By now you've probably heard somewhere, like a noisebriar sticking to your clothes in the digital wind, that Eidos would like to make the Tomb Raider franchise and its heroine more "female friendly." Trina of ladybusiness-focused site GamingAngels recently collected some thoughts on this from game industry gals she knows, and I contributed.
Decided to share here what I wrote to her, and see what you guys think. I know there're plenty of gals who read SVGL, but an utterly unscientific population sampling suggests that my audience, like most gaming audiences, is majority male. Still -- and maybe one day I'm owed a deck in the face from Gloria Steinem -- whenever we as a society discuss gender issues and "what women want," I get a pang of concern for the dudes. I'm probably fortunate to grow up in this era instead of in a previous one, but I don't like that we're allowed to discuss what's "female-friendly" and yet generally feel comfortable already assuming what's "male-friendly" (guns! explosions! boobs!) -- and permit girls' club attitudes while boys' clubs are conceptually frowned upon.
I also think the idea of "female-friendly" is by itself a little bit cringeworthy, because it assumes that all women have the same taste, and all women are interested in the same ideals. But I'm hammering on semantics here -- largely to make the point that this is a discussion in which I hope SVGL's entire audience feels comfortable participating.
Semantics aside, look. I think I get what Eidos wants to do, here. Lara has a reputation as a bombshell -- okay, okay, sex object. She's perhaps the game biz's most famous piece of eye-candy, and somehow over the years she's become iconic of the concept that 18-year-old boys drool over pixelated boobs. I can see how this has made some women feel as if Tomb Raider games are not "for them."
But when it comes to why women don't feel comfortable with this or that video game, I think it's a way bigger issue than just one character's looks and body. They could overhaul her completely in some kind of extreme way and I still doubt that it will be some magical cure for female perception of the brand -- and they might even alienate existing fans, which won't help their ends.
Eidos is trying to widen the franchise's appeal because Tomb Raider: Underworld didn't sell like they wanted it to. I also suspect Eidos is trying to clean lingering skeletons out of its closet so that a strong company will want to buy it out, but that's just a guess. Finally, when releasing a title in a franchise that's sucked for years during a packed, starkly hit-driven recession holiday, I think weak sales are to be expected no matter how great this installment is.
But if they think that making their larger-than-life heroine look mundane and conservative will make the game appeal to more women, that seems pretty dumb to me.
People often point out the implausibility of Lara wearing hot shorts in the snow, or having bare legs when she plans to be climbing stalagmites or obelisks or something. Well, I've been noticing game characters' implausible clothes for ages -- none of the FFVII crew bundled up at the Icicle Inn, Solid Snake didn't mind lying belly-down in the snow at Shadow Moses and I've watched shirtless musclemen brave the elements for over a decade with nothing more than a chuckle and "that's video games for you." The argument that we're not trying to desexualize Lara, we're just trying to make her realistic doesn't hold water.
I was really impressed with Underworld. I thought Lara's physicality was enjoyable and amazing -- far less to do with how her body looked, and much more about how she used it . Not once did I sit there feeling bad because I don't look like her, and I don't like the idea that women are so fragile that sexy fantasy women should never be allowed in video games -- especially when we allow sexy fantasy men. Please, Big Boss, do not put a shirt on.
I'm pretty sure all us gals are smart enough to know that Lara is a video game character and not a real person. Maybe her body proportions are unrealistic -- but, uh, the fact that she leaps across chasms in the Amazon, balances on hairline ledges and discovers mysterious artifacts with ancient powers is acceptably grounded in reality?I don't believe that women have a problem with Lara, other than that we've been conditioned to blame her. I think it's Lara's social context -- Lara's audience that makes them feel unwelcome (and stuff like this). And once again, this comes down to the longer-term history of the video game industry, which marketed itself for years as a toy for teenage boys, and now will probably take years more to get rid of that stigma.
You can even say it's the fault of society, fond of judging which kinds of things are "for girls" and which kinds of things are "for boys", that makes women feel like they ought not to try something like Tomb Raider. Maybe it even makes women feel like they are *supposed* to be insulted by Lara, even without having taken a look at their own feelings around the issue.
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that when it comes to the relationship between women and games, much broader things need to change than the long-established aesthetic of Lara Croft.
