-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
I never realized how much video games uses the Smurfette Principle trope until today.
- Thread starter CaptainKashup
- Start date
I think both teams in Halo 5 had two males and two females each.
Many authors aren't so much writing a believable story, they're writing wish fulfilment and it only gets more blatant the more you're exposed to it. Sometimes its so bad you can almost feel the writer/director standing over your shoulder while you consume media (and maybe a producer standing behind them with a gun).
Except for when Iris (Gladiolus's little sister) joins you with her massive crush on Noctis that's basically 80% of her personality (I loved the game, but still...)
Its worse if you know what the game originally was, and what Lunafreya ended up being.
FFV is interesting in that at first, they present it as if you have three guys and one woman, but one of the "guys" is quickly revealed as a woman in disguise (with plenty of room to interpret as NB). Later, one of the guys is replaced by a girl, so there's just one man. The story treats them as all equally important, with no real leader. Also, no romance subplots whatsoever.
I've seen the old FFv13 trailers and I know that there were extensive rewrites and cuts to the story, but do you mind explaining a bit more? Thanks
afaik she used to be more of an actual character who would be able to fight like Noctis and less a marriage plot device.
I started counting all the rosters from ff4-ff15 in my head and holy shit you're right. I can't unsee it now. Even 15 which doesn't have a playable woman still has that pattern. My god
In FF6 is Terra the main woman and Celes the older one? I feel like that could go either way
Terra main, celes older, relm younger. It doesn't feel hard and fast like in ff4 and ff7 but you can make a case for it every single time.
Gears has really broadened up. They had Bernie, Sam, and Anya and the queen in 3.
Since then there's been Lizzie, Kait, Lahni, Mina, Grace, and most recently Hana, Cole's daughter.
Edit: Oh and Mikayla from Tactics.
I mean it says something that when Kaitlin Olson auditioned, the part she was all excited about reading was for Dennis, because they hadn't even written or thought out Dee yet.
Similar with Elaine on Seinfeld - she was a late addition when developing the show and they were told to do it by someone else.
I think I realized this when I began playing JPRGs in the 90s, as these games usually have gender parity.
It's worth noting there's also another "funny" problem that comes with the trope, it's that in these teams, everyone has an ability, or a personality trait.
The woman character's ability or trait is "being a woman".
This is of course especially obvious with the Smurfs.
It's worth noting there's also another "funny" problem that comes with the trope, it's that in these teams, everyone has an ability, or a personality trait.
The woman character's ability or trait is "being a woman".
This is of course especially obvious with the Smurfs.
Aren't women in RPGs mostly healers or mages and men are mostly the fighter type ?
This is the original trope but it's often subverted.
FF7 has 3 women PCs if memory serves, one tank, one DPS, one healer.
And I could go on forever. Don't play DQs though. These games are usually the worst trope complying crap ever.
Oh yeah true Tifa, Aerith and Yuffie you mean ?
oh yeah DQs are trope heaven. I certainly agree.
Yeah, one warrior archetype, one rogue archetype, one cleric archetype.
It's not the earliest example, but the first time I recall registering it:
Fighting series do somewhat better these days, of course
Virtua Fighter 1 in 1993 had 3 female characters , 1 of which was a boss character. 3/9 was the best ratio back then.
Wow I thought Ludwig was a girl too when I was a kid, I thought I was the only one
I always play as girls so I noticed this trend really young, like ok I'm just always playing Chun Li, Sonya, Princess Toadstool etc. I remember when Super SF2 added Cammy and it was like oh... I have a choice now!
Still a long way to go. Almost every major fighting game is about 30-40% women. It's not the 8% of SFII or the 11% of the first MK, but it's still pretty bad.
That's definitely a trope, but calling it Smurfette Principle makes it sound way too scientific.
In 4 character cast, there's 1/5 chance of this. If developers want to diversify and avoid all male or all female cast (which is almost always the case), the probability rises to 1/3 of all such games. Does not sound like a very specific test.
Now I'd like to see a list of all AAA games with 4 character cast released in e.g. 3 years and if the percentage for single-female cast is actually higher than 33%.
In 4 character cast, there's 1/5 chance of this. If developers want to diversify and avoid all male or all female cast (which is almost always the case), the probability rises to 1/3 of all such games. Does not sound like a very specific test.
Now I'd like to see a list of all AAA games with 4 character cast released in e.g. 3 years and if the percentage for single-female cast is actually higher than 33%.
yeah, I learned somewhere that the first few episodes had D written as a sensible counter part to the guys, a "female presence" and she hated it and threatened quitting. When the guys approached her they said they didn't know how to write for women, so she told them to write as a guy character anyways, that she was more interested if the part was written for the character, not the gender.
You get one woman, one asian guy and one black guy in your team. Those are their appearances and personalities.
One funny case is Final Fantasy 5 where you start with 3 male and 1 female characters in your party but then one character turns out to be a woman disguising herself as a man and another character dies off and is replaced with his daughter so by the end you've got your main character and three women.
One funny case is Final Fantasy 5 where you start with 3 male and 1 female characters in your party but then one character turns out to be a woman disguising herself as a man and another character dies off and is replaced with his daughter so by the end you've got your main character and three women.
Flame Man is worse. It's a stage full of oil and he wears a turban.
so strange to look at this now cause i was part of the exact same crowd crapping on her videos for being 'mean to videogames' or whatever back then
It's another parallel with Seinfeld, which had a "write Elaine as a guy" policy because the writers didn't feel comfortable writing a female lead. She was largely used to counterbalance the male characters, so she was used less for the meat of the comedy, which Julia Louis-Dreyfus had to plead with Larry David to change. At the very least, Larry and Jerry admit that the issues were their fault and that the changes were for the better.
Have you watched the Angry Jack videos that I posted earlier?
I never realized how much video games uses the Smurfette Principle trope until today.
Innuendo Studios did a whole series on why gamers got so angry (Jack) when Anita introduced pretty simple concepts and criticisms to this industry. Videogames is a young immature industry that has been conditioned with sexism and bigotry for decades and it didn't help when Nintendo declared...
www.resetera.com
Tbh, neither was Venus though...
It was always very noticeable to me, but I had no idea there was an actual term for it.
Last edited:
What? The Guardians of the Galaxy have had loads of female members past and present.
I presume they specifically mean the first GotG film that only has Gamora as part of the team.
Yeah it doesn't work with the second film, or many of the comic book lineup's
Luckily with Guardians 2 and beyond they added Mantis and Nebula to the team
Naruto did the same thing. Literally every 3 man cell had either one or no women. This also includes the villain organization, the Akatsuki. It wasn't until Team Samui were introduced in 2008, 9 years in, that the series got its first and only female majority team. The two women however also happened to get less screen time and battle time than the one dude.
Later on, we got introduced to all nine Jinchuuriki tailed beast hosts, which included a whole two women (although it has 9 "members". And Kishimoto wasn't originally sure if the 7-tails' host was gonna be male or female), and the rest of the five Kage, which also had two women. The five Kage had in the series lore only been male up until Tsunade, followed by the Mizukage. But in the epilogue, that number dropped to one. Also, there's only been at most one female Kage in each of the five great countries, namely the Hokage, Mizukage and the current Tsuchikage.
Not if you count Hunk.
But in terms of the main game, absolutely.
Later on, we got introduced to all nine Jinchuuriki tailed beast hosts, which included a whole two women (although it has 9 "members". And Kishimoto wasn't originally sure if the 7-tails' host was gonna be male or female), and the rest of the five Kage, which also had two women. The five Kage had in the series lore only been male up until Tsunade, followed by the Mizukage. But in the epilogue, that number dropped to one. Also, there's only been at most one female Kage in each of the five great countries, namely the Hokage, Mizukage and the current Tsuchikage.
Not if you count Hunk.
But in terms of the main game, absolutely.
Last edited:
for the longest time, as someone who didn't really play Sonic games. I always thought Tails is a girl
Genuine question: What happens if there's only one woman in the main cast, but the support cast is 70% woman characters?
I'm kinda curious, and it also affects me somehow
I'm kinda curious, and it also affects me somehow
Holy shit...yall are right. I can't unsee it now lmao! You know what, I can safely say the final fantasy games were ahead of their time with this for the most part. I can't think of one(other than the first) that only had 1 female character.