Polygon examines the really limited roles Moms are afforded in most games

The stigma of a dad in media is usually being quite detached from the family, so characters like Joel and Lee are subverting the usual tropes.

But I agree with the sentiment, more diversity and more interesting characters.
 
Best mom in gaming
latest



Also in the game I'm making I currently have a dead mom and now I feel bad. Still early as hell but I'll keep this in mind.
 
How about siblings? Or to put it more specifically, showcasing brother/sister relationships. It seems more often than not, protagonists are only children or have dead siblings so we never get to see interactions between them. And when there are siblings it's always two brothers or two sisters, never a brother and a sister. I'd say the dynamic between a brother and sister is totally different from the one between two brothers or two sisters. It's something I'd like to see explored more in games.
 
Manmademan said:
The Boss, Metal Gear Solid 3. EVA, Metal Gear Solid 4.
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The Boss while a spectacular character, she ends up being dead and a mom in name only since her child was taken away since day one and never got to raise him.

Eva was hardly what you'd call a mother. Her "sons" weren't her sons at all. She too ends up dead.

Not the best examples against this article.
 
patapuf said:
Oh and boo on the article for saying Yennefer wants to make Ciri hate her. What nonsense. Way to dismiss one of the few motherfigures that doesn't fall into the "doting and gentle" archetype.
Click to expand...
That was me saying it and it wasn't a dismissal of the character, just its categorization.

It's literally what Yennefer did and Ciri did hate her for it, until she suddenly decided that she's okay with it because that's just who Yennefer is.
Even when Yennefer admitted that she doesn't actually look at Ciri with contempt, she continued to use an insult as a nickname for her "daughter," because she finds it amusing, like a crazy person.
 
Ala Alba said:
I never got very far in the game, but your mom is a party member in Grandia III.

I agree, though, that there is a lack of good mom characters in games.



Not really related to the topic, but I hate Polygon's site/article layout.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you didn't get far in the game. :) She is eventually replaced by another character and the plot during the rest of the game is terrible and makes no sense. Such a fun combat game with a lousy story.
 
I think a lot of the lack of motherhood in games is related to endless reasons why female characters are kept young, single, slim and sexy (whether it's through magic, time travel, frozen members of ancient races etc) whereas male characters can be happily stomping around in middle-age, even deadlier bad asses than they were 20 years previously. For some reason game designers don't like to imply that a female leading character has had/is having a meaningful relationship with any npc, so they can be a kind of idealised proto-girlfriend for the player, whereas it's ok for a male character to have had plenty of relationships.

Perhaps there's still an element of assuming the audience is male, so the thought process is that a male leading character's child will tug on the player's heartstrings as they play that character's father, but a female leading character's child is the child of another npc male character who has had a sexual relationship with the lead character, and so is presumed to be less appealing to a young male player.

Before we look at the lack of mothers, I think we'd also need to look at the lack of leading female characters of an age where that could be likely. We need more variety in protagonists in games (something more likely to happen with more diversity in the people making them), but at least going from few female protagonists 20 years ago to lots of pretty young female protagonists today is progress. Maybe one day we'll have leading female characters who don't start out with an artist told to draw a standard sexy young athelete because marketing.
 
Ehh, I'm not sure I buy that argument that dad's are everywhere in games just because a handful of recent ones have them. For the most part neither parent are around and dad's have their own set of stereotypes/groups they fit in, mainly either being absentee, deadbeats, or terrible fathers
 
TheSpoiler said:
The C. Viper thing isn't completely irrelevant. Her child just isn't in the games because the kid isn't fighting, but it's still very much apparent that she's a mom. Her win quotes indicate it, her ending and storyline indicate it, etc.

Like, people KNOW Viper is a mom. It's not hidden knowledge. It's very much in the open. She doesn't have a direct relationship shown on screen besides her endings because she's doing her job, but you can very much tell within the paperthin meat of SF4's story that she's torn between doing her duties and being with her child.

It'd be better if that relationship was more out in the open, definitely, but it's nice that Viper isn't fighting for some generic ass reason like "MY KID IS KIDNAPPED" or whatever. She's doing her job and would rather be home with her kid because she feels like she's missing out on quality family time.
Click to expand...

By irrelevant I meant pertinent to the core of the game's plot, which Maya (I think that's her name) doesn't really have much to do with. Their family is actually playable in the game like the Mishimas and the Kiskes. Their motivation is not just background, and is in the forefront since you will see how it plays out in the game's arcade/story mode.
 
Flipyap said:
That was me saying it and it wasn't a dismissal of the character, just its categorization.

It's literally what Yennefer did and Ciri did hate her for it, until she suddenly decided that she's okay with it because that's just who Yennefer is.
Even when Yennefer admitted that she doesn't actually look at Ciri with contempt, she continued to use an insult as a nickname for her "daughter," because she finds it amusing, like a crazy person.
Click to expand...

What scene do you mean? It's been a while since i finished the game and i can not remember an scene where Yennefer looks at Ciri with contempt (or that Ciri interprets it as such).

My perspective may be influenced from the extra lore but remember to what lengths Yennefer goes to actually save her Daughter. The goal of saving the child supersedes all others. She's not the easiest person to deal whit (which is a refreshing change) but her love for the Ciri is never in question.
 
Glad the article mentions Joyce from Life is Strange. She was a really well done character who, in turn, made her daughter Chloe a much better - and pivotal - part of the story.
 
Phoenix944 said:
I can't really recall a game with a mom but I can say the same thing with dads. I don't see a lot of parents in my games. Shame :/
Click to expand...

Games often feature solitary, violent protagonists, who don't bother to get involved in family relationships to any significant degree. You won't be raising children in the midst of shooting stuff up in a military shooter.
 
Alex_Mexico said:
The Boss while a spectacular character, she ends up being dead and a mom in name only since her child was taken away since day one and never got to raise him.

Eva was hardly what you'd call a mother. Her "sons" weren't her sons at all. She too ends up dead.

Not the best examples against this article.
Click to expand...
I don't think eventually dying during the course of the story is considered a problem. Otherwise it would also disqualify a bunch of the dad examples.
 
Ahh Polygon. always good for an ignorant click bait feminist editorial.

With thousands of games released every year you could probably find enough examples of Women who are "Mothers in Video Games."

However due to the nature of games normally involving violence, war and broken worlds that need saving, we often see unconventional families thrown togeather with the female lead often acting as the games maternal influence. Or in an RPG with a character creator it is often the player character if they chose to play as a female.

But sure lets campaign for more moms. Why not. Moms are tough
 
Now I think about it, it's pretty rare for a game's protagonist to have two living parents isn't it? In the traditional sense of living in the family home, as opposed to there being a secret Dad on the other side of the world who's harnessing souls or some shit.

More Moms would be cool. They definitely get the short end of the stick compared to vidya game fathers.
 
Beneath all the focus testing and pandering to demographics, I truly think a vast majority of videogame projects are about the things that interest, influence and engage their makers.

So, as more and more (predominantly male) videogame writers and directors have gone from their early to mid 20-starts and moved towards being husbands and fathers, we've seen that reflected in content and themes. Everyone has noticed this.

So the surest way to increase previously underrepresented roles in videogames (strong moms, strong daughters, minority protagonists etc) is to increase their involvement in development. More developer moms means more videogame moms.
 
I wonder what the writer would think about Dragon Quest V. Since the playable characters parents fit what they are talking about (with the typical role of mothers) but then the hero's wife (who becomes a mother) is a party member.
 
Some
many
people didn't take daddification all that well though, to the point of speculating there's an agenda behind it to push 80-90's kids
into starting a family, to show how nice and cool is being a dad, birthrate drop and all
.
 
Video gaming's weird obsession with childbirth, death and corruption is given full flight in Bloodborne when a character called Arianna, Woman of Pleasure, who describes herself as "a whore," gives birth to a monster, which the player is obliged to kill. Arianna also appears to expire.
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I thought she was blinking in shock/pain after.

That's what I choose to believe anyways, because the whore was the purest NPC you could save :(

Actually if you shoot the baby she's visibly alive
 
I really hope that Nathan Drake's
mother's suicide
is not a spoiler. I have not completed the game yet, and while I've
done a chapter where we got a bit of background on his mum
, I don't recall that aspect being mentioned.
 
Triggerhappytel said:
I really hope that Nathan Drake's
mother's suicide
is not a spoiler. I have not completed the game yet, and while I've
done a chapter where we got a bit of background on his mum
, I don't recall that aspect being mentioned.
Click to expand...
Its not really. There's not much more to get than that outside of a few references to her being like him but it doesn't factor into any major elements we didn't know about in the third game. It just gives them more flesh
 
Moms are cool. Tough as nails but soft inside. No problems with more moms in video games.

The Last of Us could have also been really powerful with a mother instead of Joel.
 
Gaming is not alone in portraying mothers negatively. [...] Game of Thrones
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I'm gonna have to bitch a bit about this. Game of Thrones is practically defined by its horrible fathers. It's not really fair to single out its bad mothers when, in general, disturbingly bad parenting is one of its central themes. (GoT is also about exploring the ramifications of absolute, dictatorial patriarchy, so it's perfectly reasonable that its bad dads get the spotlight - they have more power.)

It also contains one of my favorite and most nuanced characters, who is a ruthless and detestable woman that nonetheless is humanized by her struggle against the restraints of this patriarchy and is also sympathetic because of her one redeeming quality - that she fiercely loves her children.

So bleh on that.

But on the whole I agree with this article. It really just goes to show that the industry could use some damn diversity.

This "dad thing" is something I'm definitely not opposed to. Fatherhood is a concept that the majority of game developers would be infinitely more familiar with, and it makes sense to want to write what you know. (I still think the new God of War looks wonderful and a story worth telling.)

It's just a problem that the demographics of the games industry are that way in the first place. If there was a better balance, we'd get mom stories AND dad stories.
 
This is hardly unique to gaming.

As was said- men dominate industries at the moment- and you write what you know for better or worse. That will hopefully change in coming years to be more inclusive as women take the lead writing roles and developing in gaming.

The dead/absentee mother thing is a pretty easy cliche to lean on for writing in a lot of media unfortunately. Maybe people do it because dad's are usually seen as aloof or emotionally distant compared to a mother, and forced drama/lack of mom is a way to humanize them and get them to bond with a child or some such.

It's tired regardless. Can be done well ala Last of Us; maybe with God of War 4, but I wouldn't mind seeing some Ripley-type characters become more of the norm.

Alex_Mexico said:
The Boss while a spectacular character, she ends up being dead and a mom in name only since her child was taken away since day one and never got to raise him.

Eva was hardly what you'd call a mother. Her "sons" weren't her sons at all. She too ends up dead.

Not the best examples against this article.
Click to expand...

Them dying is irrelevant though. They were both characters that were present for the entire 3rd game, with Boss having a detailed backstory prior to the events, and Eva having a story that continued into the legacy of the series. They weren't killed off for simple plot drama, they were given depth. Characters die in games, that doesn't mean that they are not strong examples, but I do agree with you that neither fits too strongly against the article here regardless.
 
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