For something that is hopefully a bit positive: Suppose Nintendo were to announce a Fighter's Pass 3 dedicated to video game women, who would you recommend? I suspect there are a lot of difficult choices because Smash has so few women to begin with. And those who do appear mostly adhere to a narrow set of standards--fair skinned, youthful, conventionally attractive, and non-threatening. There are a lot of opportunities for a diverse presence--far more than a Fighter's Pass, a game, or even a series to encompass, to be honest.
I would like to recommend Raji from
Raji: An Ancient Epic
Raji has a highly unusual combination of characteristics that makes her particularly good--and difficult to duplicate.
- She has noticeably darker skin than the characters in the game--not Black or even on the darker side for Indians but obviously darker than the characters in the game.
- She is the protagonist of the game.
- She is unabashedly Hindu-inspired--and so is the game.
- Her game was made by Indian lead creatives at an Indian game studio.
- She comes from a prestige game--a reasonably budgeted commercial retail game that is on the PC and consoles.
- The game has a feminist take on Hindu mythology, placing Durga at the head of the pantheon (replacing the male Brahma) and putting the goddesses and other women of the mythology in the forefront.
- She is minimally sexualized. Her dress exposes her midriff (not easily visible in this picture), but the game is isometric, it is a stylized Indian dress, and there are no other sexualizing elements.
I think points 1 and 6 do not need an explanation given the context of this topic, so I would like to highlight the importance of points 2-5 in combination. One advantage is that it squarely defeats the tokenism issue. Another advantage is that it is the character's own culture telling its own story.
Most users in this topic have seen the tokenism excuse: If you pick a character just because they are <insert group here>, then you are fulfilling a quota. That should not be an obstacle to getting some characters to represent underrepresented groups, but it can be a legitimate problem if all of the characters are supporting characters, from indie games, from mobile games, or a combination of the above. If all 6 characters are like that, then it can create a harmful association--similar to the Korean game = grindy MMORPG, made in China = cheap and shoddy type associates. I think a character who can avoid this pattern is a good choice--not the only choice, of course.
Here is Raji. She is the protagonist--no skipping over the protagonist to get to her. Her game uses the Unreal Engine and has a reasonable budget (it is actually an indie game, though). And it is a retail game released on PC and consoles--not a mobage.
One way to avoid only selecting indie and/or mobile games is to pick supporting characters (or the occasional protagonist) from a small set of mainstream series. Why should we not? If Nintendo can pick Pyra/Mythra because they are more popular then Rex, then certainly it can pick someone like Sheva (Resident Evil 5). But there can be some issues when the character is a dominant culture looking at a relatively marginalized one. For example, Farah Karim (Call of Duty) is a practically dressed and competent Muslim woman, but she is also in a game that glorifies the American military as it invades a fictional Middle Eastern country. Plus it is a missed opportunity to pick a character who is the dominant culture looking at the marginalized culture--after all, we have good games from
indigenous groups,
Africans,
Muslims, etc. Since Raji was made by an Indian studio, you get the best of both worlds.
I do not mean that the choices have to meet all these criteria, but it is certainly good to highlight someone who does. Pity the
ResetEra topic on the game basically died with no activity.
About Raji's appearance: She is youthful and conventionally beautiful, so she is not breaking new grounds there. Her outfit exposes her belly and is not practical for a warrior. But it is a traditional Indian outfit in a game inspired by Hindu mythology. With everything else going for her, I think it is fine in context.
Side note: I am tempted to ask this question ("Suppose Nintendo were to announce a Fighter's Pass 3 dedicated to video game women, who would you recommend?") as a thread. Good idea/bad idea?