Feminism and Homosexuality in New Media

      Women in video games have a tendency to be written as “Super silliest badass action girl who will jump your bones the first romantic encounter given” or “The completely helpless or utterly weak women who will jump your bones the first romantic encounter given” Sexualized and/or idealized tends to be the virtue of the video game industry. Almost Barbaric in nature compared to the modern day  of mostly equality doesn’t it? Here’s a few good and bad examples of video games:




Good:
      Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time(Video game, not the movie): This game series tends to be my pride and joy to talk about when it comes to my argument, Video games are art. Written by John Mechner, He tells the story of Persia where a young prince unlocks an hourglass with a dagger that can control time, inadvertently destroying his kingdom as the sands turn all the palace guards and civilians, slaves and wenches(remember this is Persia times so yes there are sexualized women, let me get to my point) into deadly sand monsters. The only survivors are The Prince, The Princess of another kingdom, and an evil vizier(who else thinks vizier is such an evil word?) John Mechner does a brilliant job on not portraying the princess as a weak women that has no purpose except to breed and make the prince sandwiches. He also doesn’t write her part as someone who’s so powerful she will castrate you for looking in her general direction, What she is is flawed, normal, and during one part of the game (devious) and shows pure emotion. The prince also shows similar flaws and they both learn and grow throughout the story.

 
      Dragon Age: This game is written by Bioware, the creators of some of the best Roleplaying games of all time. Now they solve this issue a whole new way, as giving the player the choice of playing a female lead, This gives the player the choice of being an arrogant bitch, to a caring soul, to whatever the player wants. Even the Non player Characters were written so deep, it would take up 50 pages to describe it.



Bad:
Tomb Raider: This famous video character shows the stereotype of “Super silliest badass sexualized action girl” Nothing of this character is believable, the female form, the emotions, and the writing. Lara Craft is a form of pure sexual marketing and each game title continues to be a piss poor attempt of making money off the female form and unfortunately it works.


     Homosexuality in Video games becomes near non existent as i can only think of one game that shows it is the game of Dragon Age. This game became extremely controversial as you could engage in a lesbian/gay relationship with 2 of the main characters, including tastefully done sex scenes (non nudity) The game had alot of negative reviews because of this and Bioware assured that there game was completely player driven, was not a requiered cutscenes (even the straight relationships) and they had also recieved the proper ESRB for the content and did not feel the need to delete or censor the game because of the critics. This being the same company for a previous game have massive criticism because of a straight sex cutscene, again, not showing any nudity.