It’s a little late to write an article that reflects back on the games of 2011, but for this Saucy Saturday article it’s what I plan to do. I’m sure some of you have heard of the Bechdel Test, the three criteria that determine the “feminine-friendliness” of (usually) a film. These three criteria are as follows:
1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man
It’s as simple as that. A movie scores a 1 for meeting the first criterion, 2 if it meets the first two, and 3 if meets all three. While I say it judges the “feminine-friendliness” of a piece of media, it definitely doesn’t mean it has to be “feminist-friendly.” That is, it can still meet the criteria and still be offensively misogynistic. Either way, you’ll be surprised how few films meet even the first criterion.
But this isn’t a film site, so I’m adjusting the Bechdel Test to apply to that medium we love best: video games. For ease of application, the only thing I’m modifying is #1: It has to have at least two [named] women in it. Because many NPCs are named in video games, I’m chancing it to having at least two named women who are actually a part of the narrative. That is to say, they actually do something within the game, rather than just act as an NPC that gives you a side-quest.
My other stipulation with this exercise is which games I’m going to actually be applying it to. First, I’m only going to be looking at core games whose initial releases were in 2011. Therefore, re-releases will not count, and neither will new platform releases, as in the case of Mass Effect 2, which was released for Xbox 360 and PC in 2010, but on the PS3 in 2011. Another instance is Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, which was released for the Super Famicon in 1995, and re-released on the DS in 2011. The list I am using to see which games were released in 2011 is the Wikipedia list. Second, the Sims don’t count. Third, if you have the option to play a female character, your interaction with female NPCs does not count as two women who talk to each other. That interaction would have occurred in exactly the same way regardless of which gender you chose. If the gender of the main character is pre-determined to be female, then it counts.
Okay. Hopefully that’s all clear. My final note is this: I’m not making any claims to the finality of the list, or its infallibility. For example, I put Portal 2 as only meeting the first criterion, because I don’t think that GLaDOS and Chell ever actually speak to each other; GLaDOS speaks to or at Chell, but Chell never responds, so it’s not a conversation or a true dialogue. You may disagree and put Portal 2 in category #3. Feel free to post any disagreements or additions you might have in the comments. Of course I didn’t play every single game, or every single core game, released in 2011. I gathered opinions from the other PikiGeek writers for those games which I didn’t play, but we’re all human, so maybe we missed that one second where two women said something to each other in passing. If so, let us know.
Without further ado, here is the list of Bechdel Test “winners” for 2011:
1:
Dead Space 2
Portal 2
DC Universe Online
Catherine
Dead Island
Disgaea 4: A Promise Forgotten
Gears of War 3
Pokémon Black and White
Uncharted 3
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
X-Men: Destiny
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
2:
inFamous 2
3:
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
Dragon Age II
American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns
Batman: Arkham City
Yeah. That’s all of them. All 19 of them, among the hundreds of games that got released last year, and some of the women aren’t even portrayed in the best light. It was, however, collectively decided that Batman: Arkham City was the best example, as there was an entire scene between Catwoman and Poison Ivy.
In Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, it is Ezio’s mother and sister who talk to each other; in Dragon Age II, your party members will chat with each other as you quest, so if you have Isabela, Leliana, Bethany, or Merrill in your party together, they will banter with each other; and in American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns there’s the Duchess, the Queen of Hearts, Lizzie Liddell, Mrs. Liddell, Nan Sharpe and Nurse Cratchet, all or most of whom engage in conversation with Alice.
Looking back at that header image with Ivy and Catwoman, I feel like gravity should have pushed Catwoman’s boobs out of her outfit.
Consoles don’t have PhysX support.
Also: Saints Row 3
Impa and Zelda in Skyward Sword totally talked to each other, and not just about Link.
Yeah, I wasn’t completely sure if they had a dialogue together that was shown on screen.
Who cares?
This is such a non-issue.
Except it is an issue. While every game doesn’t need a male character in it, it is bizarre that we are living in the 21st Century and the representation of women in games is still far less than men. I mean, they represent 50% of the population! So why on earth aren’t there more games with decent female characters? Why is the “default” game character a (usually white, brunette, 30-something) male?
I’m going to venture that it’s because white, brunette, 30-something males are the largest buyers of video games.
False. According to a recent study by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), almost 40% of video game players and 43% of online gamers are now women. That’s from Time Magazine. Of the 57% left, even if the majority are 30-something males, that’s still substantially less than the whole. Not even half.
Is that making the distinction between people who play Farmville and people who play Uncharted 3? You can claim thats pulling a “no true scotswoman”, but it still
But since when is the Bechdel test a good indicator for feminist strength of a media work? Terminator 2 utterly fails every single part of the Bechdel test, but it remains that Sarah Connor is an incredibly empowered female character. On the flipside, you know the game that utterly triumphs over the Bechdel test? Heavenly Sword.
@David:
I know, which is why I said in my article that “While I say it judges the “feminine-friendliness” of a piece of media, it definitely doesn’t mean it has to be “feminist-friendly.” That is, it can still meet the criteria and still be offensively misogynistic.”
For games that have truly empowered women, I will usually reserve an SS article just for them, as in the case of Dragon Age: Origins.
The one defense I would offer for the game industry as a whole is that as a medium in which stories are primarily told from a first person perspective their is incentive to avoid conversations between auxiliary characters that don’t involve the player. Game’s like Skyrim, which would qualify for 3 if the player was a woman, has very little dialog that isn’t initiated by the player. I do think that the industry in general suffers from a overall lack of engaging female characters.
I tried to post this comment once already and got an error. -_- My apologies for any double-posts.
Anyhow, I agree with you on the Unnamed-NPC judgement but I gotta protest vehemently against the exclusion of games with Female-MC options. This criterion is faulty because it ignores a really huge and important storytelling skill the video game medium has because films cannot use parallel storytelling nearly as conivenently or effectively as video games can. Parallel storytelling is also a very widespread feature of game-narrative that isn’t limited to genderswapped protagonists. If there are multiple endings, you have parallel storytelling. Video games can implement new plot factors easily while a filmmaker would have to shoot and re-shoot scene after scene individually to accommodate every the smallest of new factors, like if a character starts wearing a different jacket.
I understand why you are making this call but regardless of how the interactions go down, they still happened and still constitute their own narrative. As it stands, this criterion cuts off one of the major storytelling arms of video game medium to fit a test based on film. Not cool. :/ Video game narratives should not be discriminated against in criterion decisions because of storytelling modes they pull off really, really well. Film really cannot hope to touch them in this regard. The Bechdel Test has its weaknesses of course. After all, it’s a piece of comedy, not a diagnostic tool, and it’s based on films. Skyrim and other games like it should be judged by video game limitations, not film limitations.
Well, here’s a nice simple measure of how discriminatory it is; reverse it. If you exclude games where you can choose the main character’s gender, how many games were released last year in which there were two male narrative-significant characters who had a conversation last year about something other than a woman?
I’m guessing you can think of more than 4.
It’s not the medium’s fault, it’s the fault of the people who are using it. Because using the same criteria as the article, games are still fine at portraying conversations between men.
You missed Monster Tale! It’s a metroidvania where the main character is a little girl, Ellie. She gets transported to the monster kingdom, which is ruled by the five Kid Kings, two of whom are girls. Ellie talks with them about toys, themselves, monsters, and the kingdom.
Great article, completely valid metric. The sole major difference between film and video games as a medium is the interactivity audiences have with video games. That’s it. For no reasons I can see is the Bechdel test as used in this article inadequate. The point is actually translated very well by this metric: females are woefully underrepresented in a medium in which they occupy half the audience.
Bechdel or no, I think the criteria is a fair measure of female presence in games.
I think you meant Aveline rather than Leliana for DA2; Leliana was a companion in the first game.
I think “Dead or Alive: Dimensions” passes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l81AgI-8BB0
While I think this is a useful heuristic for examining gender representation in games overall, I think two caveats are in order.
1. I think it might be worth noting that most video games don’t have two NPCs talking to each other, period: racing games, puzzle games, platformers, many shooters, etc. Of the small subset that do, most of these conversations will be about the PC (which, since you’ve disqualified female PCs where the PC can be male or female from being considered actually female, would still fail prong 3). So a good control would be to apply the same test with the genders reversed to find out the actual disparity. (i.e., in applying the inverse Bechdel test to Skyrim, you’d have to assume a female PC, etc.) I think the inverse-Bechdel number would still be disappointingly large compared to this short list, but not in the range of “hundreds of games” as your post implies.
2. I think it’s important to keep in mind that this, while meeting this test should grant some kudos to the winner for offering a rare experience, failing the test shouldn’t be considered a black mark on any particular game. Different games offer different experiences, and the Bechdel test is testing for a specific experience. So, by analogy, we might be disturbed if we saw very few comedies being made among hundreds of action movies; in that situation, a new funny comedy should certainly be lauded, but a new action movie shouldn’t necessarily be criticized.
One final note: are you sure Skyrim didn’t meet the full test? I’m pretty sure that the Imperial military leader, the Blades leader, and/or the Altmer ambassador (all female) had conversations with other women, and they were all central to the main quest.
There’s a few more that were missed:
Dungeon Siege III
Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy
Hyperdimention Neptunia