10 Video Games That Put Women in Their Place
Posted at 5:00 AM Jan 13, 2009
By Bonnie RubergOver the years there's been a lot of talk about video games being sexist. I for one often find myself sticking up for gaming. It's not as much of a boy's club as you think! There really are artistic, intelligent games out there! Women can love video games, too!
Of course, every so often you encounter a game that makes it hard to push the gender-equality card. Sure, they can be fun, or silly, or plain fluffy, but it's hard to deny that the following games try to put women in their place -- and that place usually involves designing someone's clothes or cooking someone dinner. Delicious?
10. Cooking Mama
Mama is an adorable, wide-eyed, Japanese housewife with an expertise for teaching you how to whip together bizarre dishes featuring seafood in all the wrong places. That's it, Mama, keep that apron on and stick to the kitchen.
9. Imagine Teacher/Fashion Designer/Interior Designer/Wedding Designer
Game maker Ubisoft has an entire line of "Imagine" games oriented toward young female gamers. These titles let girls experience what it would be like to grow up and be just about anything a woman can be -- notably a teacher, a fashion designer, or a wedding planner. Where's Imagine: Lawyer or Imagine: Doctor?
8. My Baby Girl
Ladies, you don't have to wait to get pregnant and pop out a few kids -- as you inevitably will -- to experience what it's like to raise a baby. My Baby Girl and My Baby Boy let you choose an infant, feed it, and clothe it. Then do other things, like go crazy sitting around the house all day while your husband works, trapped in your newfound motherhood.
7. Grand Theft Auto
This one is obvious and almost cliché, but it's got to be said: women -- surprise, surprise -- are not always prostitutes. If they are, it's not particularly funny to employ their services then kill them to get your money back.
6. Imagine Babyz
From the same people who brought you female careers, here's there's another game about raising children. Go out and make some of your own, girls!
1 | 2
Comments
Ouch, Custer's Last Stand? That's cold-blooded. But come now, you couldn't have a more one-sidded census of females in video games than that one...
What about Mirror's Edge? Tomb Raider? Or the countless RPGs that shatter the glass ceiling with a maximized fireball?
Posted 01/13/2009 at 07:16:42 AMAre you serious? Resident Evil? The game series with Jill Valentine as the heroine for the first few?
There were so many better options than that.
Posted 01/13/2009 at 07:20:35 AMAnd on the nitpicking, it doesn't really matter note, two of the women on the DOA: Beach Volleyball cover own their own multinational corporations, and the other started her own dojo in the main series. But that's assuming the main series isn't just softcore porn to begin with.
Also, Custer's Last Stand should just be given the lifetime achievement award and left off any future lists at this point, much the way Duke Nukem Forever is no longer allowed to appear on vaporware lists. We all know it's there, but you can only rewrite "steaming pile of misogynistic holy crap what were they thinking" so many times.
Posted 01/13/2009 at 07:23:06 AMHey, why isn't Duke Nukem 3D on this list? At least in GTA there was one or two non-whore female characters! The only women in Duke were naked or stripping.
Posted 01/13/2009 at 07:30:43 AMResident Evil as a whole (even the movies) had ass kicking women.
Posted 01/13/2009 at 07:41:38 AMResident Evil 4? Really? Regardless of the rest of the series having heroines, RE4 had Ada Wong swooping in to kick ass mysteriously from time to time, in a splituptohere dress, no less. Better research, please?
Posted 01/13/2009 at 09:41:41 AMWhat about Echo the Dolphin, that game was specifically made for girls. They said they were going to make games aimed at girls and then they gave us a stupid dolphin. I'm all for RPGs with female leads, like Manon Batiste in Medal of Honor: Underground, or playing as Anna/Nicole in the Tekkan series, but I'm sick of the pandering that companies do to women.
Posted 01/13/2009 at 06:01:28 PMCuster's Last Stand: Loss of General Custer and all of his troops when they attacked a numerically and tactically superior force of Native Americans.
Custer's Revenge: The mysogynistic game in spot #1 above.
Posted 01/16/2009 at 07:44:00 PMWhile I can see why you included it, and god knows that game looks awful, I have to interject that in terms of athleticism, difficulty and danger of injury, figure skating is HARDCORE! :P
Posted 01/19/2009 at 04:31:34 PMResident Evil 4?
Are you serious? Ada Wong kicks some serious ass in that game and on a few occasions even saves Leon.
WTF?
Posted 02/09/2009 at 05:03:43 PM-Little Dykling
@The Red Queen Don't be hatin' on Echo. I knew a lot of people who loved that game; never have I heard it was made for girls. Care to cite a source?
Posted 09/27/2009 at 08:45:57 PMLeave it up to a woman to pretend to play video games and do a school report. :)
Posted 10/12/2009 at 04:55:15 PMOk, let's be serious. Who would actually buy a game if it was called "Cooking Daddy"? And even if that DID become a hit, people would be complaining on how a man can do everything better than a woman.
And as for the Imagine series, they're aimed and young girls and that's what a lot of girls want to DO at that age. A lot want to become teachers and wedding designers and it let's them use their creativity, reflecting real life. But a lawyer and doctor? That's pretty dang boring as well as above their age level. You're suing people and you're cutting open people, not really what young girls wanna do and may even turn them off to it at as a later profession.
And FYI, GTA is dealing with the underworld and crime, of course there are going to be a lot of hookers and whores, what do you expect?
Posted 06/13/2010 at 11:40:31 PM