The Mommening of Games?

Last year, Pixar released a seminal work in their oeurve and, honestly, Disney's oeurve. They released Brave, a film with a female main character who had a realistic and healthy, if difficult, relationship with her mother. Compare this to the entire line of Disney princess movies and you'll find that to be an incredibly rare thing. Of them, only Mulan, Aurora, and Rapunzel have living biological mothers, and of those, only Mulan's is even a little be relevant (though not very). Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow White, meanwhile, all have stepmothers, each of whom is the villain of the movie. Mulan, Ariel, Tiana, Belle, Jasmine, and Pocahontas all have extremely relevant fathers, though.

This isn't about Disney princesses, though. That's a well worn path of analysis both in gender ideas portrayed in the princesses and in their inevitable love interests (which Merida from Brave doesn't have! Yay!) This is about video games. A few years ago, Stephen Totilo of Kotaku posted a great article on "The Daddening of Video Games". It's a fascinating phenomenon where the industry has successfully created relationships that tie the player to the game closer. It's not as fraught with choice and problems as the love interest path that Bioware pushes and fails at so often and it provides a constant goal for the player- keep this person safe, no matter what. One of 2012's best games, and one of the best narratives in video games, The Walking Dead hangs its hat entirely on this conceit, tossing you into a protective relationship between the main character and a little girl found hiding in a treehouse after her babysitter got a taste for flesh. It's a fabulous game and shockingly well done most of the time.

It's almost impossible to find a shot
that doesn't include her cleavage

It took Disney until Little Mermaid for a princess to have a meaningful relationship with a parent. It took 23 years after that for that parent to be her mother. I think video games can do better. I think video games can have a real Brave. But mothers are few and far between in video games (often killed as a matter of plot for RPGs) and even rarer still do they have relationships with daughters. Mass Effect has a couple of mother/daughter pairings in Matiarch Benezia/Liara and Samara/Morinth but...let's just say those relationships don't end well. Particularly disappointing that neither of these relationships is healthy by any stretch of the word since the Asari are an all-female species and they couldn't even work in a decent connection there. Of course, that was a decision made for the "Wooo! Boobs!" factor, but still. More thought could've been put in it.




Other mothers I've thought of in video games:

• Mother - Maria (kind mother to the villain)
• Chrono Trigger- Crono's mother(minor character, possibly dies as a matter of plot)
• FF7- Jenova(alien hellbeast that attempts to consume all living things)
• FF9- Queen Brahne(Megalomaniacal stepmother who attempts to kill her stepdaughter to conquer the world)
• Bioshock 2- Sofia Lamb (megalomaniacal 'collectivist' who kidnaps little girls and plots to...do...something? The plot sucks, okay?)
• Binding of Isaac- Isaac's mother (locks protagonist in her basement where he has to fight endless fetuses...fetii? fetapodes?)
• Silent Hill 4- The Apartment (It's an apartment.)
• Metroid- Mother Brain (It's a brain.)

So yeah. Pickings are slim.  The only one I could come up with who was really good example and interesting was Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum from Bioshock 1. Sure, her 'daughters' are genetically mutated immortal automatons made out of little girls, whose purpose is to suck DNA out of corpses...but...she's still interesting! And has a mother-ish relationship. With daughter-ish things. It's complicated.





In the Daddening of games, main characters were allowed to have families and real relationships with them. Main characters were allowed to be fathers. In the list of mothers, not one is a main character. I can't think of a single protagonist in any game who is, in fact, a mother. Of course, female protagonists are few as it is and, when they do exist, they tend to be lone wolves who don't need no man or family(see: Samus Aran, Lara Croft, Bayonetta, etc.).  And, as an aside, Samus, the most basic and beloved female protagonist in gaming history (aside from Ms. Pac-Man I guess) eventually does get some sort of familial relationship: she gets to have retconned daddy issues. Yaaaaay.

I'm not saying video games should've done better (though, I mean, I could). I just think they can do better from now on. Expand your goddamned horizons for characters. Even that far. Far enough to encompass a relationship that most people have. Is that so difficult?