"The Gaming Trifecta: Understanding the Exclusion of Female Video Game Protagonists"
|
Download PDF About the AuthorKathryn Asay is an undergraduate student in the English Department at Weber State University in Utah. She will be graduating summa cum laude in December 2018 at the age of 21 with a bachelor’s degree in professional and technical writing and a technical writing institutional certificate. She is interested in gender equality, female representation, and botanical studies and hopes to integrate her interests in her future career as a technical writer. Contents |
BackgroundAlthough I provide some general examples, quotes, and statistics about video games throughout this paper, the primary video game franchise I focus on is Assassin’s Creed in part because each game in the franchise typically limits player agency by restricting the type of protagonist they must play as. This player-protagonist restriction pulls gender representation into question because there are so few female protagonists that are actually represented in games with set protagonists, like Assassin’s Creed. Assassin’s Creed is a video game franchise created by the video game publishing company, Ubisoft. It is one of Ubisoft’s most successful video game franchises with ten major installments, over twenty spin-off installments, and more installments to come in the near future. In the games, players take on the persona of a (typically male) protagonist belonging to the Assassin Brotherhood or (less commonly) to the Templar Order. Players carry out side tasks and main missions by obtaining collectable items, assassinating enemies, and unveiling the ulterior motives in the fight for power. The games are interesting and exciting for thousands of players, but the lack of playable female protagonists is palpable, especially since players do not get the option to design their own protagonist as is the case in other games, like Skyrim. Although the Assassin’s Creed franchise tries to create powerful and inspirational female characters, like the female African-American protagonist in Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, the games the franchise produces tend to lack equal representation of playable female protagonists. Understanding the differences between protagonist specifications can help provide a clearer picture for how Ubisoft attempts and fails to generate female representation in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. A playable protagonist is the controllable character that the video game’s plot follows for the duration of the game. In some games, like Skyrim, players are able to design their own character’s appearance and initial capabilities; they are able to choose the gender of their protagonist. Assassin’s Creed games typically have only one to three protagonists per game that are predefined and unchangeable. Having a predefined protagonist restricts the player’s agency. In recent years, Assassin’s Creed developers have created games with optional protagonists such as Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, which introduced playable twin protagonists Jacob and Evie Frye. Having optional protagonists means that players are able to alternate between two or more main protagonists at their choosing. In Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, players are able to choose which twin they want to play as, but there are also missions that are restricted to each twin. Other types of protagonists that developers have introduced are limited protagonists—protagonists that are only playable for specific missions or sequences during gameplay but are not the primary protagonist. Assassin’s Creed: Origins has a playable male character as the primary protagonist, but there are brief sequences in which players are able to play as the protagonist’s wife, Aya. These sequences are so short that Aya cannot be considered as a primary protagonist; she is a secondary, limited protagonist. |