LONDON, UK — This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the legendary classic game Tomb Raider and one of the most iconic female protagonists ever; Lara Croft.
With a long history of unrealistic body representation in gaming, OnlineGambling.ca have taken 10 major female leads and redesigned them with more natural and realistic bodies.
Unrealistic body representations for women is nothing new in the world of video gaming. According to Karen E. Dill and Kathryn P. Thill, female video game characters are represented as either: (1) sexualized, (2) scantily clad, and (3) a vision of beauty. The study revealed that over 80% of women in video games represented one of these.
What would some of the most iconic female leads look like if they were more realistic, or existed in the real world?
What if Sylvanas from World of Warcraft had some stronger hips to help carry such heavy armour? Or if League of Legend’s Leona’s porcelain skin was actually a battle-worn canvas in need of some TLC?
After conducting multiple research polls with both gamers and a panel of women, OnlineGambling.ca have redesigned 10 characters from eight of the most popular video gaming franchises – BloodRayne, Darkstalkers, Dragon’s Crown, League of Legends, Mortal Kombat, Overwatch, Soulcalibar, and World of Warcraft.
Methodology
OnlineGambling.ca initially polled 70 video gamers on which female protagonists they felt were problematic in representing real life women’s body sizes and standards. A shortlist of 30 characters was then narrowed down to 10 fan favorites; each character had to appear in a recent game or franchise edition.
Next, a panel of women were questioned on areas of their bodies that they had issues with or were self-conscious about.
Finally the chosen female video game characters were then redesigned to reflect the average American female body, plus elements from the issues raised from the panel discussion.
Realistic? No person that moves around as much as those characters do, would look that big, and even they did they certainly wouldn’t be flabby. This is more along the lines of “10 iconic female gaming characters redesigned as if they frequently ate fast food.”