Injustice: Dudes Among Us

As a comic book fan, I am all too familiar with the “Who would win in a fight?” arguments that are so prevalent among this culture. Which is why I am so excited to pick up the new game Injustice: Gods Among Us. This game is from the creators of Mortal Kombat and allows players to do battle with all their favorite DC Comics heroes and villains. At least with all the male ones they can. If you are a fan of female DC Comic book characters, you are sadly out of luck.

In a previous entry I explained how video games are predominantly male oriented (see here), but comics have matured more in the past few decades. While the amount of talent in the comic book field is predominantly male, there is a plethora of female characters in comics. Well rounded and well written female characters. Certainly there are enough female heroes and villains to be make up at least half of the characters in a fighting game about them. But sadly that is not the case with Injustice.

Only a quarter of the available characters at the time of this game’s launch are female. While the game developer has promised a slew of additional characters to be available as DLC in the future, I doubt that the majority of those characters will be female either. So the disproportionate amount of male characters will always be present no matter how many DLC is made available.

I also have to question the characters chosen for the game’s initial launch. While characters like Wonder Woman and Catwoman are obvious choices, there are a few other characters that I question the choice of. It is obvious the creators of the game were trying to sandwich additional female characters in to appease fans. However I do not feel appeased. Right off the bat I see Killer Frost on the list of characters. Unless you are a die hard fan of DC Comics (whom I’m sure would all buy this game no matter who is in it) you have no idea who Killer Frost is. I consider myself TO BE a diehard fan and even I have barely heard of her. Same with Raven, who really only is recognizable to fans thanks to the Teen Titans cartoon show. But in the comics there was a whole period of time where she was absent from the pages of DC titles. And I don’t think I even need to talk about Hawkgirl (see entry about her here).

Harley Quinn is the one character I can see why they included her, even though with the presence of the Joker as a playable character she is not necessary. That does seem to be a problem with DC female characters. So many of them are female versions of an already established male character. And usually since the male character existed first, he has a larger fan base than his female counterpart. So it becomes redundant to have both the male AND female version in the game. But Harley Quinn is a fan favorite who has appeared in all the incarnations of Batman since her inception. When Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy was still in preproduction, so many fans suspected she would show up at some point, and I myself and hopeful she will make an appearance in any future franchise Batman films.

So of the quarter of female characters available at launch, only half of them are actually characters whom fans would want to give major play time.  Meanwhile nearly all the male characters are recognizable fan favorites who will no doubt get hours and hours of multiple replays. And that should not be. As I said before there are multiple female DC comic book characters who could have been added to this game and whom fans would recognize well enough to want to give just as much play as the male characters. Zatanna, Vixen, Supergirl, Power Girl, Starfire, Maxima, Giganta, Poison Ivy, Cheetah, Batgirl, Batwoman, Big Barda, Doctor Light, Dove (of Hawk and), Fire, Ice, Huntress, Katanna, Knockout, Lightning Lass, and so on and so on. Granted not all of them would be recognizable to all fans, but certainly thee are better choices than the ones that were initially made.

Two sides. Same coin.

Now granted, sexually equality is not the first thought game makers should consider when making a game. It should all be about making the game as fun as possible. But when you have a property such as this there is really no excuse. The characters already exist. And these characters are already designed to fight so they lend themselves to the mechanics of the game already. There is no reason why this game could not have been half female characters and still be immensely popular. There is certainly room. I can already see several characters that are just doubles of another character on the list. Why do we need both Green Lantern AND Sinestro? Same with Black Adam and Shazam? These are characters with the exact same power sets and I am sure their fighting skills are identical as well. On a similar note, I’m sure Bane and Solomon Grundy probably aren’t that different either. And although he’s a personal favorite of mine, Nightwing is probably just a cross between Batman and Catwoman. That’s at least three spaces that could have been given to a cool female character with a complete new set of fighting skills.

"My eyes are up here boys."

In the end, none of this really matters. People who are going to buy this game will buy it regardless of how many women are featured in it. And I guess I should be happy there are any female characters in a fighting game at all. When I look back at the first Mortal Kombat game it had only one female character. The original Street Fighter didn’t have any (Street Fighter II did add one character). And the only games that did end up having large female casts were games where sexually exploiting the ample bosoms of the characters was more important than compelling gameplay. In the end, these types of games have come a long way. They just need to go a little further.