The famed Bechdel Test, wherein a piece of media is judged on whether it has two named women characters engaged in a conversation about something other than a man, is perhaps the most well-known indicator of active female presence in media. It was developed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985, and has rightfully called attention to the ongoing problem of gender inequality in film and television over the past several decades.
As a means of encouraging representation in interactive media, the Hard Drive investigative team has decided to begin regularly applying the Bechdel Test to certain video games. Unfortunately, the first game chosen, socially-backward 1996 FPS “Duke Nukem 3D”, might not have been the best example to test the medium’s execution on the subject.
VERDICT
Fail. While Duke Nukem 3D does include scores of women throughout the entirety of the game, they are far from empowering depictions as the protagonist battles invading aliens who have taken over Los Angeles in between bouts of cringe-inducing remarks and needlessly explicit urination animations. The vast majority of women only speak as a means of begging for death as they are left suspended in strange cocoons by the aliens, only to be abandoned by the heartless Nukem as he progresses to the next level in his mission to conquer the aliens. Furthermore, it is later revealed that these poor women were only used as a ruse by the aliens to distract him while they begin their attack on Earth.
The Hard Drive investigative team was given a false sense of hope in the final cutscene, as Duke Nukem, having retired to his quarters after killing the Cycloid Emperor (the leader of the aliens) is called back to bed by an anonymous young lady. However, no further conversation is provided, and at any rate, there appeared to be only one woman present in the scene. The ensuing copulative noises are an embarrassingly unsubtle indication of the lack of insightful conversation that closes out the game.
Further hope was provided by the extra stages in the game’s Atomic Edition, with one of which being set in a place called “Babe Land”. However, while this lamentably appears to be the game’s biggest effort to pass the Bechdel Test, it still falls far short of a passing grade. Virtually none of the women in this level have a speaking part, and their inclusion only appears to be for the sake of dancing suggestively in sexy pirate costumes.
While the Hard Drive investigative team fully intends on continuing its probes into various games’ performances on this important metric, it would like to apologize to the readers for the rocky start to this new column, and assures them that more thought will be put into the selection process going forward.
