Mainstream video games are generally considered the domain of men. With few exceptions, women in video games are usually portrayed as princesses in distress or scantily dressed caricatures with breasts several times larger than their heads. These sorts of characters are a reflection of how video game makers perceive the gender stereotypes of males. Sadly, they are right for the most part. From a business perspective it almost doesn't make sense to be progressive because the increase approval from female gamers would be matched, and likely exceeded, by an uproar of hate from male gamers. It is because of this that the often hated character Kat from the 2010 Fall Blockbuster Halo Reach seems like such an almost illogical exception, and a welcome breath of fresh air.
For those of you not in the know, the Halo games are a series of sci-fi shooter set in the year 2552. First contact with an advanced alliance of alien species calling itself The Covenant turns into a seemingly unprovoked holy war. As human worlds fall one after another, the war becomes desperate. Halo Reach is set on the last colonial planet of humanity, Reach. The player is part of an elite team of commandos (code named Noble Team) as they do everything they can to delay the imminent conquest of Reach. The second in command of Noble Team is the brilliant, witty, one armed soldier code named Sierra 320, Kat for short. I've attached two videos from the campaign below, watch the top one first. Fanboyism of the second clip aside, the video shows a distinctly different form of female video game character. One who is badass, smart, and most impressively, not meant to be a sexy selling point (Halo Reach...).
From her facial scars, to her relative lack of femininity, to her prosthetic arm, Kat seems to break every gender stereotype that male gamers have grown so used to fantasizing about. Many on the internet would argue that Kat is simply a woman adhering to male stereotypes, similar to the over the top action heroines of the blacksplosion movies in the late 70's and early 80's as described by Zeisler (69-71), however, that is not necessarily true.
As with any stereotype, gender stereotypes are simply a method of categorizing something without having to invest any effort into getting to know it. We male gamers have gotten so used to seeing ultra-sexualized female characters that the adjective sexy has come to be synonymous with the adjective female. If I had to take a guess, the sheer amount of hate for Kat, most of which centers around her being unable to drive (none of the AI in Halo ever could) or the argument that women have no place in war, likely stems from the fact that Kat violates expectations and doesn't suffer for it. Rather than having a girly voice or being soft spoken, Kat has a Slavic accent and makes a habit of speaking her mind in a stereotype where having a mind is already heresy. The difficulty is not with identifying Kats gender, it with identifying her role. Her innate ability to be just as tough as the other members of Noble Team make her hard to understand for someone who hasn't yet realized the problems with stereotypes.
So to answer the original question, Kat is NOT a female from a video game perspective, and that is a very good thing. Unlike Laura Croft from the Tomb Raider games, she does not sexy fight. She kicks serious alien ass, often times in brutal and unladylike ways. However, her dog tags list her gender as female, and in the end that's not what matters. It's the act of wearing dog tags, not the gender written on them. Being a female did not stop a sniper from killing her in the middle of a sentence and at the end of the day, Kat's ability to come up with brilliant plans, repair a comm. unit with more shrapnel than transistors, or keep fighting after losing her arm were far more important to Noble Team then her gender. It appears that when faced with extinction, humans can overcome the odd idea that women are in some way inferior or unable to fight like men. The only question I can't seem to be able to answer is why we need an apocalyptic war in order to realize this.
Works Cited
Zeisler, Andi. Feminism and Pop Culture. Berkeley California: Seal Press, 2008. Print.
Halo Reach- Long Night of Solace- Opening Cutscene. Youtube. Google, Web. 10 October 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXiTqPQvxw4
Halo Reach Tribute (to Kat-320). Youtube. Google, Web. 10 October 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPkfSMF_M-0
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