When first recruited, soldiers receive a “will” value. It’s quite idealistic, but it’s the type of idealism that’s needed.Įqually important, in terms of stats, there’s no difference whatsoever between male and female soldiers. As an aside, the soldiers are quite diverse, with non-white women from all over the world aiding the defence of Earth. This means that your X-Com team will be more reflective of the gender balance in society rather than the armed forces.
In the sequel X-Com: Enemy Within, the distribution is upped to 50-50, creating complete gender equality in the X-Com team. While it is still predominantly male, this is noticeably higher than the world average, with the US having only 15% female recruits in the armed forces. Wrong. When hiring new soldiers, it is random in a distribution of 66% male, 33% female. Considering that some armies do not allow women on the front line, you’d expect the X-Com team to be all male. It is repeatedly noted that the X-Com team is made up of the best soldiers from around the world. To give you an idea of what to expect, it’s made by Firaxis Games, best known for the Civilization series. You shoot down alien ships, attack alien abduction sites, and protect citizens from terror attacks, all while researching technology to hit back with. That makes it sound a bit boring it’s also about killing aliens! In the face of an extra-terrestrial invasion, a hit squad of X-Com soldiers is assembled to counter the alien force. What ensues is a difficult game (I constantly have to restart), where you, as the nameless Commander, oversee the defence of Earth. X-Com: Enemy Unknown is a turn-based strategy game with elements of resource management. This is not to say I’m dismissing Sarkeesian’s excellent latest video, but instead offer a good example from which developers can take advice. I’m not including this as a “Not All Games” argument as gaming culture is quite obviously toxic towards women, but rather as ideal for games to aspire to. For this, I look to the remake of X-Com: Enemy Unknown.
With Anita Sarkeesian’s latest video on women as background entertainment making the rounds at the moment, I thought I’d focus on one of the better depictions of gender in video games.
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