CHAPTER 3

Dangerous Defaults: Demographics and Identities within and without Video Games

Marcie Gwen Persyn

Introduction¹

As has been established in this volume, video games are overwhelmingly androcentric:² from concept design and marketing methods that cater to the male gaze,³ to online fora and in-game chats that can be markedly aggressive towards those perceived as ‘interlopers,’⁴ even to the recruitment and support of the most skilled gamers and programmers in e-sports and game development companies.⁵ Much of this is anecdotally known to, subconsciously understood by, or systemically inflicted upon gamers of all gender identities. Even as gender parity among gamers comes closer to becoming a reality in certain circumstances,⁶ the games themselves continue to presume and promote male protagonists both within video games and in their adjacent advertisements.⁷ The resulting discrepancy between the demographics of gamers and the demographics of games perpetuates a gaming community that is unwelcoming, if not actively hostile, to new gamers who do not identify as male. By marginalizing female and non-binary characters and diminishing their presence in both plot narratives and world design,⁸ the games themselves become either loci of fetishization or isolation – both of which promote sexism, misogyny and even abuse.⁹ Historical/archaeological video games, as imaginative renderings of a past far removed both culturally and temporally, may be even more at risk of perpetrating gender disparities in their presentation of heroic golden ages desperately lacking in heroines.

To further complicate the question of how women are represented within historical/archaeological video games, one might pose several related questions: how many women included in historical/archaeological video games are playable avatars? How many are non-player characters (NPCs) with substantial interaction with the avatar? And how many may be considered mere ‘mob’ characters, included either as unspeaking background figures, or awarded only a single (often archetypical or even nonsensical) line of dialogue? The answers to these questions reflect not only the amount of effort put forth by the game designers, but also the extent and complexity of engagement that the user experiences with in-game women. The inclusion of female figures of every type – as avatars, primary characters, important NPCs and even as mob characters – can enhance or undermine the game’s environment for certain gamers, functionally forming a world that is either welcoming or hostile to those who identify as/with women.

In this chapter, I will sample five popular historical/archaeological video games that were launched and received critical success within the five-year span of 2013–17. After compiling the statistics of how female playable avatars and NPCs are represented within these games in proportion to their male counterparts, I will utilize this data to analyse how designers depict women in each of these games, and thus how gamers are encouraged to respond to female characters. Through this information, we may begin to understand more fully the ramifications of the inclusions, as well as the exclusions, of women from these games.

Method of survey and collected demographic data

The five games examined in this study – God of War: Ascension, Total War: Rome II, Ryse: Son of Rome, Apotheon and Assassin’s Creed: Origins – were chosen as a sample set in order to examine a variety of developers, creative teams, gaming platforms and genres. These five games show diverse ancient settings, ranging from mythical Greece (God of War: Ascension and Apotheon), to late Hellenistic Egypt (Assassin’s Creed: Origins), to the Roman republic and early empire (Total War: Rome II and Ryse: Son of Rome, respectively). Their content blends historical fact with supernatural legend. Almost all of these games, with Apotheon the sole exception, have since released updates and extended downloadable content packaged (DLC) to be addressed in the subsequent analysis section; Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3, however, reflect data extracted from the original versions of the games.

While each of these games borrows from the ancient Mediterranean world in their subject matter, they are representative of a variety of developmental teams, gaming platforms and design criteria. God of War: Ascension, Total War: Rome II and Assassin’s Creed: Origins are all serialized games from well-established development studios, while Ryse: Son of Rome and Apotheon are stand-alone games, with the latter being the product of independent video game developer, Alientrap. Furthermore, these games represent various genres, which in turn alter the engagement of the player with the video game environments and characters. Both God of War: Ascension and Ryse: Son of Rome are ‘hack-and-slash’ role-playing games (RPGs), a term of art signifying that the majority of the gameplay will not only be violent, but gruesomely so. Assassin’s Creed: Origins, too, is an RPG, yet it is sub-designated as a ‘stealth’ game – as such, the gameplay is more often based on puzzles or other cerebral skills, rather than strictly upon violence or button-mashing. On the other hand, Total War: Rome II is classified as a ‘real-time strategy game’, a genre that gamifies battle but typically avoids gore. Apotheon, as a ‘metroidvania,’ is designed to be a throwback to games of the 1980s, with the minimalist interface rendered as a two-dimensional field through which the avatar moves. As in other forms of media, genre affects not only aesthetics, but also game content, context and even user expectations as to how violent, fast-paced, technically or mentally challenging the experience of gameplay can be; it is also a key criterion upon which gamers base their decision of whether to pick up or pass on a video game.¹⁰ The pressures and biases of each of these games are thus unique, as is the data they provide on video game demographics.

Table 3.1    Video game development information

Game	Release date	Developer	Genre	Platform
God of War: Ascension	March 2013	SIE (Sony) Santa Monica Studio	RPG; hack and slash	PlayStation 3
Total War: Rome II	September 2013	The Creative Assembly	Real-time strategy	PC
Ryse: Son of Rome	November 2013	Crytek	RPG; hack and slash	PC; Xbox
Apotheon	February 2015	Alientrap	Metroidvania	PC; PlayStation 4
Assassin’s Creed: Origins	September 2017	Ubisoft	RPG; stealth	PC; PlayStation 4; Xbox One

A brief overview of key information for each game is provided in Table 3.1.

For this study, sample playthroughs were used to analyse the avatars, world-building, locations and dialogue from each of the five games surveyed; data was recorded and used to calculate how many female characters are encountered by gamers within the first hour of gameplay. The information was gathered through analysis of recordings of gameplay posted on a range of YouTube gaming channels.

The first hour of gameplay is a type of crucible, often indicative of the world-building, gameplay and environment that a player will choose to expose themselves to for the duration of the game’s storyline(s), quest(s) or mission(s). In other words, it is within the first hour of gameplay that a player determines whether to continue playing or find another, potentially more welcoming, gaming environment.¹¹ First-hour hooks tend to correspond to Game Approachability Principles¹² – which adhere to gaming heuristics such as scaffolding of tasks, sandboxing and knowledge transfer, among others – and to the formation of ‘holdouts’, suspended gratifications that encourage a sense of interest or intrigue in the players, ultimately ‘buy[ing] the game a second chance’.¹³ Yet, it is not just gameplay itself that can win or lose a gaming audience: matters of plot intrigue, design aesthetics and sense of fun are equally critical. So, too, is the ambient world design and the characters portrayed within it.

The data provided below in Table 3.2 reflect the estimated number of encounters with male and female characters that appear within the first hour of gameplay for each of the five games surveyed here.¹⁴ Only human(oid) characters were surveyed, including gods and goddesses. Non-human(oid) entities encountered by the players were omitted, while monsters that were previously human, such as the NPCs evinced by the first hour of God of War: Ascension, were counted in the final tally.

Repeated instances of recorded dialogue and reappearances of characters (where determinably the same NPCs) were recorded only as one instance. Likewise, as this is a study focusing on gameplay rather than on video game cinematics, introductory films were not accounted for in the data below. Once the gamer has control of the character, however, the count begins; therefore, I have included in Table 3.2 those characters within in-game cutscenes. The depth of character interaction is noted in the table by distinctions between ‘avatars’ (playable characters), ‘mobs’ (unspeaking, background characters), NPCs (unnamed characters with dialogue or direct interaction with the avatar, including combatants) and ‘primary characters’ (non-playable, named characters with plot significance). The numbers in Table 3.2 are given as totals, rather than reduced proportions, in order to maintain the scale of the design of each game.

Though more than half of these games are RPGs, a genre of video game that is often popular among female gamers,¹⁸ there is still an appalling lack of female characters at every level of game design. None of these games allow female primary avatars, even in multiplayer modes or in the DLC packages subsequently released. There are exceedingly few primary characters portrayed by women, and the few included are almost unfailingly hyper-sexualized, victimized, villainous, or some mixture of the three. Combatant NPCs, with the singular exception of the Fury Megara in God of War: Ascension, are all male. And while female merchants and civilians occasionally appear as voiced NPCs in Ryse: Son of Rome, Apotheon, and Assassin’s Creed: Origins, they are still outnumbered by male counterparts. Even unvoiced mob characters, dead or alive, are predominantly designed to inhabit male bodies.

It is illuminating to compare these first-hour impressions with statistics drawn from the game as a whole. One means to measure this is to analyse the voice cast credited in each game, comparing not only the overall gender distributions of the characters reflected by the gender identities of the actors cast, but also the methods used to provide these actors with acclaim in the end-game credits. That is, some voice actors give life to primary characters or figures with whom the avatar interacts regularly, typically ‘named’ roles; other voice actors provide ‘additional voices’ (or the equally vague ‘voice talent’), and give the rote remarks of myriad mob characters and NPCs throughout the game.¹⁹

Table 3.3    Statistics of English voice cast credits

Game	Male voice actors	Female voice actors	Named male characters	Named female characters
God of War: Ascension21	25	8	12	6
Total War: Rome II22	65	29	023	0
Ryse: Son of Rome24	34	5	8	4
Apotheon25	26	15	16	9
Assassin’s Creed: Origins26	60	32	14	5

There are limitations to this analysis, however, as the gender identities of the voice actors do not necessarily reflect the identities that they voice – a single voice actor may lend their talent to many characters of a range of gender expressions within the game. The data in Table 3.3 is thus inferential rather than indicative, but set alongside the information from the game visuals can produce a clearer representation of the video game environment.²⁰

Table 3.3 provides only the statistics for the English voice cast, though many of these games employed actors from around the world for alternative language options. Data for this table was gathered from The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) on 20 August 2020 and was cross-referenced against the end-game credits.

The games examined here vary in the number of both actors and characters; God of War: Ascension had the smallest voice cast (a mere thirty-three actors), while Assassin’s Creed: Origins had by far the most actors on staff (ninety-two in total). But all five of these games are unequivocally similar in the vast disparity of male to female actors and characters. The male voice cast of each of these games outnumber their female colleagues at a scale of almost 2:1, even in the most balanced examples. By extension, then, distinct voices of women may account for up to 33 per cent of either the gaming environment overall or at least of cut-scenes with dialogue. This statistic is far lower in God of War: Ascension (where female actors provide 24 per cent of the voice cast) and Ryse: Son of Rome (where female actors represent a mere 13 per cent),²⁷ though it is somewhat improved in Apotheon (37 per cent) and Assassin’s Creed: Origins (35 per cent).

These statistics are, on the whole, consistent with the gender distribution of the graphic designs of these games as represented in Table 3.2, indicating that the first hour of gameplay analysed here is indeed indicative of broader patterns upheld throughout the games: female characters are disproportionately absent from the games’ world-building, both visually and audially, excluded from both primary and secondary roles. These are both crucial aspects of gameplay, as it is just as important to represent women among the primary characters as it is for them to form a meaningful chorus of NPCs in the background. Without the former, there is little, if any, meaningful interaction with female figures; without the latter, the created environment is overwhelmingly masculine, as unrealistic as it is unnuanced its unilaterality. What is going on in these games to cause such disproportion?

Where are all the women?

God of War: Ascension is the seventh game in its series, and while it serves as a prequel to the franchise, the game, nevertheless, begins in medias res and offers little exposition. The villains introduced by the narrator in the opening sequence are the Furies, whose character design is somehow both hypersexualized and graphically insectoid.²⁸ Kratos, the main character, is a widely recognized misanthrope for the majority of the series, and thus his interactions with other NPCs are mostly limited to slaughter, indifference and casual sex; by extension, there are few NPCs within the game other than those humanoids that Kratos brutally murders. Because of the dearth of human characters of any kind, the statistics given above may seem less dire than many other games, but this data is somewhat skewed by the game’s delivery of plot. Essentially, the opening arc offers a mano a mano revenge story, and thus the disproportionate lack of women throughout this game is disguised by the simple fact that the villain of the first arc is herself female. The ratio of secondary mobs and voiced NPCs gives a more accurate indication of the game’s representation of women, with zero female mob characters in the opening and a mere five speaking female NPCs, compared to more than fifty male NPCs that Kratos encounters. To exacerbate this further, all but two of the male NPCs are enemies that Kratos fights against; and all of his enemies, except Megara herself, are likewise male.

Aside from Megara, the main villain, and Kratos’ unspeaking ghost wife, the only female NPCs within the first hour of gameplay are illusionary, mostly nude women who attempt to seduce Kratos so they can kill him. It is not a subtle dichotomy that men equal combat and women equal sex; but then this is not a subtle game (see Figure 3.1).

Total War: Rome II is, for two main reasons, an outlier from the other games in this study: first, it is generically distinct in that it is a turn-based strategy game; second, as a campaign-based game, the NPCs (troops) are almost entirely mob characters without names, voices or interaction with the gamer aside from carrying out the commands given. Despite the beautiful rendering of Italian geography, the NPCs remain largely faceless, and the few speaking characters – such as the avatar, Silanus, or the senator who orders him about throughout the tutorial of the game – lack distinct personalities. Nevertheless, it is striking that there are absolutely no female characters in the first hour of gameplay, either rendered within battle, portrayed inside defended towns or even illustrated on the transitional loading screens. Between campaigns, while the gamer explores the main maps and carries out various upgrades, all verbal interactions are similarly with male artisans (despite these liminal periods representing reprieves from the ‘total war’ from which the franchise draws its name). This is a game of faceless NPCs and expository main characters, yet it is, nonetheless, unceasingly and monotonously full of men. Still, this may be an improvement over the facile and offensive portrayal of women within God of War: Ascension.²⁹

Figure 3.1    In a beguiling illusion, Kratos is nearly seduced and entrapped by the Furies. This cut scene marks the conclusion of the first chapter of the game and plays just after Kratos’ defeat of the game’s first boss. Other than the and Kratos’ late wife, these are the only five women present in the first hour of gameplay. Reproduced in accordance with fair use.

The beginning of Ryse: Son of Rome is a non-linear, flash-forward scene from the narrative that anticipates the final arc of the game (in which the avatar, Marius, attempts to assassinate Nero). In these first minutes of gameplay, hundreds of NPCs with few features to distinguish them from one another pour into the city of Rome. Yet another all-male melee ensues in the game’s second chapter, as Marius recounts to a cornered Nero the attack against his family that resulted in his joining the fourteenth legion and shipping off to Britannia to take revenge on ‘barbarians’. The episode is repeated yet again upon Marius’ ship’s crossing the channel, only to discover their port has been taken over by the very same enemy. It is a repeating formula that has room for male allies, male enemies and male role models, but little else.

The first mention (and subsequent appearance) of a woman in Ryse: Son of Rome is Marius’ mother, Septima, who is introduced only to be murdered offstage alongside her nameless daughter – all within ten minutes of her entrance. Marius’ patron goddess makes a mysterious first impression upon him just after, and in the context of the bloodied and pillaged Roman Forum, one finds a few female corpses, but no other women are even referenced in the opening hour, despite the hundreds of male NPCs the game generates for you to fight against and alongside. As Beavers has argued, there are three stereotypical tropes evidenced by the female characters in Ryse: Son of Rome: damsels in distress, sex objects,or victimized avengers responding to past violence or abuse, with occasional transition or overlap between categories.³⁰

Apotheon’s primary characters, on the other hand, are much closer to reaching gender parity, but the NPCs and mob characters are another story. As in Ryse: Son of Rome, the game’s opening sequence is the sacking of the hero’s city, here called ‘Dion’; in this first chapter, the hero Nikandreos takes up arms against entirely male opponents, while likewise being supported by an all-male set of allies. Nude female corpses litter the scene in rare moments, but overall very few women are to be found in this artistic representation of mythical Greece. Although the narrator of the game is female (Apotheon’s introduction is provided by Hera, who takes Nikandreos on as her Jason-like protégé), the next voice of a woman that can be heard is an NPC figure lamenting, ‘Why are the gods doing this?’

Figure 3.2    This image captures Nikandreos’ pivotal confrontation of the first boss, Ophion the Tyrant (the Gorgon-shielded figure). A female voice begs for mercy as Nikandreos approaches from the left; the camera pans over, revealing the corpses of townspeople, one of whom is a nude woman, before showing the woman kneeling before Ophion and the two onlooking males. Reproduced courtesy Alientrap.

Having escaped from Dion, rescuing what few survivors he can, Nikandreos then ascends to Olympus. In this relatively more peaceful space, there are slightly more female characters who are depicted either as going about marketplace tasks (carrying objects, meandering and selling alongside their male counterparts), or weeping and running in circles should the gamer choose to act aggressively against the NPCs. It is an overwhelmingly masculine space, in which gender normativity is oppressively manifested – the men go to war, while the women stay at home, in the market, under masculine protection. Nevertheless, considering that Apotheon’s overall plot has much in common with that of God of War: Ascension,³¹ it should be noted that this game does explore further female characterizations in primary roles, such as that of Hera, Demeter and Persephone.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins is a different model entirely from Apotheon. With more traditional RPG features, such as cutscenes and side-quests available for the player, most of the NPCs within the first hour of gameplay of Assassin’s Creed: Origins are voiced, though few are named or highly relevant to the plot. Like Apotheon, however, Assassin’s Creed: Origins only includes male antagonists in the first hour of gameplay, nor is there any indication at this early stage of the game of women in positions of authority, be that positive or negative. The two named female characters encountered by Bayek in this opening are, respectively, a healer and a victim requesting help – two overused female stereotypes, indeed. Aya, Bayek’s competent female counterpart, is mentioned in vague reminiscences, but these do not indicate that she will be anything other than a love interest for the main character (effectively short-changing the character, who becomes a deuteragonist, or alternative avatar, later in the game). Ptolemy is mentioned only to be cursed, without any reference to his far more impactful sister-wife, Cleopatra VII (though she does eventually appear). But while primary female characterization may still be reduced to overplayed tropes, the inclusion of female NPCs within the game’s ambient environment is strikingly more balanced than any other game surveyed here, and the inclusion of, albeit gender-stereotyped, female characters makes for a welcome change.

The observable patterns noted here, however, are troubling. It is almost as if these historical/archaeological games are themselves buried in history, with outdated sensibilities catering to the male gaze. As we enter a new decade, one hopes to see a shift in these prejudices in historical/archaeological video games. While the designers of God of War, which released a new installment in 2018, notably remain opposed to generating a female avatar (citing Kratos’ laughable ‘character development’ as their rationale³²), Ubisoft has taken a different route: their recent Assassin’s Creed game, Odyssey, enables the gamer to choose between siblings Kassandra and Alexios as their avatar; its sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, also features both male and female avatars.³³ If these games are any indication, concerns of gender diversity have already gained traction among development companies.

The fallacy of historical accuracy and failures of DLC

As has been demonstrated by the data gathered above, the norm of these games is to craft male-dominated background environments, littered with male mob characters, populated with male enemy NPCs, explored by heroic avatars that are also male by default. The lack of female characters has been noted – and even criticized in certain quarters – but many continue staunchly to defend these sexist renderings of the ancient world and its mythical analogues.

Despite the artistic medium and suspension of disbelief inherent to video gaming, discussions of female characters within video games frequently center upon the alleged ‘historical accuracy’ of their inclusion in a given ‘historical’ scenario.³⁴ Yet, as scholars like Sun-ha Hong, Adam Chapman and Neville Morley have separately shown, video games, even within historic/realistic storylines, allow the gamers to create or interact with unique narratives on their own terms.³⁵ The portrayal of history within games is thus about realizing the historical understandings of the gamers, crafting a representation of the past that is ‘real enough’ within the ‘digital hyperreality’.³⁶ Hong writes: ‘Games’ reappropriation of the past is primarily oriented not around “accuracy”, but a pragmatic pillaging of historical, mythical, and ritual elements. These are then fractured and reconstituted according to games’ own technical, economic, and cultural imperatives.’³⁷

Unfortunately, this creative application of pillaging and reappropriating perpetuates and reinforces modern prejudices, both with respect to a gamer’s expectation of the past and to their implicit perceptions of the genre of game in which they are immersed.³⁸ Thus, for example, because a gamer considers both ancient Sparta and the modern genre of hack and slash video games to be male-dominated visually and physically, the default is to assume that a male character is a more ‘realistic’ avatar for gameplay within patriarchal settings and for violent quests. As a result of this assumption, a game environment with a 1:1 male to female characters ratio may feel ‘historically inaccurate’ to the gamer, who does not realize that their bias is grounded not in historical fact or reality, but rather in their own expectations of what that past world, and its virtual incarnation, should resemble. It is a dangerous default because it is self-fulfilling as well as self-propagating, and because the genres of many historical/archaeological video games have been traditionally overrun by male characters.

Historical realism, therefore, has been evoked as a rubric utilized by game designers and gaming communities alike to rationalize the exclusion of female characters, both playable and non, thereby perpetuating misogynistic tendencies of the past in a new, virtual medium. By excluding female characters, the designers often oust female gamers, too, manifesting the virtual misogyny in a real-world counterpart.³⁹

Development studios and designers only exacerbate the fallacy of historical accuracy in their ex post facto addition of female figures in DLC packages. It is fundamentally a gesture that, while superficially equalizing, actually intimates that female characters are second thoughts in the creation and framing of these ancient, virtual worlds; the same is true of gamer-driven updates, known as ‘mods’, that occasionally provide additional female characters (sometimes including amateur voice acting).⁴⁰ As such, the gaming community is encouraged to consider this an empty gesture – or, worse still, pandering – to an increasingly diverse audience, despite the fact that these updates and DLC packages actually contribute not only to a fuller narrative but also to a more realistic virtual representation of the past.

DLC packages are by nature additive rather than radical adjustments to the game: typical DLC may incorporate new types of equipment, new areas to explore, new quests to complete or new avatars to pilot. They do not, as a rule, recreate the gaming environment, and as such they fail as a corrective to a sweeping issue such as problematic gender disproportions or sexist representations of characters within a game’s primary narrative. It is not enough merely to add on playable female avatars if all the NPCs she will encounter or combat with are still male: the gaming environment remains oppressively, dominantly masculine, albeit one now in strife with the marginalized, afterthought avatar. The DLC female avatar is too often a lone (or rare) woman versus the world and its NPCs.

Furthermore, if the goal is to make video games more welcoming to female players, a stand-alone female avatar is not a sufficient addition to the gaming environment. While certainly a step in the right direction, a number of recent studies have indicated that gamers do not necessarily identify with the main character. Rather, for many gamers, the avatar functions only as a lens through which to experience the game.⁴¹ This is likely to be especially true in DLC packages and mods, as these add-on characters’ interactions with the environment – and the environment of the game itself – rarely diverge from the canon, whereas video games designed originally to include female characters may offer a broader range of interactions, plot developments or even side games depending upon the identity of the avatar chosen. Additionally, games that prioritize the inclusion of female avatars and primary characters from their inception are coincidental with lessened primary character sexualization (though female secondary characters may yet be hypersexualized).⁴²

(Hyper)sexualization of female characters

Arguably due to, rather than in spite of, their relative scarcity, the women within these video games were not only marginalized but also frequently hypersexualized. Whether in the pronounced swells and curves of the stylized yet rare female bodies of Apotheon, the form-fitting clothing worn even by the main character’s mother within Ryse: Son of Rome, or, most memorably, the voluptuous and scantily clad eight-limbed Megara of God of War, the character design of women in this selection of historical/archaeological video games was clearly meant to objectify them. Regardless of their role in each game – be she victim, parent, villain – all cater to a heteronormative male gaze.

The hypersexualization of female characters in video games has a long and well-studied history. One infamous facet of game design that has become the focus of many gender studies within video games is the so-called ‘Lara phenomenon’. Lara Croft, as the primary character of the Tomb Raider series, was a seminal ‘strong’/‘capable’ female prototype – but her capabilities as an Indiana Jones-esque archaeologist are coupled with emphasized and sexualized physical features. The Lara phenomenon defines the subtle undermining of female character design and the misogynistic tropes that can be perpetuated even when the lead character of a game is gendered female. For while she is a powerful female avatar with the potential to connect to female gamers, the hypersexualization of her character may simultaneously detract, or distract, from her other skill sets within the game. The result is, at best, an ambivalence on the part of the marginalized female gamer – even in cases where the gamer is encouraged either to be empowered by the sexualization, or to view it as somehow ironic.⁴³ Maja Mikula has pinpointed that the key difference in gaming experience that can lead to such dichotomous reactions ultimately comes down to a matter of identification and objectification.⁴⁴ A gamer who identifies with Lara may feel empowered through gameplay; a gamer who views her primarily as a sexualized object is more likely to feel either titillated or excluded, per their own desires (gaze) and gender identity.

Moreover, as has been revealed in a recent study, the marginalized and sexualized role of women within games can have pronounced negative social effects on gamers over time: ‘Short-term and long-term exposure of sexually objectified female characters within video games resulted in men, more so than women, being more tolerant of abuse toward women, rape myth acceptance, and sexist attitudes toward women in a real-life setting.’⁴⁵ The need for more female representation within video games is more urgent than simply crafting an environment that is more welcoming to female gamers, or a more accurate reflection of past and present worlds. Bringing balance to the representations of women within historic/archaeological videogames can avert these dangerous attitudes engendered by sexist video game design.

It has been demonstrated by Lynch, Tompkins, van Driel and Fritz that, although sexualization of female characters persists in video game design, there has been a marked decrease in the degree of sexualization of female character design in recent years. This is particularly true among primary characters, and correlates positively with an increase in the overall number of female figures included within game environments.⁴⁶ Both are a direct response to social (and social media) movements demanding more equality for designers and gamers alike, regardless of their gender identities, and a clear result of the growth in the number of women gamers and gaming professionals alike.

Alongside these positive trends between the rise in female gamers, gaming professionals and female avatars, there has been a simultaneous decline in the hypersexualization of female characters within games.⁴⁷ One must wonder, then, if more women playing video games has led to an increase in female characters within the games, could the reverse also hold true? That is, could an increasingly inclusive game design and world environment also attract more diverse gamers? The answer is almost certainly ‘yes’.

Conclusion

The games surveyed in this brief study demonstrate a marked disproportion toward male-dominated gaming environments: all five utilize default male avatars; all five present in the first hour of gameplay visual world environments populated with predominantly male mobs; and all five outnumber female agency as represented through voice with an average ratio of 2:1. This lack of female presence in games encourages a greater degree of sexualization in the women that are designed, results in objectification and fetishization of characters of every classification (mob, NPC, primary character, avatar), and thus creates an environment of gameplay that is exclusive of female gamers. Secondary effects, such as the wrongheaded rationalizing of the erasure of women via vain claims to ‘historical accuracy’ and the toxic community this exclusionism crafts, further drive women away from historic/archaeological video games that follow this model. By extension, however, an increase in the number of female characters may result in the growth of women interested in historic/archaeological video games.

It would be too easy a conclusion to criticize the male-dominated field of computer programming and video game design without reflecting upon the shared culpability of and systemic prejudices within the discipline of classics, whether in philology, history, archaeology or other related sub-disciplines.⁴⁸ The false equivalence between historical accuracy and world-building within historical videogames is in many ways a reflection of the positive feedback loop between silenced voices in the historical record and the mitigated presence of marginalized and subaltern voices in both secondary scholarship and the academy. Is it any wonder that a gaming community of designers and players alike, drawing upon androcentric representations of the patriarchal past garnered from classical scholars, would iterate a similarly sexist slant?

While in this chapter I have outlined the numerous forms of the failings of video game representations of women within historical/archaeological games and described what I view to be root causes and effects of these shortcomings, I must conclude that at least part – if not the bulk – of the onus of correcting these inaccuracies lies in the scholarly sphere. Only by diversifying the histories that we as scholars and teachers relate to our students and to the public can we hope to see a manifestation of the complexities and diversities of the ancient Mediterranean world. And since many modern students of classics and the ancient Mediterranean find their interest in the ancient world first captivated through video games such as these, the increase in women and other marginalized players blazing their own trails through historic/archaeological video game narratives may, in turn, lead to an increase in diversity among students and scholars of the ancient world – a symbiotic and mutually beneficial cycle of change for the better.

Notes

1.Myriad thanks are due to this volume’s editors, Kate Cook and Jane Draycott, for their dedication to and support of this project. I am grateful, too, to the reviewer whose comments have honed this paper into a sharper, more focused creation. As one would say online: GJ, GG (good job, good game)!

2.For an early study, see Braun and Giroux (1989); for a concise, incisive history of sexism in gaming and video game design, see Lynch, Tompkins, van Driel and Fritz (2016).

3.Robinson, Callister, Clark and Phillips (2008).

4.Per the study of Kasumovic and Kuznekoff (2015), low-skilled/low-status male gamers were prone to lashing out at female co-players, whereas the same players were ‘submissive’ towards male co-players. In the study, avatars were androgynous; the only indication of players’ genders within gameplay was through vocal interaction.

5.Lynch et al. (2016: 1–2, 14).

6.E.g. Greenberg, Sherry, Lachlan and Lucas (2010) and Dale and Shawn Green (2017).

7.Robinson et al. (2008).

8.For more on the overwhelming lack of representation of non-binary characters within video games, see Utsch, Bragança, Ramos, Caldiera and Tenorio (2017), and Shaw and Friesem (2016). Nonetheless, one positive review of both gender and racial diversity within recent video games such as Hades and Animal Crossing New Horizons is indicative of perhaps a new shift toward more inclusive representation in video game design and gamer communities (Parrish 2021). See the work of Norgard, Jones and Beydler later in this volume for a further discussion of gender in Hades.

9.See Williams (2006) and Gestos, Smith-Merry and Campbell (2018).

10.According to Yee (2017), the range of self-identifying female gamers’ genre preferences vary from as low as 2 per cent (in sports video games) to as high as 69 per cent (in Match 3 games and farming sims). RPGs and Rougelikes attract a female audience of roughly 25 per cent; strategy games less than 10 per cent on average. See also Clare (2021).

11.As Cheung, Zimmermann and Nagappan demonstrate, various elements can determine whether a gamer should stay or go, indicating that gamers themselves and industry designers alike have long acknowledged the first hour of gameplay as significant for establishing fans (2014).

12.Desurvire and Wiberg (2015).

13.Cheung, Zimmermann and Nagappan (2014: 63).

14.It is deeply regrettable that none of these video games are fully gender-inclusive, adhering to conceits of binary gender constructs. Thus, there were no characters in any of these samples whose genders were presented as trans, gender-fluid or non-binary.

15.This is an approximation, as the number of units per campaign are obscure and the number of mobs per unit vary; however, this estimate is low, as it was arrived at through counting units and multiplying them by the type of unit with the lowest possible number of troops per battle.

16.Nikandreos, though mostly silent, is named and makes various vocalizations throughout this first hour of gameplay.

17.This count is certainly too high on both parts, as the gamer treks through the town on multiple occasions during the first hour of play, encountering same/similar NPCs many times; their character designs are distinct only in close encounters. Nevertheless, the proportion should be a fair representation. In any given screenshot, there are approximately two or three men for each woman.

18.Correlatively, the RPG genre typically includes less sexualization of its characters (Lynch et al. 2016: 10, 14).

19.In several of these games – the trend is the most notable in God of War: Ascension and in Apotheon – voice actors were cast for multiple parts, providing both ambient dialogue (‘additional voices’ or ‘voice talent’) and portraying major or minor plot characters.

20.This data may also be set in dialogue with the findings of Orellana Figueroa in the previous chapter (29–43).

21.Only thirty-three voice actors are named in the credits, though IMDB provides an additional four members of the voice cast (three men, one woman) who were employed in the DLC.

22.The IMDB database includes one additional male voice actor from the DLC.

23.None of the characters are named in the end credits, where only actors’ names are provided; however, there are named characters within the game (see Table 3.2), just no female characters within the first hour of gameplay.

24.The IMDB database provides 38:8 male:female actors for the Ryse: Son of Rome credits, adding an additional four male and three female actors from the DLC.

25.The Apotheon endgame credits exclude one of the voice actresses, Miranda Gauvin, who voiced Aphrodite, and erroneously name Poseidon as the voice actor for Jason Marnocha, rather than the reverse. I thus utilize the IMDB final count in Table 3.3.

26.The IMBD count not only includes the motion capture team from the video game credits, but also incorporates cast members from the DLC. The numbers given in this table correspond, therefore, to the list provided by Ubisoft in the endgame credits.

27.It is notable, in particular, that in Ryse: Son of Rome, additional voices are portrayed by twenty-six male voice actors, while only one woman was cast in the original game to supply the voices for all female ‘additional voices’. This creates a vast proportional discrepancy: while one-third of the game’s main characters are female, less than one-twentieth of the game’s background characters are voiced by women, and they are all voiced by the same actor. If this was an oversight, it is a glaring and insidious one, insinuating that all the background women are the same, even as the background male characters are differentiated and nuanced.

28.She has four extra insect legs extending from her back, and myriad orifices (vaginas?) all over her decolletage that literally birth mind-controlling bugs – a truly grotesque combination of sexualization and vilification. See Goad in this volume for further discussion (61–74).

29.This stereotyping and objectification of female characters is fairly consistent throughout the God of War series overall, and has been compellingly discussed by Clare (2021: 52–6). Thus, other primary female characters within the series can be summarized as follows: objects to be protected (e.g. Pandora), objects to be conquered (e.g. Megara, or even Kratos’ erstwhile guide, Athena) or objects to be physically/sexually exploited (e.g. Aphrodite, via a mini game included in God of War 3). See Ciaccia later in this volume (128–44).

30.Beavers (2020b).

31.The game’s main quest is a scavenger hunt that typically requires the slaying of a god who possesses a key item (such as the bow of Artemis, acquired after Nikandreos kills the goddess in her grove). The wheat sheaf of Demeter and seeds of Persephone are both surrendered to the protagonist without violence, although these portions of the game take more than one hour to access.

32.Henry (2018).

33.This has not been an easy victory (see this volume’s Introduction: 1–14).

34.Wainwright (2019).

35.Hong (2014), Chapman (2016) and Morley (2020).

36.Hong (2014: 37).

37.Ibid., 36.

38.See also Clare (2021: 17–22).

39.Williams (2006).

40.Furthermore, many mods add female characters that are explicitly sexualized, such as nude avatars and NPCs.

41.One excellent study on this phenomenon has been written by Adrienne Shaw, who explores this topic in close detail in her third chapter (2015: 97–147).

42.See Lynch et al. (2016).

43.Jansz and Martis (2007: 147). Still, other scholars have declared that the sexualization of Lara’s character makes her an object for the male gaze alone, a marketing device that essentially ostracizes female gamers (Selwyn 2007; Cruea and Park 2012; Shaw 2015).

44.Mikula (2003: 81).

45.Gestos, Smith-Merry and Campbell (2018: 539).

46.Lynch et al. (2016). Their study sampled 571 video games from the period spanning 1983–2014; the authors of this impactful study acknowledge, however, that some of their results may be ‘optimistic’, as a key criterion for their selection was that games include primary female characters (ibid., 14).

47.Williams (2006) and Lynch et al. (2016).

48.See, for example, the gender disparities across advanced degrees awarded within the humanities (‘Gender Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities’).