8 Ugly Problems About Gender Representation The Gaming Industry Won't Admit
2. Token Romances Are All Too Common
This issue is less severe in none-RPG titles, but where it is present it proves to be just a little bit irritating. I'm going to highlight a personal favourite game of mine - Skyrim - and talk about its use of romance and love interests. On the offender scale its fairly small, and even offers an in-lore explanation as to why the marriage mechanic is what it is, but having your own personal servant in your home of choice for the remainder of your journey isn't exactly the most intelligent way of presenting the concept to an audience. Other RPG titles like Fable suffer from this issue as well (along with a distinct heteronormative approach to story telling, but I digress) where a marriage is superfluous to the main events of the game. These romances hold no impact on the story and are just an addition to a player's questing, so why don't we make them more fulfilling? It's hard to recall instances outside of the RPG sphere where a romance has felt particularly forced or 'bolted on' to the main experience, which in many respects places gaming above some of film and TV's most successful programming. Indeed, there have been some truly memorable and worthwhile romances in the medium throughout its history, but a more diverse and perhaps accurate depiction would be very much welcomed as games continue to push genre boundaries.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
