I've been playing World of Warcraft since 2005, and I've noticed a pattern in the treatment of female characters. Of course, sexy and beautiful women are prevalent in the storyline while more clothed women aren't. One can shrug this off as understandable because the gaming industry is inherently androcentric, and women are lucky to be represented at all. That's a very poor excuse, but seems to be the only one the dudes on the Warcraft forums can come up with. The sexy women are only there to serve as eye candy for the dudes that play the game. How else can you explain the Queen of the Dragonflights wearing a bikini and club boots at the top of a 100 story tower in an arctic zone in the middle of winter? That's just not logical even for a game with minotaurs that can shapeshift into cats, dance with you, and then drive away on a motorcycle.
Should we justify the oppressive themes as nothing that should be taken seriously because they are there for dudes, or should we question why these themes exist? Why does the ancient queen of the dragons have to look like a 20 year old beauty queen? The male audience thinks women have no dreams, intelligence, individuality or lives worth noting, so all they're good for is being sexy. Women like Alexstrasza are hailed by the male audience while Jaina gets "Jaina Must Die" clubs. Sylvanas gets a major plot within the story while Tyrande gathers dust in the background. Women are either sexy and prevalent in the story, or modest (if you will) and only talked about.
Part of the cure for this mentality is to show the male audience more characters like Jaina or Tyrande. Don't keep these girls in the back, out of plain view of the storyline. Make a female the main antagonist of an expansion. It doesn't matter how much a character is talked about, if they aren't actually there, then they aren't really that important to the audience. Case in point, Elune is arguably the most powerful character in the story. If she wanted to, she could kill all the bad guys and make 50,000 pieces of armor out of one piece just by snapping her fingers. But wait, she doesn't like to get involved in human conflicts, so she's not a big part of the story. As a player, you know about her, you know she's strong, but she's not a tangible character, so who cares?
Keep in mind that there's a difference between the real story and how it's being twisted to suit the "needs" of dudes that play the game. There are more than enough strong women in the story. The difference is that as soon as they are put in the game, they shed a few pieces of clothes, develop bigger breasts, or make sex innuendos. Not to mention the game's "boss hierarchy", where a character like Azshara (one of those extremely strong and important female characters I was talking about) will always come in second to Deathwing, a male.
The treatment of female characters in Warcraft isn't unique, women are being represented poorly in every game I can think of. Violence against women and rape are plot devices in the new game Dragon Age, which by the way is getting very high ratings and reviews. Why is this okay?
World of Warcraft has gotten much more woman-friendly, particularly in the most recent expansion, but there are still major problems that anyone who isn't a feminist probably can't see. Anyway, I'd recommend the game if you can stomach the horrible player community, where rape is a joke and you are ostracized if you are black, and the employees who you report these issues to don't care or participate in it themselves.... but that's another issue entirely...
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I've been playing Dragon Age daily since it came out. I'm not going to say that I'm not uncomfortable with rape as a plot device (I'm not playing a City Elf, which is where you get that background story, but I watched that background story played out), but I think in this case it is used the same way as all of the background stories are: as a motivation for the character to go out there and fight for good.
I'm going to warn about SPOILERS now for anyone who might want to play the game.
~~SPOILERS AHEAD~~
For example, in my background story, I watched everyone in my castle, including my father, be murdered in front of me. That is pretty extreme too, just like the City Elf background, and is a way to imbue the character you're playing with a passion to right wrongs (at least if you play as a "good" character). I think picking out that one aspect of one of the backgrounds makes it sound a lot worse than it is, when in fact each type of character you can play has a dramatic and most often traumatic background. It's not like the game is glorifying what happens.
Oh, and I should add that I completely agree about the clothing/armor. The thing actually DOES make me uncomfortable about Dragon's Age is that some of the female characters are ridiculous scantily clad, even if they are wearing armor (though my character at this point is covered head to toe), plus the standard female body in the game is thin with HUGE boobs. Though I guess the standard male body in the game is fairly idealized too, they just get to wear armor that, y'know, is armor.
I was actually very pleased when I put chain mail on my female character and it was actually chain mail. I think Dragon Age is generally pretty good with it, particularly with Medium, Heavy and Massive armor. Some of the leather stuff is pretty revealing though. I can't help but feel like Leliana's plunging neckline is not a sensible thing to have in a combat situation.
The huge breasts bug me too, but the inclusion of bisexual love interests and some pretty strong female characters seems like a step in the right direction.
I think Valve games do an excellent job with this. They tend to have fully clothed and strong female characters, though in the newly released Left 4 Dead 2 the most underwritten character is the one female, Rochelle.
Your post raises several issues related to women and gaming, some of which I think are legit and some that I think miss the mark.
You're definitely right to point out that female NPCs often get pushed to the background when it comes to in-game depictions of the Lore. And I think you're partially right about the obnoxiousness of some in the player community, though I don't think it's fair to paint the community as a whole that way. I used to be a GM for EverQuest, and most players were pretty mature and decent people. That said, there's definitely a sizable percentage who suck, and I often had to take people aside to explain the difference between offensive and funny. (I have to admit, now that I'm just a player, I do miss having the power to put jerks in the "kitten room" for a time-out! *chuckle*).
However, I disagree with your opinion that the sexiness of female characters is problematic. People generally play fantasy games as a form of escapism in which everything is larger than life - the stakes are high, the deeds are heroic, the players are powerful, and everyone is hot. Sexiness is just another aspect of the wish-fulfillment that fantasy games provide, and in my experience, it's just as appealing to the female players I know as it is to the male players.
I was going to point out something similar. When I"m playing a fantasy game, I don't want to be a plain jane ordinary or ugly character. whether I play a male or female character I want my character to be super strong and super intelligent and super attractive and super everything else. That's the whole point of the game - to aspire or play as the "ideal" human being.
I think the KEY important characters - both the heroes and villians, should be made very attractive looking. That's part of what completes the fantasy of the game.
I have very little to say, but a lot of love for your username.
I've been going through some Elder Scrolls games and being generally impressed with how much clothes the ladies wear in them. I'm pretty sure that you can't really even tell that my catwoman is a lady unless you take her cuirass off.
Tyrande had a huge storyline in Warcraft 3. She and Furion are considered some the most powerful Night Elf Heroes.
It is not good gameplay to have NPC's come and "snap their fingers" and take our the nemesis of a storyline. They are secondary to the actual players and raids that work together to meet those challenges.
I'm not sure who hails Alexstraza or hates Jaina. Most players are not invested or intrested at all in the lore and those that are how you describe are probably not in the norm.
A large percentage of the players in World of Warcraft have never played the earlier Warcraft games, like myself for example. This is why I brought up that there are very strong women in the story, but they always come in second to males in the MMO, or they shed some armor, or make sex innuendos, or whatever. How do these people learn that most, if not all, of the women in the story are actually badasses if they aren't shown it in the MMO? Why isn't Blizzard making more of an effort to bring in these characters? Why do I get the feeling that as soon as Tyrande becomes a big part in WoW, she's going to get a new blood elf model wearing a white bra, panties, and thigh-highs?
The example I used to describe Elune may not have been the best one. I was only trying to describe how powerful she is, and yet she's no where to be found in game. New players who don't play Night Elves probably don't even know who she is.
I describe the playerbase's reaction to Jaina and Alexstrasza through talking with guidies and reading the forums over a long period of time. Male players more often then not like Alexstrasza more than Jaina because she shows more skin (I'm not pulling that out of my ass... that's actually their reasoning) and sometimes dislike Jaina because she doesn't or because "she's too smart". Which is more than an little disheartening.
Well, hopefully Azshara will be the main villain of the next expansion. It could be either her or Deathwing. (Hey, maybe there'll be more Onyxia too?)
(Is Elune even a real woman? I was kind of under the impression she was a Naaru.)
Oh, and we need more Chromie. She's awesome :) Plus they need to pull all the bronze dragonflight stories together already dammit.
As a player of a female gnome, I would love for Chromie to have more of a role.
Also, I was not aware people hated Jaina. I always thought she was pretty well liked- at least on the Alliance side.
Yeah, I'm hoping that Azshara will be a bigger deal in Cataclysm than Vashj was in BC. Elune isn't a Naaru, she's a major deity (if not THE major deity) in the story. You can read about her on wowwiki.com
I've been playing MMORPGs since roughly 1999. In the past I've played Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, EverQuest, Diablo II, Guild Wars, Vanguard, and I currently play Age of Conan and EverQuest 2. In Asheron's Call, male and female armor was pretty much equal as far as coverage. There were dresses, but male characters could put them on, which was at least somewhat fair. One of the biggest controversies during the heyday of Asheron's Call was the red dress. It's a rather tame controversy compared to the b.s. I've heard about WoW, which is pretty much why I'll never both with it. Overall, I understand what you mean; it stinks that in a game, which is supposed to be your escape from the daily crap you deal with in the real world, aspects of that same crap filter in and pick away at your immersion.
Actually, in WoW its pretty easy to keep your female characters cleavage and tummy free. All of my characters get a tabard and shirt and that tends to keep them very covered up.
I think part of the problem with the way WoW is pulling its story is a lot of its source material is rife with the same problems. That WoW is making progress away from that model shows that they're starting to break that tradition and could be seen as a real turning point for Blizzard in its acknowledgment of strong women (as most of the main heroes in games are men, but the villains started becoming bitchy women).
When the source materials for a lot of WoW is Lord of the Rings, American pop culture and Dungeons and Dragons, you run the risk of misogyny. But again, I think their moving the lore to feature more women is them really starting to break the chains of that misogynist tradition.
I could be overly optimistic on this, but Blizzard is an innovative company and does have the world's most popular MMORPG.
I agree with you, but the quibbly side of me would like to point out that Onyxia was the scariest thing in WoW for a while (I never raided, so I can't speak to her representation).
Also, as a somewhat relevant side note, I know some people who are looking forward to the new expansion simply as a potential end to Barrens chat.