Girls in Comics and Games
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:43 am (Thoughts)
Yesterday I read two very good articles that I wanted to mention.
The first is the latest “Girl in the Clubhouse” article from Johanna Stokes at Comic Book Resource. It is about girls can do for comics and, like her other articles, it is excellent. Her biggest advice: if you like a book, buy it so the publisher knows you liked it. It’s a great article, so go read it. She uses buisness sense as well as passion for the product to show how women can help support comics and graphic novels that they appreciate in order to encourage more in the same vein.
The second article I read was one from The Escapist and it discussed the portrayal of women (both their physical appearance and their roles and attitudes) in video games and the impact that has on consumers. The author of the article, M. Junaid Alam, discusses not only why the images might be bad for buisness, but also why they are bad for the industry and it’s customers. He points out that the portrayal of women in many games is not only bad for drawing female consumers, but also bad for the male consumers. The article made me kind of wonder what makes gaming companies so certain that games with strong, interesting women with small breasts won’t sell if they’ve never tried it. Without the data on it, how do they know it won’t work? Granted, you still need the mechanics and plot to be done well, but is that really too much to ask? That is pretty much a requirement for any good game. Why don’t we get some variety in character types and heroes then?
Both articles are wonderful and well worth the time to read. And if you haven’t read Johanna Stokes’ other “Girl in the Clubhouse” articles, you really should. They are interesting and extremely well done.
Viv said,
November 3, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Dude, if you have The Escapist article, I’d love to read it. I followed the link and got to only part of the article, not the full thing.
Katie said,
November 3, 2005 at 6:04 pm
I was able to read the whole thing on the website. You have to keep “turning the pages” with the next button on the bottom, which is annoying, but I did get to read the whole article that way. Was the button missing for you?
Viv said,
November 3, 2005 at 6:48 pm
I just noticed the buttons now. I be dum. And honestly, the scantily clad woman was tough to hide at work, so maybe I wasn’t looking in the right direction.