aloy (Horizon) just to name a few. Now try and mention any female villains. Can you mention three without looking anything up, even one? Better yet, how many games have women among the cannon fodder that the player slaughters en masse?

That's the real point, games today seem to have a real hard time painting women as villains, especially as low level grunts. I think this is a very important part of equality, not to hold women to some ideal standard where they're always the good guys but show that they can be just as bad as men. Now I've mentioned Nadine here, she counts, right? Well first off, she was a Mary Sue, she wasn't that interesting and both times you fought her you didn't stand a chance against this terminator. She's also one only villain that hasn't died in Uncharted, even villains who ended up redeeming themselves in the past died as they did. Nadine just buggers off to return as a protagonist in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Not to mention she's the only female mercenary in all of the Uncharted games. How odd.

The Last of Us is another example of a game which Naughty Dog, gaming media and Druckmann himself uses to show off how badass women can be. It's true that Ellie and Tess are both really badass and good characters but where are the female villains? Even Marlene who, not to spoil anything important, stands in your way at one point isn't portrayed as a bad character. Also where are all the female Fireflies and survivors? Is Naughty Dog telling me that only men are strong enough to do all the savage things you need to do to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? Or have what it takes to be a mercenary in the Uncharted franchise?

Now, I do of course understand why this is a thing. It is of course because we're still uneasy about harming women. We've played games and seen movies where men have been slaughtered without discretion for decades, centuries, maybe more? It's funny how everyone calls for more women in gaming but as soon as they can be harmed all hell breaks loose. I think the first time I noticed female cannon fodder was in MGS4 were Kojima had made the FROG unit to kinda experiment and see if gamers would be more hesitant to kill female enemies.

FROG:s, all female special forces.

What I ask is simple, add female baddies among the waves of enemies you throw against me in games. I didn't think about it until I played more games with female protagonists, how my character was the only female combatant in sight. Why is it okay to slaughter my own gender exclusively while we hesitate to even add female enemies that end up dying before the end of the game? As a man, I'm fine with female protagonists, but I'd like my own gender to not be the only one portrayed as evil as well. As long as this is a thing we won't have gender equality.

I'd also like to mention the recent Star Wars: Battlefront 2 announcement. Apparently we're going to play as a female protagonist in it. Fine, I say, but a female Imperial soldier? Where has all the female storm troopers been before, I ask? Is it maybe that we don't mind the idea of millions of male baddies being killed throughout the Star Wars franchise so we don't really see female baddies until it's time to play the "bad side"? Seems awfully fishy to me, don't get me wrong Star Wars is full of badass women but I've never heard of women among the Imperial Grunts before Phasma in Star Wars Episode 7 who wasn't even a grunt but a fancy commander. Doesn't seem consistent, and consistency is vital for making a believable and immersive world.

Ellie, doesn't hit women because they're too fragile. 

Naturally I do wanna give a shout-out to developers who do support real gender equality in games like Bethesda and Ubisoft who have both badass female protagonists and female antagonists and cannon fodder. Bethesda in particular has been doing it for a long time, first time I saw female raiders in Fallout 3 (which as my first Bethesda game) was quite refreshing to me. They also do it without proclaiming how progressive they are at every step, really I'd say Bethesda is currently a shining beacon of how it's done as far as identity politics is concerned. I really hope Naughty Dog takes note and adds a few female enemies in their next game. Female protagonists is good and I enjoy playing them but it makes it all the more weird when all enemies are exclusively male.

Introduce some real diversity and equality, please.

Oh and here's the interview that caused this topic to begin with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzomI_VXFLs