Have Faith in Your Fictional Women: An Analysis of Soul Calibur's Characters
Tira and Seong-Mina in Soul Calibur. Anyone look cold here? The conversation surrounding misogyny in video games and gaming circles has been a large talking point for the better part of a decade at the very least. When choosing who to market video games to back in the very gendered 1970s when they began to be produced for commercial use, marketing executives chose boys, excluding entire markets from a medium, and a product, that anyone can enjoy. It's a choice that has haunted the industry to this day, as more and more men show their disdain for women who play these games, whether these women play in competitive circles or for pure entertainment, gatekeeping is common in the industry and community. Women are not only discouraged from engaging with these products, but from making them as well, as development teams, from writers to programmers to directors show a clear lack of diversity on all fronts. Nowhere is this gap more felt than in the fighting game genre, as straight cis