#TOMB RAIDER LARA CROFT 1996 SOFTWARE#

Her body was also designed to be highly unproportionate in order to better appeal to male audiences. In the original 1996 version of Tomb Raider, the female protagonist wore minimal, tight clothing throughout the entirety of the game. However, Lara Croft was soon seen as a less reliable feminist icon as she was realized to be designed by men for the purposes of satisfying the majority of the male playerвЂ™s fantasies. Because of this, many women in pop culture began to idolize her character.

This female character was strong, powerful, and adventurous, and the entirety of the plotline revolved around her, something not very common at this point in time. The introduction of Lara Croft, at the time, was a major breakthrough in female representation in both video games and media in general. The only exception to this was the 1986 game Metroid that did not reveal their lead character as a woman until the very end of the game as a major plot twist. In video games, it is not uncommon to constantly neglect or stereotype the female gender throughout the duration of its gameplay (Kondrat, 2015.) In fact, вЂњfemale characters are more likely than male characters to be portrayed as sexualized (60% versus 1%), scantily clad (39% versus 8%) and as showing a mix of sex and aggression (39 versus 1%)вЂќ (Dill, 2007.) Before Lara Crofts 1996 emergence in Tomb Raider, there were no playable female characters in any major game franchise. Through the evolution of Tomb RaiderвЂ™s Lara Croft, we can see the evolution of feminisms in video games and the increasing demand for better female representation in media. The worldwide, bestselling game Tomb Raider was one of the very first videogames to feature a playable, female character. The portrayal of women in games often reflects traditional gender roles and stereotypes causing female characters to often be subjected to sexual objectification or created only for the purposes of being a supporting character for the male lead.

As much as female representation is important, the quality of this representation is equally important. In the years following 2015, up until 2019, this trend has remained consistent with males currently being nearly five times more likely than females to be portrayed as the main character in a video game (Ivory, 2006.) Studies show вЂњ65%вЂ¦of the reviews indicated male playable characters, whereas only 22%вЂ¦mentioned female playable charactersвЂќ (Ivory, 2006.) According to the video game research company EEDAR, only 4 percent of the 700 games they surveyed had exclusively women leads or characters that couldnвЂ™t be exchanged for a male character. Meanwhile, 30%, more than three times the video games with female heroines, centered around male protagonists. When looking at every video game presented at every Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference in 2015, only 7 of the 76 games, less than 10%, centered around a female lead. And yet, women continue to face severe underrepresentation in mainstream video games with minimal improvement in the last two decades.

#TOMB RAIDER LARA CROFT 1996 SOFTWARE#

According to both the Entertainment Software Association and the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, women today occupy half of the entire gaming population. The video game industry is yet another form of media that is highly influenced and managed by the white male vision that embodies the ideals of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity.

Tomb raider lara croft 1996