How do you feel about the damsel in distress?

MegaHiro91

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To all the female gamers out there, I'm curious: Growing up in this male dominated world of ours, how have you felt about many videogames being about "the guy getting the girl" and rarely the other way around? Mario rescues a princess. Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, and Final Fight are all about rescuing your adultnapped girlfriend. And even in an artistic narrative driven game like Shadow of the Colossus your mission is to slay the colossi in order to wake your dead/sleeping girlfriend. How does it feel to always have to be the one to be saved, and being treated like a reward for the protagonist? I am not trying to spark a gender war or anything, I'm again just curious.

In more modern games you often have the option to play as a girl, and there are even more and more games featuring a female lead like Stellar Blade, Horizon, and Control. But I am moreso talking about the arcade days of yore, where game developers had just figured out that players (who were predominantly boys) had to have motivation - a goal - and what better motivation than a girl who would be super grateful to her rescuer.

As a bonus question, are there games out there where the roles are reversed?
 
Well if you wait for the female perspective you won't get much discussion. I think I've only seen like 5 or 6 openly female posters on the site, total. lol.

My male perspective says it was a clear writing crutch in the early games. Clearly lazy and hacken-eyed. But at the same time, some social media activists turned it into something it wasn't and cast gamers as sexist. I find there are as many games that feature females as heroic protagonists as those that present them as victims or motivation for the heroes. Maybe its the genre I play but Japanese games are known for the many female protagonists. RPGs in general were pretty progressive at including heroic characters of both genders, whether east or west.
 
Well if you wait for the female perspective you won't get much discussion. I think I've only seen like 5 or 6 openly female posters on the site, total. lol.

My male perspective says it was a clear writing crutch in the early games. Clearly lazy and hacken-eyed. But at the same time, some social media activists turned it into something it wasn't and cast gamers as sexist. I find there are as many games that feature females as heroic protagonists as those that present them as victims or motivation for the heroes. Maybe its the genre I play but Japanese games are known for the many female protagonists. RPGs in general were pretty progressive at including characters of both genders.
Haha, you may be right but it was worth a shot, as I am - for obvious reasons - most curious about the female perspective. That is not to say though that males can't chime in as well ;-)
 
Idk, what I do know is that Samus is badass
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My take is that the idea itself doesn't necessarily suck so much as the frequency of it and the ideas it presents does. A lot of people can't save themselves without outside help, and it's undeniably nice to see your predicaments represented in fiction. Incidentally, this is why I think the desire for its complete removal is also a bad idea. It just needs more men in distress, for the guys also trapped.

The issues of frequency are undeniably less pronounced nowadays, as you said, but things like the Mario and Zelda series still suffer pretty hard. Mario because like...Peach is just a better character than him. Gameplay- and writing- wise, owing to him being intentionally made as whatever as possible. Green Mario is much better than him for a reason. Zelda is iffy, because you have stuff like Shiek, Spirit Tracks, Dynasty Warriors Zelda, and that new game with her. But you also have her and other women kinda just...existing for Link to save? They're less characters and more plot devices.

(I do find those kinds of older games difficult to play, due to the sexism present in them. But saying it's a video game problem is ignoring that every medium has the very same issue with the genders being male and lesser. Video games also tend to be better about equality, I've noticed)

Which is an issue, when the idea is represented as either a plot device, or a reward for the player. That's entirely what they exist for, as ethereal as that reward actually is just a woman, because that's all she can be. This is an issue when women are treated as "lesser," often by having the playable and major characters be only men. Think Jump King's "there's a smoking hot babe at the top of the tower!" but not a parody.

The best way to do this, I think, is how Shrek did it. Fiona was competent, but she also needed to be rescued. Be that from tradition or simply things she internalized, she didn't free herself from the tower, and she didn't refuse to marry Farquad - I have no idea if that's how his name is spelt - until Shrek stopped it and let her choose.
 
i feel i see this more often in shows and movies specifically but what actually irritates me the most is when during some fight the damsel is gonna try to get some hits in on her current or eventual captor and just immediately and effortlessly gets knocked back down or brushed aside for the men to resume fighting. it feels so downright spiteful
 
To all the female gamers out there, I'm curious: Growing up in this male dominated world of ours, how have you felt about many videogames being about "the guy getting the girl" and rarely the other way around? Mario rescues a princess. Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, and Final Fight are all about rescuing your adultnapped girlfriend. And even in an artistic narrative driven game like Shadow of the Colossus your mission is to slay the colossi in order to wake your dead/sleeping girlfriend. How does it feel to always have to be the one to be saved, and being treated like a reward for the protagonist? I am not trying to spark a gender war or anything, I'm again just curious.

In more modern games you often have the option to play as a girl, and there are even more and more games featuring a female lead like Stellar Blade, Horizon, and Control. But I am moreso talking about the arcade days of yore, where game developers had just figured out that players (who were predominantly boys) had to have motivation - a goal - and what better motivation than a girl who would be super grateful to her rescuer.

As a bonus question, are there games out there where the roles are reversed?
For me the damsel in distress just feels like a perhaps dated trope, a relic of a time when gaming was geared more towards men. I don’t mind rescuing someone so long as they aren’t annoying (looking at you Ashley Graham).

Honestly I can’t think of a game where the roles are reversed, there’s probably a bunch of indie games like that though.
 
i feel i see this more often in shows and movies specifically but what actually irritates me the most is when during some fight the damsel is gonna try to get some hits in on her current or eventual captor and just immediately and effortlessly gets knocked back down or brushed aside for the men to resume fighting. it feels so downright spiteful
Yeah, a lot of newer movies (I don't really watch TV) try to be better about it, but they feel very upset about the fact that they do. There's always something that makes me go "they actually hate this," and wish they didn't bother.
Mario games are good, Peach is just an excuse for the plot and even then she became more like a proper character as the franchise evolved.

PS: Ah oops, I didn't read that it was aimed at women. My bad.
Yeah, she's a plot device, first and foremost. The RPGs developed her a lot (and she's my favourite in the series for it), but it feels reductive when even modern* games have her relegated to being plot device.

* Kinda wild that the last New Soup game was over a decade ago, huh.
 
Yeah, she's a plot device, first and foremost. The RPGs developed her a lot (and she's my favourite in the series for it), but it feels reductive when even modern* games have her relegated to being plot device.
Spin-offs allowed more freedom for the story and characters.

I'd argue that her having a playable state in both 3D World and Wonders as well as having her own game still was a good thing.

* Kinda wild that the last New Soup game was over a decade ago, huh.
I still count Wonder as a new Super Mario Bros entry, "New" was just an addition but ultimately they're all in the continuity of SMB3 and World.

And her being a damsel in distress in NSMB was mostly as a "back to roots" thing.
 
i feel i see this more often in shows and movies specifically but what actually irritates me the most is when during some fight the damsel is gonna try to get some hits in on her current or eventual captor and just immediately and effortlessly gets knocked back down or brushed aside for the men to resume fighting. it feels so downright spiteful
It's just casually realistic. A princess couldn't do anything in a fight between warriors unless she has a gun or something, nor could even the toughest woman in the world beat even a lower-tier UFC fighter of equal weight. This has been shown time and time again. Of course those shows and games aren't realistic overall anyway so if they want to make her super strong then they can, but then she wouldn't need to be saved anyway.
The knight saving the damsel is like the oldest storytelling trope or just about, so older games relied on it because the story wasn't important. It was just there to give you a motive to go on an adventure. Nowadays you don't see it much outside of those very old series like Mario and Zelda, so it'd be dishonest to pretend like it's a big issue.
 
i feel i see this more often in shows and movies specifically but what actually irritates me the most is when during some fight the damsel is gonna try to get some hits in on her current or eventual captor and just immediately and effortlessly gets knocked back down or brushed aside for the men to resume fighting. it feels so downright spiteful
I definitely feel that one. Like we pretend that the girl gets a chance to fight back... but not really.
 
i feel i see this more often in shows and movies specifically but what actually irritates me the most is when during some fight the damsel is gonna try to get some hits in on her current or eventual captor and just immediately and effortlessly gets knocked back down or brushed aside for the men to resume fighting. it feels so downright spiteful
It feels like it perpetuates the stereotype of “women can’t fight” and that annoys me.
 
You've probably seen less than you think. Those posters that use the female anime gifs in every posts aren't female.

I know a few that have verbally identified as female. I don't want to put them on blast but they exist.
 
Are there even any games where the premise is the female MCs saving their guys? The only recent one I can think of is River City Girls and even it become a twist in the end.
 
As long as it’s not blatantly displayed as ”the damsel must be saved because she is weak due to the fact she is a damsel” I think it’s mostly fine. It’s not sexist by nature but it can be based on how you handle it.

Though at the end of the day it’s just make-believe, and at least to me it feels good to be a hero and save people, damsel or not.
 
You've probably seen less than you think. Those posters that use the female anime gifs in every posts aren't female.
Rule of the internet: there's no women.

As I heard somewhere.

On the other hand are game devs inherently sexist for having a damsel in distress or just a lack of originality?

But on the polar opposite having a female character (that doesn't look athletic whatsoever) managing to overtake a bigger guy also seems a bit unrealistic (unless she does martial art and even then there are other factors in a fight). A middle ground of being still strong in other ways can work.
 
On the other hand are game devs inherently sexist for having a damsel
Not inherently, no. But if they go out of their way to show that the damsel is incapable of nothing more than crying in a cage, I’d say it’s on the verge.

But on the polar opposite having a female character (that doesn't look athletic whatsoever) managing to overtake a bigger guy also seems a bit unrealistic (unless she does martial art and even then there are other factors in a fight). A middle ground of being still strong in other ways can work.
Most games aren’t aiming for that kind of realism I feel, so whenever this gets brought up it usually feels like it’s just people are looking for an excuse to be actually sexist. Like claiming Samus or Lara Croft is suddenly too far from realism just because they’re babes.

Wizards usually look like frail old men who would keel over if they win at bingo, but they can throw fireballs so their physical appearance is never questioned.
 

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