A bit belated, but this is an interesting addition to the discussion about gender roles in Choice of Games projects.
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A bit belated, but this is an interesting addition to the discussion about gender roles in Choice of Games projects.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
It’s an interesting piece that I generally agree with, but I get the impression that the author thinks a woman playing a character who is dominant, in charge and/ or generally unaffected by sexism is necessarily “playing as a man”.
It may be true that in most societies throughout history, men have been the leaders and the gender encouraged to be more active, but I don’t think that a female player occupying one of these traditional roles is automatically being placed in the role of a man with a female avatar. Let’s not forget that there have been several influencial women (rulers, generals, other important figures) who have managed to retain power and importance even in male-dominated environments, and that there also are (admittedly few) societies in which women were traditionally the leaders.
While it’s interesting to create female characters who have to rise above sexism in emulation of how real life was and is for a lot of women (I was also impressed by this in Dragon Age), I don’t think it’s realistic for ALL of them to be placed in that situation, either. I don’t feel like casting women in positions other than this is necessarily robbing them of the (implying one) experience of playing as a woman, but rather *one* of the *multiple* possible experiences – in another game and setting, she could be a queen who’s mostly unaffected by sexism by virtue of her royal blood and undisputable claim to the throne, which would be an equally valid female experience.