Prince of Persia is a game by Ubisoft published in 2008. It is a game that, while enjoyable and offers beautiful environments to explore and simple, forgiving gameplay mechanics to coax in more casual players, finds itself rooted in many of the gender and cultural stereotypes that plague the digital game industry today.
Gender stereotypes of the game are seen in full force, creating a perfect example of the “hegemony of play” (Fron, et al). For example, the way the main female character, Elika, is dressed. She wears an extremely revealing blouse, added on with the fact that her clothing is torn, shows more skin than previously thought possible. Moreover, despite the fact that Elika has magical powers and the ability to fly, she is forced to act as a sidekick to the physically grounded Prince. She follows him around constantly, offers assistance as he is about to fall to his demise, and gracefully sweeps back down next to him. This passive and submissive behavior is seen as clearly intentional by the fact that when the Prince begins to scale vines on a wall, she finds it necessary to take his hand and take a piggyback ride until they reach the top, despite the fact that she is shown as fully capable to deal with all other acrobatic feats (jumping from pole to pole, running walls, shimmying, etc) that the Prince does. And despite the fact that she can just fly. It is difficult to see how Elika's character design was not aimed at a certain male demographic, and that strong gender role stereotypes came into play in her design. It is also difficult to see how her design could come around with a fully diverse design team.
The male and female gender gap is further played out in the game by the types of characters the Prince and Elika represented. As mentioned by Jenkins, boy culture has roots in being physically violent and that boys are typically characterized as more capable of leaving and exploring new places. Girls, on the other hand, are often restricted by parents and generally prepared more for a domestic lifestyle. This is especially brought out by the Prince, who comes from a faraway land, and the princess, Elika, who has never left her palace home. The Prince often offers more violent solutions to problems (“Can't I just hit something?”) while Elika rarely expresses anger and offers a more peaceful and maternal attitude (after defeating a bad guy, “he only wanted to defend his people”). If the solution to the issue of increasing separation of gender in media is to create a gender-neutral game environment (Jenkins), Prince of Persia is certainly not an example.
Personally, I enjoyed exploring the environment and discovering the story of the game space, but the forced and blatant gender stereotypes played out in the game were, to be honest, quite uncomfortable and unnecessary. There are certain aspects of the gameplay and game space that could be seen as appealing to a female audience, such as the exploration of spaces, a goal of healing environments, and preventing destruction. The female character is also characterized as having the ability to open portals to new, enchanted worlds as mentioned by Fullerton. These aspects, however, are drowned by the male lead character, who takes the main stage and serves no function other than to battle and hinder a girl who could otherwise be flying. Moreover, personally, I do not agree with either the female or the male stereotypes in the game. With the Prince and Elika as the only relate-able characters in the game, it is difficult not to view them as stereotypes for an entire gender. In this way, it is difficult not to offend people if they, like the barbies mentioned by Laurel, are the only indication of what a gender is supposed to mature to be like. Ultimately, Ubisoft presents a strikingly beautiful environment and friendly, casual gameplay, but sinks the game by forcing blatant gender roles on its two main characters.
Bibliography
Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (2007). The Hegemony of Play. In Situated Play: Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association 2007 Conference. Tokyo, Japan. 1-10.Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (2007). A Game Of Ones Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Game Space. In Proceedings, Digital Arts & Culture 2007, Perth, Australia. 1-11.
Jenkins, H. (2004). Game design as narrative architecture. The Game Design Reader, 670-686.
Laurel, B. (2001). Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
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