Why Representation is Important in Gaming

I love female leads in gaming. The representation they provide and the strength they show is often astounding to me and something I so absolutely adore experiencing. After all, as a woman myself, I am a fan of being able to play my gender and associate with a character, seeing them persevere.

However, I didn't completely understand the sentiment of needing more representation. I was happy just playing male protagonists and seeing their story unfold. With characters like Kratos getting their character development throughout the years and being able to see him grow from a rage-filled god to a father that is trying his best to fight the very genes within him just felt amazing and a wonderful addition to his story.

To this day, I still hold many moments in the God of War franchise close to my heart. And I didn't personally understand what it was that made people want more representation of different kinds. Until I played 2013's Tomb Raider.

I guess I didn't understand because oftentimes I would disregard my own capability and strength. After so many years of feeling subpar for X or Y motive, I just felt a male succeeding on-screen made more sense - if you asked me for symbols of strength before I would have only named male characters. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely relished on Freya's character from the God of War franchise, but at that time I hadn't had the opportunity to truly delve into the girl power mentality. I guess in part, I was scared it might make me sound absurd and annoying. But when I played Tomb Raider, I got to play through the game as a woman who perseveres through her hardships. It was the first time I played a game, and I felt represented. Like I could connect to the character and see myself in her success. I wasn't just playing a rage-filled god, the Hero of Time, or even a red Italian plumber. I could connect to the character, and just see myself in in the game.

It was an experience I hadn't understood previously, and soon after discarded and went back on my merry path to play whatever I wanted whenever. Gaming in and of itself didn’t give enough female representation for me to really have cared at the time, and truth be told, I was kinda dumb and it still didn't load in my mind. Until I wrote A Story About Lara Croft's Development History, and throughout my research I found out that she was supposed to be a Latina girl named Laura Cruz. And then I fully grasped it.

I wanted to be able to see myself in these characters, to see them react as I might, as I would. To see a woman persevere through the toughest of threats and just feel included, acknowledged, understood. I loved Kratos as a character—I still do!—but I got to love Lara Croft, and the now-extinct Laura Cruz to a different level. I got to see myself in a videogame and understand why it is important.

My wife and I have been playing Horizon Zero Dawn and this just further sparked my love. Being able to play a female character just truly filled me with jitters and excitement, almost a form of melancholy deep inside that I couldn't do it in every single game. It sparked a conversation between her and I about how important representation in gaming is and how tough it must be for those that don't experience any. POC characters are few and far between and in my many years of gaming I can't really name more than four off the top of my head - two of which were released nearly two years since the start of 2020.

This saddened me, broke my heart and tore it to pieces. How many people couldn't experience the same thing I had because of lack of representation? I saw a story online—and whilst I couldn’t find it anymore to share here—it centres around this black kid that is at a comic book store that loves Spider-Man, and the man telling the story gets the pleasure of introducing him to the Miles Morales variant, which apparently filled the kid with joy. And why wouldn’t it? I understood that sentiment now more than ever.

It’s difficult to explain why representation is important until you’ve experienced the feeling it provides. That moment when you get that satisfaction in your gut and feel represented. Almost as if “represented” was a feeling of its own.

When I finally played a game with a female lead and tried to understand why, I could tell you that I felt empowered and capable. It seems stupid to me - when put into text, it sounds borderline ridiculous that I would feel empowered and represented by a videogame character that is destined to succeed. But seeing Lara fight through hardships that seemed impossible made me feel like I could fight mine. And so, fight I did. I learned from Lara that I could be headstrong against impossible odds.

This is so much more important when it comes to kids in the industry. I never experienced seeing a female lead in movies that was headstrong and unbending. The predominant representation is soft girls that get helped by prince-like men, although nowadays we do see more representation for tougher girls, with Raya and the Last Dragon as the latest example of a girl that saves the world. Such characters I could have associated with more when I was little, and I couldn’t be happier that it’s happening - even if it didn’t happen when it would have impacted me.

Seeing powerful figures that you can associate with teaches kids growing up that they are capable too. It's stupid, and as adults it sounds like it should be something obvious. But it's something the child’s mind doesn't seem to grasp. And oftentimes, you'll find kids that like a character they associate with more than any other. One such example is a friend I had in school named Diego, he was a black kid and absolutely loved Black Panther. I didn't even know Black Panther existed back then, but he said it was his favourite because he felt understood (I, of course, apparently didn't grasp why representation was important back then but I digress).

The way he was represented, and the way I, later on, fell in love with Captain Marvel is the reason why it's so important. It helps the person see themselves in a strong and powerful light. This empowering feeling that the character can do it, so you can too. We associate with these characters because they succeed in ways that we might not have, or we learn from them to succeed the way they did. It shows that we are capable, even if that should have been obvious from the get-go.

Not all forms of representation are good, however. Negative representations can be very harmful to the people it is representing too. Look no further than the abundant over-representation of Latinas being tough and in-your-face. It creates this negative stigma of a singular trait that might become very famous.

Ahh, Gabrielle. Dumb and in-your-face. Such a perfect representation of me!

It doesn't stop there; in fact, that's the tip of the iceberg. When people find out I'm from Colombia—granted the way we have been represented in shows and movies due to our history—I get asked about cocaine because of our history with Pablo Escobar.

The way Colombia gets represented as drug overlords has led to me hearing this as the predominant joke I get while exchanging introductions. And although I don't personally mind—I've learned to play along—a lot of people will. And this isn't limited to ethnicity or personalities.

If you learn about negative representation in media, one of the biggest examples is dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder), with movies like Split where one of the alters (the name of the alternate state of being the sufferer has) is a killer. Due to this, I have heard from many people and sources while learning about the disorder how it negatively affected the lives of those that do indeed suffer from it. Having people that they have entrusted the details of their disorder ask them "But your alter won't try to kill me, right?" or variants - this only got worse with the release of Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan.

Looking back to the positives of representation, being able to see yourself on television might even help you to empathise with your own problems. We tend to be so much more judgmental with ourselves, that we often forget we're human too, and it helps us to be able to associate what we're struggling with in another character that represents us.

And best of all? It makes us feel understood and seen. We're no longer unspoken of and omitted. With characters that represent us, we feel seen and understood. I want to be able to look at a character and see myself through and through, feel connected to them, understood, seen. Be able to see people react to all of these characters' traits and know that deep inside, that all applies to me. That Lara Croft's headstrongness isn't a bad thing just because she's a girl, but good. Or seeing Aloy struggle with being an outcast, and outbursts of rage while she still tries to be kind. It's not a weakness that she snaps at people, it's a strength because she's still trying to be kind.

I've spiralled down into a desire to play every game with female leads, not only to devour all content that lets me be myself but to further support these developers that took their time and effort to let me be represented in the industry. And I urge anyone to do the same. I will be writing about my journey, rating the female representation, and giving the support these developers deserve. I will die on the hill that we need more representation; not only of genders and ethnicities, but sexualities as well. We deserve an opportunity to feel represented in what we love, and I implore that any and all do the same with me.

I'd take on the quest of doing so for every POC character as well, but I don't feel like I am in the right position to represent these groups nearly as well, and I feel I would do a disservice to it as a whole, so I will be sticking to games with female protagonists. That being said, please do share with me in the comments any and all games that do have one, and know that with time I will get to it and play it. Stay awesome everyone!