Prime Example of Female Representation in Games

Metroid Prime for the Nintendo Gamecube is one of my all-time favourite games.  It tells the story of interstellar bounty hunter Samus Aran, a human female, in her exploration of an unknown planet called Tallon IV.  During her time on Tallon IV Samus must discover what happened to the indigenous population, battle the antagonistic Space Pirates and solve the crisis that is literally destroying the planet.  It is a science fiction first person shooter game; although unlike most shooters it places a heavy emphasis on exploration and problem solving rather than simply blasting enemies.  The game was released in 2002 to critical acclaim, and has been remade in 2007 onto the Nintendo Wii for a new audience.  Metroid Prime is the 5^th game in the Metroid series, with each game following the same gameplay elements and themes.  What makes the Metroid series so ground-breaking at the time (the first game was released in 1986) was that it featured a female protagonist.  Apart from traditional femme fatale characters (eg. Princess Peach in Super Mario) Samus was the first tough action female main character in a game.  This blog post is going to examine if Samus is a female gaming stereotype, and will use Hall’s research on encoding and decoding messages and the construct of meaning to help determine these facts. 

Image courtesy IGN.com

This post is about the character of Samus, not about the game itself.  As Samus is exploring the unknown planet by herself, there is no dialogue in the game.  There is no other person apart from enemies she can interact with, and the player gets information about the storyline by scanning information scattered across the planet.  What the player can deduce about the character of Samus is from her actions.  She is brave, that much is clear from her willingness to jump headfirst into an unknown planet against unknown enemies and odds.  She is tough; she defeats hoards of Space Pirates, a race of alien raiders who are present in all Metroid games as the antagonists.  She is highly intelligent, solving many difficult puzzles across the planet.  And she is fiercely independent, doing all these tasks all by herself with almost an entire planet against her.  The character Samus gives pretty much nothing away during the game, it is designed for the player to see the world through Samus’ eyes, and the player becomes Samus.  From what images we do get of Samus during cut scenes in the game is her in her full suit of armour.  The only time we see her face is during the credits when the main enemy is defeated and she has a spare moment to witness the destruction.  Unlike other female characters in games, she is not immediately sexualised, which is an important point that will be addressed later on.  Samus’ sex appeal is something that is not uncommon in female shooting characters.  Samus is seen as a trailblazer for female’s in video games, and is considered one of the first tough female protagonists in a video game, followed by Princess Zelda, Lara Croft and others (Knight 2010, p. xxi)

Image courtesy IGN.com

There are two different categories characters from games fall into; playable and non-playable.  Playable are the characters the player of the game takes control of, non-playable characters, or NPCs are the characters in the game the playable character interacts with.  This distinction is important to note when examining female characters, as there is a huge difference between the two.  I’ll start with the playable characters, such as Samus Aran.  These are the characters that generally fall under the stereotype of intelligent, tough, independent and sexy.  Apart from Samus, the most famous other shooting game characters are Lara Croft and Joanna Dark.  All three of these characters are independent, dangerous with a gun and incredibly attractive.  But why are all these independent strong women sexy? Is it impossible for game creators to create that sort of female protagonist who isn’t attractive? 

Video courtesy youtube.com

The other categories of characters from games are the non-playable characters, the NPCs.  For females in games, the most well-known are the damsel in distress model.  These are the characters the player must free or rescue from an evil kidnapper.  Most famous of these types of characters are Princess Peach from Super Mario, and Princess Zelda from Legend of Zelda.  Princess Peach is small, frail, and is constantly being kidnapped by Bowser.  The plot of all Mario games involves Mario battling Bowser’s evil forces and rescuing the princess.  Zelda is not as ‘damsel-ly’ as Peach, as she has magical power but she too finds herself kidnapped by evil forces more times than not.  And both these characters, while not being as sexy as the shooting females, are still attractive enough to warrant rescue by the player of the game. 

So why are Samus and all these other women in video games so ‘sexy’?  The answer is actually pretty straight forward, it’s simply the fact that sex sells.  Lara Croft is the prime example.  Lara has been the sexy sales figure for a booming industry composed of many products, merchandise featuring her image include t-shirts, mouse pads and calendars (Herbst 2004, p. 23).  Lara even has a film made about her; such is the interest in her character.  However, games like Metroid Prime are also critically acclaimed by critics, who cite the gameplay and storyline elements as the main attraction for gamers, not the sexy protagonist.  It seems as though this is going in one large circle, but I feel that the characters are given such a ‘sexy’ appearance to simply make more sales, the developers concentrate mainly on gameplay which attracts the hardcore gamers, and the image attracts the casual gamers.  The sexy appearances are, in my view, a way to attract a type of gamer who may not have been interested in the game to begin with but who change their mind after having a look at the character models. 

 image courtesy IGN.com

Hall's concept of encoding and decoding delves into the ways in which the producers of content encode their stories with meaning, and then the ways in which the consumers then deduct and decode meaning from that encoded narrative (Hall, 1980, pp.55-58).  It is important to point out that the encoded meaning into a message is not necessarily the decoded message.   

The gender representation in Metroid Prime can be decoded in three ways:

Dominant - The audience agrees with the game, in this case the players would accept Samus to be a strong independent woman, and these players can relate to true real life examples of women like Samus.  

Negotiated - The audience agrees with some part of the game, in this case players would agree with some aspects of Samus' character but won't agree with others.  In this case it would be the idea of the male gaze does not follow the stereotype, as the player never see's Samus' complete body, only the full body armor.  

Oppositional - The audience disagrees with the game, the players would reject the stereotype of Samus as a female shooter.  

To me, having a sexy female protagonist does not really make much of a difference to the game.  I enjoy it because of its great gameplay style and wonderful visual effects.  I can understand why developers put sexy females in games because after all, they are a business that needs to make sales. 

image courtesy deviantart.com

Reference List

Hall, S 1980, ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, England, pp. 55-58, accessed 12 Sept 2013

Herbst, C 2004, ‘Lara’s Lethal and Loaded Mission: Transposing Reproduction and Destruction’, in Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, p. 21-46

Knight, G 2010, Female Action Heroes: A Guide to Women in Comics, Video Games, Film & Television, Greenwood Publishing, Santa Barbara, California