Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist

Shira Chess states several ways feminist ideals are pushed in video games, such as strong agency and player hegemony, especially playing as a female-identifying character, intimate and personal narratives, and empathy building. Chess states queer and gender identity are dovetailed into feminist ideology, and I personally resonate with this the most. I realize that rather than playing games with female leads, I naturally gravitate towards ones where I can dynamically explore and express different gender identities. In other words, I find myself playing lots of games with male-leads, even choosing to play as a male-lead more frequently than their female counterparts when given the choice. 

A few years ago, I questioned whether I was going against the feminist agenda by not preferring to play as female characters, but after much thought, I think it actually boils down to this: I know I am powerful as a woman. I don’t need a game to reinforce this, though I definitely appreciate games that do. What I desire from a game is to feel powerful as something “other”, something I don’t get to experience nor feel comfortable expressing as much in the real world – a different gender. The empowerment of playing as an identity slightly “outside” of myself reinforces the empowerment I feel as a fem-presenting person, which dually secures my sense of self. 

A particularly memorable quote from Chess was the following:

“As we play things, we feel things, become things, and rethink things. There is nothing more feminist than this.”

We become things. Games have been instrumental to my coming to terms with a more ambiguous gender identity and learning to revel in it. Through Zagreus from Hades – sharp-tongued and strong, biting humor and fiery anger, queer and imperfect, flawed yet sincere. His brute strength juxtaposed against his fragility, accompanied by a sense of deep caring, pain, and gentleness allows me to connect and become. Through Corrin from Super Smash Bros – the genderfluid shapeshifter – that lets me alternate between their male and female forms at will, equally strong and fluid and satisfying no matter their appearance.

So I guess it’s a little difficult to talk about a specific game. It’s easier for me to describe what components make a game feel feminist to me. It could be summed up in a sense of flexibility: a character that is unconventional, in terms of defying traditional patriarchal values, and/or contains a multidimensionality that I can lose myself in – e.g. genderfluid characters that are ambiguous in all possible ways, a wounded yet uncharacteristically gentle man (I can fix him), a coldhearted woman with no fanservice-y justification for her actions (I cannot fix her, nor do I want to).

lol that was so specific

in short i like games that let me be queer and go apeshit

that is all