Why Gaming Gets Women Wrong

When I was in high school, I learned about something called the hero’s journey.
Every story you’ve ever been told, or the good ones anyway, tends to follow this structure.

In his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” American historian and mythologist Joseph
Campbell describes the hero’s journey as one where a hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

In plain English, our hero starts off at a point where life is dull, boring, and uninteresting.
Eventually, our hero is called to a grand adventure where he must struggle against some
opposition, overcome his faults and flaws — sometimes with the help of companions — and return as a changed person, having become a better version of himself.

“The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” illustrates this point quite nicely, where a child Link becomes a great hero through intense trial and tribulation to eventually defeat the King of Evil and save the princess. I’m really digging into this hero’s journey thing because I think it’s relevant to what seems to be a lack recently of well-written female characters in narrative-based games.

I’ve talked about the concept of a “strong female character” on Playing Politics before, a character who can have no flaws and is practically invincible. But with news