Soldiers In Love and a Bunch of Heroines: How Games Are Changing in 2012

WildStar

I hemmed and hawed over including WildStar in this list. There’s no guarantee that this game will be out this year, though the devs are reportedly shooting for a late 2012 release. But my hesitancy doesn’t come from a nebulous release date. It comes from the trailer. Oh, the trailer. The first thing you see is a lingering shot of a pin-up girl painted on the side of a spaceship, complete with gun barrel nipples and a missile locked firmly between her legs. The spaceship sets down on the planet below, and a pair of purple stilettos traipse down the landing ramp. The camera pans up the woman’s stick-like body to reveal an enthusiastic bosom and a pair of – I kid you not – fuzzy purple bunny ears.

Urgh.

The reason I bring WildStar up at all is because the disappointing trailer was not my introduction to the game. The first I’d heard of this upcoming MMORPG was a preview on PC Gamer that detailed the game’s rather brilliant approach of appealing to a variety of players. As with all MMOs, you star off WildStar by picking a race. Then you pick a class. Then you pick a path — that is, a style of gameplay. Scientists search for collectible data and lore items. Soldiers protect civilians and outposts from hordes of enemies. Explorers use tracking devices to discover resources and new locations. Settlers build towns and foster social engagement.

Pretty nifty, right?

Carbine, the studio behind WildStar, seems to have picked up on the fact that people play MMOs quite differently. Just look at me and my friends. I like world exploration and story-based questing, but the people I play with like maxing crafting skills, or uber-competitive PvP, or grinding loot until their eyes bleed. Everybody’s got their own niche when it comes to MMOs, and as I’ve said here before, I think that opening up a broader array of multiplayer options might just be what hardcore gaming needs to appeal to a largely uncatered-to female market. As for the men and women who are already playing, gameplay systems like this are exactly what’s needed to combat the growing sense of ennui that enshrouds the MMO genre.

So on the gameplay side of things, I think that WildStar represents some encouraging new blood. But inclusive gameplay isn’t going to go very far if women are put off by the visual environment within the first ten seconds of the trailer (really, bunny ears?). One step forward, two steps back.

Tomb Raider

Lara Croft is a problematic icon, one who contradictorily represents both sexual objectification and strong female heroines. It’s a tough position to be in, and it’s one that many Tomb Raider fans — like me — struggle with. On the one hand, Lara has everything you could want in a female protagonist: bravery, resourcefulness, intelligence, wit, strength. On the other, she’s the poster girl for…well, poster girls.

I played the original Tomb Raider when I was eleven, and Lara was the first time I had ever seen an uncompromising female action hero. The tiny shorts and impossible physique were lost on me. I was in awe. I wanted to be her. Even now, long after my sad realization that Lara Croft’s main purpose was not to give little girls a hero, I’ve still held onto that nostalgic admiration.

It seems that developer Crystal Dynamics is poised to make the eleven-year-old in me very, very happy.

The new Tomb Raider is a prequel, the story of a young Lara Croft on her path to awesomeness (though she looks pretty awesome in the trailer already; don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d have the presence of mind after a shipwreck to pop my shoulder back into place with a bit of gauze and my teeth). Early interviews indicate that this team is working hard to make Tomb Raider a game about Lara the person, rather than Lara the object. They’re trying to humanize Lara, to give her dimensions beyond her cup size. If the game lives up to its hype, we’ll see a Lara Croft wrestling with morality, discovering her potential, and pushing herself beyond her limits. In other words: a real human being, with depth and feeling and layers of character.

Will they get it right? Too early to say, but the concept art alone is enough to encourage me that Tomb Raider may finally be moving in the right direction. We’ll only have to wait until next Christmas to actually play the thing. Sob.

Becky Chambers is a freelance writer and a full-time geek. She blogs over at Other Scribbles.

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Becky Chambers