I wanted the tough, heroic-looking woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. If you wanted to play a woman, you were stuck with a scantily-clad caster or archer. You could play a tough, heroic-looking melee class, but only as a man.
Character gender was predefined by class. In terms of story, Diablo II treated player-controlled heroes relatively equally regardless of their gender, but there was a caveat. In those simpler times, that was the best I could hope for. Warcraft III was a game in which I could command an army of women riding on tigers.
At that point in my life, playable female characters were scarce, and I didn’t care that these supposedly fierce, cunning warriors were charging around in purple mail bikinis and responding coyly when I clicked on them. In hindsight, I think this has a lot to do with the inclusion of the matriarchal Night Elves. However, just a few years later, I played Warcraft III - which has very similar gameplay to StarCraft - to death. My grade school notions about girl toys and boy toys were not far behind, and at the time, StarCraft felt like a game that did not belong to me. I was in my early teens when I first played StarCraft, and though I thought it was cool, it didn’t really capture my interest. The exception, of course, is Kerrigan, who is one of the most memorable video game villains to date. In StarCraft, women are rare, uniformly flirtatious, and only exist in support roles. That last point was something that affected how I felt towards my first Blizzard game, StarCraft. That doesn’t mean that the protagonist has to be a woman, but it does mean that if the majority of characters are male, I’m going to notice the treatment of the female characters all the more. I don’t want to spend my free time in a world where women play second fiddle to the “real” heroes. I don’t need a game to have prominent female characters in order for me to get into it, but I do want it to be a place in which women feel welcome (to be fair, Blizzard does this better than many, but they’re still rather hit-or-miss). But in terms of story, I’ve often been underwhelmed by their female characters. I have played everything they’ve released since 1998, and even though I wouldn’t count anything they’ve made among my all-time favorites, I know I can always count on Blizzard for a good game. If a game has both solid gameplay and a great story, then I’ll be throwing my wallet at the developers behind it for years to come.Īs far as that balance goes, Blizzard has the gameplay side down pat.
On the flip side, I’m willing to forgive clunky gameplay mechanics if the story is really good. My enjoyment of a game is ultimately determined by a balancing act between two factors: does the gameplay appeal to me, and do I enjoy the story? A game with no story or even a bad story can still be fun, so long as it has engaging gameplay.
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