Talking to Women about Videogames: On icons & minorities

[talking to women of video games

is a series where Jonathan Holmes talks to various people who are women on the biggest new game week for any reason.

We shot this episode a week and a half ago, long before Allistair Pinsof Dtoid Jim Sterling, Holly and Green had already written to their respective positions on the next

Tomb Stiff

restart. I will try to take a different perspective to discuss the game with an emphasis on why people feel strongly about it. Despite the fact that this is a long road to release and we know that trailers of games and gameplay videos Tomb Raider

has already provoked a reaction deep visceral fans and the fans are not. Many people I talked to are not even sure why they feel so strongly about it. I just saw the trailer and before you know, they are furious.

This is probably because their feelings are confused by different issues, but equally sensitive. With this new game, everything that Lara Croft is an icon, and as a woman, changed forever. Can not wait to make such moves without receiving any bounce.

Before we begin, we will establish our conditions. I think we all have a basic understanding of what the word woman media - although certainly all have different interpretations of the details of everything - so let's there is icon

. Although the term is often used synonymously or popular legend, it actually means something very different. Icon will not be well known, the time that represents an idea or concept. The icons on the desktop of your computer can not be famous, but always do a great job of symbolizing things bigger and more complex. The same goes for other familiar icons such as a stop sign, a smiling face, and the American flag. The icons are all around us, even though they often take for granted. For example, each letter of the alphabet is an icon. The shape of the letter "A" represents "unity", the letter "B" is the entire "B-ness", the letter "P" is .. well, you get the idea.

Icons should be simple to work. They can not be too detailed, or their ability to represent clearly and quickly becomes clogged just an idea. This is true both for the appearance of an icon, design, and even icons in a narrative history. The disorder of the message detail too, which reduces the ability of the icon to show us what it means.

Lara Croft was originally an icon of action and adventure, a hero of detail without conscience substitute player to inhabit. His adventures were our adventures. His story is our story. He was a person, which allowed

your becoming

. In the absence of details to make the human character, Lara Croft could easily become an extension of our own psyche.

According to Crystal Dynamics, which is all set to change with the new game Lara. With these details, his character is bound to lose some of its iconic properties. Now she has her own story, which will become a person, rather than a "life" incarnation of the ideal action-adventure. Do not be so easy for us to see it as an extension of ourselves, now that she is her own person. His face was symbolic, literally and figuratively muddy to the point where it is difficult to recognize.

It's a waste. Lara was a classic women's tracks in the game has not really hit the jackpot. Although women constitute the majority of the world's population, remain a minority in the world of the protagonists in this action game - probably because the consumer action games are all men. Humans are still primitive, so that, in general, we find it hard to identify with someone who does not seem that this is probably why so many people who like my videos are from Brazil, the Uruguay and Peru [Editor Note: Do not forget our audience increasingly Lebanon]

The fact that Lara was able to break that barrier was nothing short of revolutionary minority. Contrary to what game developers can think Lara Croft is a character that millions of men were able to identify a point in his career (specifically, the party escaped a Tyrannosaurus Rex). The fact that the developers of the new Tomb Raider

are deliberately throwing the familiarity of an original story full of torture has led some to question its discretion and for good reason.

His decision to represent Lara as a constant victim is also questionable. If developers of the new Tomb Raider

was responsible for creating the story of Nathan Drake home, allegedly beaten continuously, moaning, and abused at the beginning of your trip? Do you feel the need to share this kind of abuse in a male protagonist in order to "build his character" someone who would be "hard" enough to explore the tombs and kill strangers? I do not understand it would. They seem to be in the mood for a woman

to become an action hero must pass through a

- Spit-in-your-Grave

style nightmare to break barriers for women to be a normal woman and a wild, action heroes mass murderer.

Any potential sexism aside, this is not the way to go about writing the story of a minority that has been done to attract the majority. Focusing on the differences only serves to make their minority status more difficult to relate to most, and most importantly, you run the risk of his portrait comes off as awkward. Imagine if The Cosby Show was called

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