Feature: 1P Vs 2P #5 - Girls In Gaming


Posted by Tom "Tphi" Phillips - Jul 31st 2008 20:04


Contributed to by 1P and 2P

Can every girl in gaming be a poor damsel in distress or stuck with a disproportionate chest? 1P and 2P debate once more...

1P: No, no, no, no, no, NO!


2P: But yes!

1P: Stop saying that!

2P: Lucario sucks, Pikachu FTW.

1P: This is blasphemy!

2P: There’s only one way to solve this: We must Brawl!

1P: Er.. well, I already told you, my Wi-Fi is broken! The dog chewed through the cable!

2P: It's wireless.

1P: Heh.. well.. We both agree that Samus owns, right?

2P: Yeah, all she has to do is belly-flop with her impossibly large norks.

1P: Oh here we go… If I hadn’t met you, I’d suspect you were a girl.

2P: There are no girls in gaming, at least no real ones.

1P: Er… Lara Croft? Orchid? Yuna?

2P: Let me rephrase: there are no girls in gaming who are like girls in reality. They're fantasies created by male gamers, for male gamers.

1P: Could say the same for movies.

2P: Some, true. But many not. What girl wouldn't want to aspire to be one of the strong female leads that isn't running around in an impossibly tight t-shirt at the same time?

1P: Dude, games are the same. They are the ultimate immersive experience! You can become the character and lose yourself in the alternate reality.

2P: I wish we could lose you in an alternate reality.

1P: Maybe there’s a parallel world out there where you’ve actually had a girlfriend. That’s a scary thought.

2P: Don't you remember Sarah? She was a girlfriend.

1P: You were five and you cried every time she held your hand! Digital girls can be anything you want.

2P: Oh, don’t even start… every girl in gaming has either: (a) A disproportionate chest; (b) A sultry mysterious-come-hither voice or (c) is a ridiculous simpering damsel in distress who you have to protect in order to feel like a big man.

1P: Samus? She is basically the last hope of the Galaxy against an unstoppable foe, you can’t get a much better role model for girls than that.

2P:Yes, but the whole point of the game is to get to the end so you can see her with her suit off.

1P: Krystal? Ok, so she started life as the damsel in distress, but ended up becoming a big character in her own right.

2P: I wish Starfox Adventures had never happened. But yes, she does have some power in her own right. At least she’s not as bad as say… Peach or Zelda.

1P: Peach got her own game where she was the one doing the rescuing! Besides, half the humour of her character is that she’s such a doofus. And Zelda… did you play Ocarina of Time? She operated within a kingdom ruled by her sworn enemy helping out the hero.

2P: Who was a man.

1P: Look at the flip-side of this: we’re also stuck with very few basic character types for the male heroes, right? It’s not exactly a good model for young men. All the heroes are gung-ho muscle men certain of their cause, or they’re the quiet, sensitive brooding Final Fantasy-type.

2P: Well, what about…

1P: There are exceptions to every rule! The fact is, if you say that girls in games are portrayed in a negatively stereotypical fashion, then you have to argue the same about men.

2P: I guess it’s just more apparent with girls as they are less prevalent in videogaming.

1P: Exactly.

2P: Wait a minute…

1P: What?

2P: Did we just agree on something?

1P: … I feel sullied, somehow.

2P: This is going to take me a long time to come to terms with.

1P: Pikachu > Lucario

2P: Ah, that’s better. You’re WRONG!

<1P has disconnected..>

1P and 2P invite you to air your feelings about girls in gaming below...

Missed previous issues?



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Comments

Dyson Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 15:14 || Total Comments: 109
Oh, you.
VaatiKaiba Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 15:20 || Total Comments: 265
I love these features. Pure and utter genius. Can I ask - is this written by one person, or is to N-Europe staffers actually having a debate?? Cause it's really well written!
Deathjam Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 17:52 || Total Comments: 75
Agree wholeheartedly with what vaatikaiba said and this article. But then you have to think, would you want to play with a lead who didn't fit the stereotypes? I can think of male characters who don't fit it, but they are hardly popular these in that the don't immediately spring to mind. Female characters on the other hand...not one. Lara et al all pander to some sort of demeaning stereotype but I like it that way and so do some girl gamers, two of which I know.
Mokong Says: 
July 31st, 2008 at 17:53 || Total Comments: 537
The identity/identities of 1P and 2P are unknown, even to Tom (Tphi), these articles do not even come to us by email so we can't even trace the senders address. The articles appear on the door step of either Tom, Nathan or Myself, in a white envelop with nothing but 1P/2P writen on it. Inside is a print out of what appears to be a print out of a MSN convo. How he/she/they found our addresses we do not know, the first article just appeared at Toms house one day.... we were confused for awhile till Nathan got an encrypted message saying what Tom got was for an N-E article and we should post it and more would follow.

We tried dusting the envelops for finger prints, hair, skin flakes.... but found nothing that could help us find out where 1P/2P comes from?
Nathan Says: 
July 31st, 2008 at 17:57 || Total Comments: 1107
Not even my review copy of CSI: Hard Evidence for the Wii gave me enough training to work out who the hell keeps sending them to us. Bauer's gotten himself into a Chinese prison again too, so we have no means of tracing them.
Fierce_LiNk Says: 
July 31st, 2008 at 18:34 || Total Comments: 541
I have heard that the identities of 1P and 2P are being held in a safe inside a maximum security prison, somewhere in the United States.

I plan to get myself incarcerated within the Prison Walls, and to find the identities of these fiends, and attempt to break out of the same Prison.

I have armed myself with a Warp Pipe, which should take me just outside of my cell. Using an elite band of hardened criminals, I will enlist in their help as I try to escape. Mini-mushrooms will be used to help us crawl through the vents, and we plan to break through the outer wall using a bomb-omb, and hookshotting our way over the wall.

In a bid to help me find my way out, I have tattooed the layout of the Prison, as well as my plan onto my body for future reference.


On a more serious note, this was great work, guys. Keep it up.
VaatiKaiba Says:
August 1st, 2008 at 02:26 || Total Comments: 265
I smell a conspiracy theory!

Although, I do recognise one of the Miis in the front page link...
ConflictCloud Says:
August 1st, 2008 at 06:37 || Total Comments: 162
Ah, I love these, even when I disagree with them. (I don't think anyone would say that all the characters in, say, Final Fantasy VII are stereotypes. Though now that I think about it, games like that are kind of the exception that proves the rule...). One other point. Doesn't 1P change his position on the Pikachu/Lucario debate?
Nintendo-master2 Says:
August 1st, 2008 at 09:31 || Total Comments: 1526
IT WAS ME WHO SENT THEM! Mwa ha ha, how was that? Was I believable? I bet I fooled you ;)

Anyway what about Mellisa in Hotel Dusk or the maid in Hotel Dusk? They didn't seem very stereotypical to me.

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