Politically America is strange, with presidential elections, re-evaluation of gun laws, and third-wave feminism all being on the forefront. Where third-wave feminism is concerned, there is a lot of construction around gender roles. At Simmons, the concept of gender roles and gender identities is widely known, with organizations on campus and policies at Simmons working on awareness and activism. But gender plays in other fields as well.
Gaming and gender have come together in several ways. From Gamergate, to female Youtubers and Twitch streamers, to my personal favorite: the tag "female protagonist" on Steam. Here is a look at the five top sellers in this tag as of writing this. In order these games are: Remember Me, Crashlands, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Dishonored 2, and Trinelogy.
Remember Me is from Capcom, the publisher for the Resident Evil and Street Fighter franchises, including others. Released in 2013, it is marketed as a "cyberpunk action-adventure game." The protagonist is a female able to steal memories and change memories to alter someone's recollection of an event. Overall the game has mixed reviews, with repetitive game play, poor design choices and an underwhelming protagonist. Most of all, nothing about the game requires that the protagonist be female, or give an specific rationale as to why the protagonist is female. It does not detract nor add anything to the game, but by being tagged with "female protagonist" you would think it would be important somehow.
Crashlands was released this January. It is a story-driven adventure role-playing game revolving around crafting, but is geared more towards being a mobile game rather than being a PC game. The experience is lacking for PC users. The female protagonist? All the characters in the game are aliens, with no reason to bother giving them genders in the first place. But hey, people think the art is cute.
If you need to be told that Rise of the Tomb Raider is going to feature Lara Croft, then that is a personal problem and you should really look into that. Featured in in Tomb Raider games since 1996, with comic books since 1997, and two films featuring Angelina Jolie, this title speaks to itself and being tagged as such is redundant.
Dishonored 2 will not be released until November, but due to the magical world of pre-ordering, it is currently in the top sellers on Steam for this category. The "2" in the title should give you a clue, but this is a sequel to a game from 2012. It is being published by Bethesda Softworks, who make the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, among their many titles and poor reputation as company. You can play as the protagonist from the first game, or as one of the other main characters in the first game, an Empress. Since this game is not out yet there really is not too much to say, but since both characters have a previous game and a back-story, but having a second protagonist option is new to this game, the tag actually makes sense here.
Trinelogy is a combined pack of all three "Trine" games, which are puzzle adventure games. Each game has three characters with different skill-sets and you have to rotate through them (when playing by yourself) to solve puzzles using their abilities. One character is a female spy. She is the first character introduced in the first game. She was going for treasure and ended up getting magically bound to the other two male characters, and now they have to solve puzzles and adventure together to get themselves out of the bind. The first two games are interesting and compelling to play, but the third game is pretty short and the entire future of Trine games is now up for contention because of it. Considering the game is dependent on playing all three characters, it seems deceptive to tag this as a female protagonist.
